Arcadia

Near Walsingham, there lies a sleeping beauty of an early Tudor manor, legendary and impenetrably hedged. Sir John Guinness and his lady had possessed it jealously; were said have furnished it exquisitely, authentically. His collections—above all the paintings—were fabled. Not that anyone had ever been let in.



With my Norfolk friends, I’d been longing for a sight of it, prowling for threadbare places in the hedge, for glimpses of fantasticated brick.



Then Sir John was widowed: his beloved house went on the market, and for ages went unsold. You can’t just hand these places over to the National Trust—they demand an endowment. The upkeep at East Barsham was reputed to be £2,000 a week, just to whack the weeds and keep the roofs from tumbling in. The price fell and fell to £2.75 million. There were rumors that the Bee Gees secretly owned it (wait, I thought they were dead); that a cult had bought it, and it was randomly open for the sale of incense.

Straightway on my arrival, my friends said eagerly that the gate was open. They’d only just ventured in, and found a handwritten notice declaring: House & Garden + Tea £5. A snip. But a gardener sort of person had turned them away, saying we were closed today, that Roy had a session.

Roy?

This time, the sign said: House & Garden £10. No mention of tea. The gate was open once again, and we drove in. O my!





Sheer Lud-in-the-Mist.

We called out, and at last came an Igor-in-Wellingtons, out of some sort of construction zone way out back, with mud and machinery. Capability Brown, ploughing under? He was like an unbaked gingerbread man, all white dough, with visionary liquorice-button eyes. Sorry, didn’t hear you, Roy and I were just having some tea. He took our pounds and told us, Oh yeah, go anywhere you like, wander around, unless there’s a note on a door. Sometimes Roy is busy. Talk among yourselves. Only be careful going up them turrets. The stairs are just past the broken window.

He unlocked the great front door.

My gods.



It looked like something between a well-swept hippy squat and a private madhouse. Sparse, commonplace furniture (one mattress with the charity-shop tag still on it); the walls and tables stuck with clearly penned impenetrable psycho-babble koans; sub-Warhol paintings everywhere, stacked and hung. What looked like a student copy of Whistler’s mother. Huh? Rather a witty Elizabeth I. An entire new suite of unremarkable bathroom fixtures, none of it plumbed, with the bathtub in the place of a bed, and the old taps sticking out of the walls. A few books, mostly thrillers and lengthier psycho-babble, but including (I noted) Wolf Hall. Well-swept, I said; but that was downstairs.  Upstairs there were stranger Gothick passages: a mullioned window sill, thick with dead wasps; cobwebs; a papier-mâché dragon lying in a wilderness of fallen plaster, as if he’d roared the walls and ceiling down.






J., who has an eye for vintages, said the champagne bottles lying about everywhere were of spectacular breeding. The turret stairs, of terrifying steepness and narrowness, though luckily uncrumbled, were worth climbing, for the view of the ten chimneys.



Returning to the great hall, we found the front door locked against us. Spooky! But we sought out a back door with a key in it, and let ourselves out. This would have been a showplace garden once; even now, it’s lovely in a Dreamchild sort of way, with its prickling topiary. There are some terrific moss-grown stony garden chairs, like a stage-set for the Council of Elrond done by Rackham.



Again, we called the Igor out, and he came stumping: we had the backdoor key to give him, and besides, there was another party coming along, thrilled by the serendipity—the door just opened for us—and bemused.

This time, the Igor fixed us like the Ancient Mariner, and held us, talking nineteen to the dozen. Sorry Roy locked you in. I said to him, there’s free [i.e. 3] people in there, Roy, I said, don’t lock the door or nuffing, he always does this. He tells me, If I paid you, you’d take wings and fly away. And then where’d I be? He’s not used to having money, Roy. He had thirteen Mercedes here, all lined up, but I told him, what you going to do with all them? The neighbors been complaining we been cutting trees, but what if a branch smacked through a bus window and affected a little child? It’s common sense. They don’t like it that Roy’s been diverting the river. (So that’s what all the machinery is about.) What’s wrong with creating a water-feature?

Well!

Of course, we went home and Googled Roy like mad. He does appear to be an elderly pop-artist and cabinetmaker of note—none of the latter craft is in evidence. though much of the former. And—oh dear—his idea in buying the place was to turn it into a “boutique hip-hop hotel.” You just can’t do that with a Grade I listed building. As he should have known. So now he’s stuck with it, and restless.

Anyone want to go in on a bid?



We wondered too, about the Igor. Though he had a strong east London accent, he claimed to come of a centuries-deep New Forest lineage, and spoke knowingly of that Edwin Lutyens and that Gertrude Jekyll. And it was always we. Old retainer? Old partner? Bastard son?

On my last evening, a neighbor of my friends came over, and of course the conversation turned to East Barsham. Back in the day, Lady Guinness used to wander the Fakenham market in odd shoes. But now! The neighbor said that her son and his girlfriend had been round, and encountered the terrifying Roy, who stood before a doorway crying, “Go away! I’m treating a schizophrenic!”

Nine