Finchcocks

Finchcocks is an early Georgian manor house in Goudhurst, Kent. For 45 years it housed a large, visitor-friendly museum of historical keyboard instruments, displaying a collection of harpsichords, clavichords, fortepianos, square pianos, organs and other musical instruments. The museum was run by the owners of the house, Richard and Katrina Burnett until 2017.Independent, The glorious life and times of Finchcocks – the living museum of music, 28 October 2018 It is now owned by Neil and Harriet Nichols who use it as a family home and a venue for residential piano courses and classical concerts.

Ownership

The house was built in 1725 and named after the family who lived on the site in the 13th century.

Finchcocks was owned by Edward Horden, whose family crest lies above the front door. Edward was Clerk of the Green Cloth - a secretary to the board that was responsible for organising royal journeys and auditing the Royal Household accounts for three monarchs, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

The current house was built for Edward Bathurst (1680-1772), a London barrister and Master of the Middle Temple. Edward resided there until his death, before which he conveyed the estate to Charles, son of his second marriage. Charles died in 1767 at which point the estate passed onto this brother, Richard Bathurst, a minor canon of Rochester Cathedral, who resided there until 1796. The University College London Legacies of British Slavery database details the fact that, as well as inheriting Finchcocks, he inherited a plantation in Jamaica with 56 slaves; 35 men, 21 women and 8 children.

Finchcocks was sold to Robert Springett (1753 – 1826) in 1797, a local landowner who enlarged the estate from 210 to 344 acres.

In 1863, Richard Springett sold the property to his neighbour Edward Hussey of Scotney Castle.

In the period of Hussey's ownership, the property was rented to Sir James Stirling who lived at Finchcocks from 1882. During this time the property was visited by Siegfried Sassoon, who described the house in his memoirs The Weald of Youth.

During the Second World War pupils and teachers from King's School, Rochester lodged there before the house was requisitioned by the army.

From 1960 - 1970, the property was a school for The Legat Ballet - Nicolas Legat and his wife Nadine Nicolava Legat, who brought the classical Russian style of ballet to the UK in 1923.

After wartime use for military purposes and a period of institutional use in the 1960s, the house was acquired in 1971 by Richard and Katrina Burnett, who restored it and in 1976 opened it as both a museum housing their collection of historic keyboard instruments and a centre for concerts and other musical events.

When they decided to retire and downsize in 2015, much of the important collection was dispersed at auction, but Finchcocks itself was sold to another musical couple, Neil and Harriet Nichols, who run courses for pianists at the house and host charitable concerts, as well as making it their home.

Architecture

The property is noted for its brickwork and has a dramatic front elevation attributed to Thomas Archer. It is located in of grounds. There is parkland to the front and a garden to the rear with wide formal lawns, mature shrub borders, an orchard for wild flowers, and a Grade II listed walled garden and summerhouse. To the east and west of the property lies a Grade II listed Ha-ha. There are extensive views over the Kentish landscape of park, farmland, and hop-gardens.

The house has an elongated rectangular main block with curved and projecting flanking wings in the English Baroque style. The imposing front façade displays a painted moulded cornice supported on Tuscan corner pillars and a pediment containing the Bathurst coat of arms. The rear (west) elevation is of simpler composition with a plinth and plat band around pillars which mirror the front elevation. Within the house, the vaulted cellar was said to have been so extravagantly built as to have delayed the erection of the wings. The main building has four storeys above the cellar, with a central hall running the full depth of the house.

Notable architectural similarities exist with nearby Matfield House, as well as other buildings where Archer is known to be the architect including Chettle House and Marlow Place.

Events and broadcasts The rooms within, with their high ceilings and oak panelling, provided an ideal setting for music performed on period instruments; the house and instruments were used regularly for recordings by leading exponents of early music such as Trevor Pinnock, Simon Preston and Nigel North.

Broadcasts and events at the property have featured on BBC Radio 3, BBC music magazine, the pianist magazine and Classic FM. It was also the location for the filming of The Amazing Mr Blunden directed by Mark Gatiss for Sky Movies.

The Finchcocks collection

Finchcocks was acquired by Richard Burnett, a fortepianist, in 1970. The Adlam Burnett workshop (founded by Derek Adlam and Richard Burnett) was set up at the house and enabled instrument makers to produce copies of historical keyboard instruments in an ideal environment, learning from the construction of many originals. The building housed the Katrina and Richard Burnett collection of over 100 historical keyboard instruments; about forty of which were fully restored to playing condition. These could be seen and heard whenever the house was open to the public; it was one of the few collections of historical instruments at which people were welcome to play them themselves. With the Burnetts' retirement in 2015, the museum closed and many of its instruments were auctioned off for charity. The auction catalogue documented the instruments meticulously and in the auction many fetched two or three times the estimated prices. A total of £835,462 was raised from the sale of the collection.

