Eaton Hall is the country house of the Duke of Westminster. It is south of the village of Eccleston in Cheshire, England. The house is surrounded by its own formal gardens, parkland, farmland and woodland. The estate covers about .
The first substantial house on the site was built in the 17th century. During the early 19th century it was replaced by a much larger house designed by William Porden. This in turn was replaced by an even larger house, with outbuildings and a chapel, designed by Alfred Waterhouse. Its construction started in 1870 and concluded about 12 years later. By 1960 the fabric of the house had deteriorated and, like many other mansions during this period, it was demolished, although the chapel and many of the outbuildings were retained. A new house was built but its design was not considered to be sympathetic to the local landscape, and in the late 1980s it was re-cased and given the appearance of a French château.
The house has been surrounded by formal gardens since the 17th century, the design of which has changed over the centuries in accordance with contemporary ideas and fashions, as has the surrounding parkland. A variety of buildings are included in the estate, some decorative, others built for the business of the estate; many of these are listed buildings. The house and estate are not normally open to the public, but the gardens are open on three days a year to raise money for charity, and some of the estate's buildings can be hired for charitable purposes.
Halls
Eaton Hall has been the country house of the Grosvenor family since the 15th century. There is evidence of a two-storey house on a moated site in the estate in a 17th century estate map and an 18th century engraving. A survey undertaken in 1798 showed that the building was still present.
Samwell Hall
The first substantial house was built for Sir Thomas Grosvenor, 3rd Baronet. He inherited the estate at the age of 8 when he succeeded his grandfather, Sir Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Baronet, who died in 1665. The new owner commissioned the architect William Samwell to design the house. Building started in 1675; much of the stone used was brought from the ruined Holt Castle in north Wales. By 1683 the cost of building the house had risen to over £1,000 (). An engraving of the time shows it to have been a substantial square house with three storeys and dormers. The entrance front had nine bays and a portico. The engraving also shows the earlier moated house to the south of the new house.
Porden Hall
By the time that Robert Grosvenor, then the 2nd Earl Grosvenor, and later the 1st Marquess of Westminster, inherited the estate in 1802, the Samwell Hall had become old-fashioned and in need of renovation. Grosvenor appointed William Porden to plan the improvements. Building started in 1803 and Porden (later assisted by Porden's son-in-law Joseph Kay) estimated it would take three years to build at a cost of £10,000 (). In the event it took just under 10 years and cost over £100,000 (). The previous house was encased and surrounded by "every possible permutation of the gothic style"; including turrets, pinnacles, arched windows, octagonal towers, and buttresses (both regular and flying). Two new wings were added in the first stage, and in the 1820s more wings were added, by this time under the direction of Benjamin Gummow. The interior of the house was as lavish as the exterior, with more Gothic detailing. The hangings for the state bed included of purple damask and of sarsenet (fine silk) trimmed with gold lace. When the future Queen Victoria visited in 1832 at the age of 13, she wrote in her journal: "The house is magnificent". Others described it as being "as extravagant and opulent as the very latest upholsterer-decorators could make it". A critic found it "the most gaudy concern I ever saw" and "a vast pile of mongrel gothic which ... is a monument of wealth, ignorance and bad taste". Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Marquess of Westminster, succeeded his father in 1845 and commissioned the Scottish architect William Burn to make alterations to the house. Burn raised the centre of the south front to make it look like a tower, and changed some of the external Gothic features. The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described this house as a "spectacular Gothic mansion".
Waterhouse Hall
The 2nd Marquess died in 1869 and was succeeded by his son Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, initially the 3rd Marquess and from 1874 the 1st Duke of Westminster. He appointed Alfred Waterhouse to design another new hall. Again the core of the previous hall was retained; parts were refaced and re-modelled, other parts were completely rebuilt. A private wing was built for the use of the family, and this was joined to the main part of the hall by a corridor. Waterhouse also designed the chapel and a clock-house, and rebuilt most of the stabling. The work began in 1870, took 12 years to complete, and cost £803,000 (). The library was long, the dining room with its ante room was long, and the octagonal great hall contained an organ. For the interior, Henry Stacy Marks painted a frieze of the Canterbury Pilgrims for the morning room, Gertrude Jekyll painted panels for the drawing room, and in other rooms were paintings by Gainsborough, Stubbs and Reynolds. Pevsner wrote that it "was an outstanding expression of High Victorian originality", and added "this Wagnerian palace was the most ambitious instance of Gothic Revival domestic architecture anywhere in the country". The Daily Telegraph described it as "one of the most princely and beautiful mansions that these islands contain".
In 1902 the 2nd Duke gave the large alabaster, porphyry and green serpentine chimneypiece from the Ante-Drawing Room as a wedding present to his sister Lettice, Countess Beauchamp. In 1910 it was carefully dismantled and re-erected at her house, Madresfield Court, Malvern, by the architect Randall Wells, to become the focus of his new top-lit Staircase Hall, where it survives.