Fourteen instruments from the collection were retained and form the Richard Burnett Heritage Collection, to be housed in 2018 at the Burnetts' home in Tunbridge Wells.

Similarly, there is a collection of musical pictures, prints and an exhibition on the theme of London's 18th-century pleasure gardens such as Vauxhall and Ranelagh Gardens.

Historical instruments in the collection

Clavichords

Lindholm and Söderström: unfretted, 1806 Georg Friedrich Schmahl: fretted, 1807

Harpsichords

Joachim Antunes: single manual, 1785 Thomas Blasser: double manual, 1744 C.A.: bentside spinet, c.1700 Fr. Ant. L.: single manual, 1716 Gregori: single manual, c.1697 Onofrio Guarracino: virginal, 1668 Jacob Kirckman: double manual, 1756 Joseph Mahoon: bentside spinet, 1742 (today in Geelvinck Early Piano Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Organs

Anon: chamber organ, c.1680; chamber organ, c.1790; miniature free-reed organ, c.1860 Alexandre Père et Fils: harmonium, 1859 Autophone Company: cob organ (portable free-reed barrel organ), c.1885 John Avery: chamber organ, 1792 William Ayton: barrel organ, c.1800 John Byfield: chamber organ, 1766 Longman and Broderip: barrel organ, c.1790

Pianos

Anon: portable square piano, c.1815; lyre piano (possibly Schleip, Berlin), c.1825; domestic barrel piano, 19th century Gustaf and Wilhelm Andersson: barrel piano, c.1890 Bayes and Company: square piano, 1793 Frederick Beale: upright euphonicon, c.1842 Adam Beyer: square piano, 1777 John Brinsmead and Sons: upright, c.1855 John Broadwood and Son: grand, 1792; square, 1795; square, 1798; grand, 1801; square, c.1805 John Broadwood and Sons: grand, c.1810; square, c.1820; grand, 1823; cabinet upright, c.1830; grand, 1846; square, 1858; grand, 1859 (now at Hammerwood Park, East Grinstead, Sussex); upright, c.1870 Muzio Clementi and Company: grand, c.1800; upright grand, 1804; square, c.1815; square, c.1815; square, c.1815; grand, c.1815; grand, c.1821; grand, 1822; cabinet upright, c.1825; cabinet upright, c.1825 Collard and Collard: square, c.1835; grand, c.1835; grand, c.1840 William Edwards: cabinet upright, c.1825 W.J. Ennever and Son: upright, c.1850 Sébastien Érard: square, 1792 Erard Frères: grand, 1801 Erard: upright, c.1860; grand, 1866 Johann Fritz: grand, c.1815 Christopher Ganer: square, c.1780; square, 1784 Conrad Graf: grand, c.1820; grand, 1826 Crang Hancock: transverse grand, 1779 Carl Henschker: grand, c.1840 Mathias Jakesch: grand, 1832 Jones, Round and Company: upright grand, c.1810 (today in Geelvinck Early Piano Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands and on loan at Huis Midwoud, Midwoud) William Kearsing: square, c.1830 Knowles and Allen: square, c.1805 Sebastian Lengerer: grand, 1793 Longman, Lukey and Company: square, c.1780 Frederick Mathuschek: square, 1873 Sébastien Mercier: upright, 1831 Henri Pape: upright piano-console, 1841; upright piano-console, 1843 Ignace Pleyel et Compagnie: upright, c.1840; grand, 1842 Michael Rosenberger: grand, c.1800 Leopold Sauer: pyramid piano, c.1805 William Southwell: upright square, c.1800 Robert Stodart: grand, 1787 William and Matthew Stodart: grand, 1802 (now at Hammerwood Park, East Grinstead, Sussex); square, 1807 Johann Baptist Streicher: grand, 1867 (today in Geelvinck Early Piano Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands) Anton Walter und Sohn: square, c.1800 Wilson: square, 1789 Robert Woffington: upright, c.1800 (today in Geelvinck Early Piano Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands) Johannes Zumpe and Gabriel Buntebart: square, 1769 (today in Geelvinck Early Piano Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Others

Anon: cylinder musical box with drum and bells, c.1895 Busson: piano accordion, c.1850 Chappell and Company: keyboard crystallophone (or 'pianino'), c.1815 (today in Geelvinck Music Museum, Zutphen, Netherlands); digitorium, c.1870 Paul Lochmann: symphonion (disc musical box), c.1895 Thomas Machell and Sons: dulcitone, c.1920 (today in Geelvinck Music Museum, Zutphen, Netherlands) J Tait: angelica (musical glasses), c.1815

Related publications

Burnett, R: English Pianos at Finchcocks, Early Music (1985) Burnett, K and R: Finchcocks Past & Present (2003) Dow, W: Finchcocks Collection, Catalogue: the Richard Burnett Collection of Historical Keyboard *Instruments (1989)

Finchcocks

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