During both World Wars, parts of the hall were used as a hospital. In 1943, the Britannia Royal Naval College moved to the hall from Dartmouth when the college there was bombed. It moved back to Dartmouth in 1946, after which the hall was used as an officer cadet training unit until the end of National Service in 1958.
Dennys Hall and the present hall
By 1960 the hall needed repair and decoration, and dry rot was found in the roof. In 1963 Gerald Grosvenor, 4th Duke of Westminster, decided to demolish the main part of the Waterhouse building and the private wing whilst retaining the chapel, clock tower and stables. A new building was commissioned by the Duke, who appointed John Dennys, his wife's brother-in-law, as architect. Dennys had earlier worked on Saighton Grange on the Eaton estate.
The intention was to build a modern, manageable home. The result was a rectangular, flat-roofed building, faced with white Travertine, its "whiteness [being] a stark contrast to the softness of the Cheshire landscape". Its construction began in 1971, it took less than years to build, and cost £459,000 (). The exterior had a central porte-cochère on the entrance front. The house followed an asymmetrical plan, with two storeys plus a basement containing a swimming pool. A central two-storey hall gave access to the principal rooms, with the main reception rooms being on the first floor. The decor included wall coverings in silk and woodblock floors.
Subsequently, the Dennys Hall was considered to be unsympathetic to its setting, and it was decided to change its exterior. This was undertaken by the Percy Thomas Partnership. Work on recasing the Dennys Hall to make it look more like a French château began in 1989 and was completed in 1991. The result has not been widely praised; the 2011 Cheshire volume in the Pevsner Buildings of England series describes the building as "Château style, (Waterhouse's) Eaton style, but also Tesco style".
Associated structures
Adjacent to the hall are the remaining structures designed by Waterhouse. To the north is Eaton Chapel; this, with its clock tower, is a Grade I listed building. The decorative scheme of the interior of the chapel is based on the 'Te Deum'; it involves stained glass and stone mosaic, and was developed by Frederic Shields. Immediately to the north of the chapel is the Stable Court; this is listed at Grade II*. The buildings in the Stable Court are in brick, red stone, and half-timbering, with red tile roofs. The west range has a half-timbered upper storey with two gables, and a central gatehouse with turrets which are polygonal at the base and circular higher up and have conical roofs. On each side of the gatehouse are two-storey arcades with gables above. In the courtyard is a statue of a horse by Joseph Boehm, which is listed at Grade II. At the southeast corner of the stable yard is a postillion's house, dated 1873 and listed at Grade II*. In a lobby between the stable yard and the chapel is an artificial grotto, listed at Grade II. In the area around the Stable Court are further structures listed at Grade II. To the north is the Coachhouse Court, which consists of a coach-house, a covered court and a riding school. These were designed in the 1870s for the 1st Duke. To the north of this are Eaton Hall Cottages, four attached cottages, which were designed about the same time. In the forecourt between the Coachhouse Court and the cottages is a lodge, with gates, piers and screens. Near to the cottages is the former engine shed of the Eaton Hall Railway. To the east of the stable yard is a chapel-like sandstone game pantry dating from the 1870s.
From 1896 until 1947, the estate was served by the gauge Eaton Hall Railway. The line ran from the hall to a depot at Balderton on the Chester-Wrexham line, and a spur went to Cuckoo's Nest, where there was a repair yard. Part of the old railway route was re-opened in 1996.
Grounds
The estate covers an area of about , within which about of parkland and about of formal gardens. These are listed at Grade II* on the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. The boundaries of the estate generally follow field boundaries but on the east side they follow the line of the River Dee.
History
In the 17th century, formal gardens were created around the Samwell Hall; these included such features as parterres and canals. However they were costly to maintain, and in the later part of the 18th century fashions changed to favour a more informal type of garden layout. Credit for designing the informal gardens at Eaton Hall has been given to Lancelot "Capability" Brown. Although one of Brown's documents dated 1764 shows that payment was made to him by the estate, it also notes that a plan for the garden had been drawn up by William Emes. From this, Marion Mako concludes that, as Brown was an engineer as well as a landscape gardener, the payment was for an engineering project rather than for landscaping. Emes had been influenced by Brown, although he had not been his pupil. With his clerk of works, Thomas Leggett, Emes worked in the estate for the next 10 years. When Robert Grosvenor (later the 1st Marquess) inherited the estate at the beginning of the 19th century, it had become run-down. The marquess appointed John Webb, a pupil of Emes, to improve the garden and the landscaping. Among Webb's innovations were new terrace walls behind the house, the levelling of Belgrave Avenue and the planting of 130,000 trees along it, and a serpentine lake to the east of the house alongside the River Dee. He also arranged for the construction of greenhouses and a kitchen garden.