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Sarsden House

Oxfordshire

SET IN THE MOST WELL TENDED OF PARKLAND, Sarsden is an elegant, largely late seventeenth-century house, adapted and extended in the 1790s and 1820s. Not far from the picturesque village of Churchill, Sarsden has been the home of Tony and Rita Gallagher since 2005. They have carried out a program of major refurbishment and redecoration of this distinguished house, its setting and the surrounding estate, which was landscaped to the designs of Humphry Repton in the early nineteenth century, and cleverly extended by his architect son George (who had trained with the great John Nash).

There was a house built here in 1641 for Sir John Walter (an eminent lawyer), but that was destroyed by a fire, and was in the 1680s rebuilt for William Walter as a solid, classical, U-shaped mansion of smooth limestone ashlar around a front court.

The touch of Repton

Nothing seems to have been changed since that rebuild until after John Langston had acquired the estate in 1792. Three years later Langston called in the celebrated landscape designer Humphry Repton, who by early 1796 had prepared one of his famous ‘Red Books’, with before and after watercolour representations, for re-landscaping the estate. This book remains in the house. Repton was always the architect manqué, and rather boldly suggested alterations to the house itself, including the enclosure of an inner courtyard to create what he called ‘a hall of communication’. This became the domed, temple-rotunda-like interior, which comes as a surprise after the restrained classical entrance hall. It is typical of the Regency delight in convenient circulation through a house for family and guests.

The Repton influence continued, and Humphry’s devoted architect son, George Repton, returned a few years later to work for James Langston MP, who inherited Sarsden in 1812. Langston was widely considered an improving landlord and ‘outstanding’ architectural patron among the Oxfordshire landowners of the nineteenth century (he rebuilt many churches, farms, and schools).

‘A hall of communication’: the top-lit, domed inner hall suggested by landscape designer Humphry Repton, inserted into an earlier courtyard. It successfully transformed the feeling and circulation of the earlier house.

The entrance front of Sarsden, seen from the north-west.

A watercolour from Humphry Repton’s original Red Book of 1796, which set out proposals for the landscape.

The Doric temple designed by Humphry Repton.

The handsome entrance hall with its Doric screen of columns, which leads to principal rooms of the south front. The hall is typical of the comfortable classic country house feel of the interiors.

George Repton was invited back in the early 1820s, and in 1823–5 added a long colonnade of paired Ionic columns. This connects with the large orangery on the south front and transforms the amenity of the main house and the way it connects with the landscape. He also remodelled the 1760s estate church of St James, which sits close to the main house (adding a cruciform extension to provide both chancel and transept), and added the Ionic entrance portico on the west front of the house at the same time. All the principal rooms lie along the south front, with fine views across the landscape, and include a generously sized library-drawing room, anteroom and a long formal dining room, the latter connecting directly into the large orangery.

George Repton served the family well and had already been commissioned to create the new rectory for the Reverend Charles Barter, who had married Elizabeth Langston in 1817 (the house is now known as Sarsden Glebe). He also designed an attractive cottage orné, Sarsgrove House, which can be seen across the park. It was created for James Langston’s two unmarried sisters, Henrietta and Julia, in 1825, following his marriage to Lady Julie Moreton, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Ducie. Their daughter, who inherited the house married her cousin and became the Countess of Ducie.

The west front of Sarsden House, a principally late seventeenth-century building, extended with an Ionic colonnade and great orangery, added by architect George Repton.

The interior of the orangery, comfortably furnished as a room for enjoying during the day, and after dinner.

Comfortable and commodious, Sarsden remained in the Langston family until 1922. It passed through a number of owners in the mid-twentieth century, including the 2nd Baron Wyfold, before it was acquired by Tony and Rita Gallagher, who moved here from Warwickshire.

Mr Gallagher is a successful property developer and business man, and he and his wife have devoted considerable attention to the refurbishment of house, church, stables and twenty other houses, lodges and cottages. Earlier work by garden designer Christopher Masson has been further complemented by the Gallaghers’ own garden design team.

A place for entertainment

All the principal rooms of the main house have been handsomely decorated by Mrs Gallagher, in traditional style but with many modern touches, and contain many fine portraits and paintings acquired by the Gallaghers, some especially for this house. The emphasis has been on light and comfort, and making quite a formal house work well as a sociable home. The Gallaghers have also refurbished the church of St James; the walls now painted a blue-grey, the pews and woodwork all restored, as well as the organ.

The principal drawing room, hung with a collection of early twentieth-century portraits. The screen of columns frames the progress towards the dining room.

The anteroom has a strong Regency character, and is hung with blue and gold silk.

The stately scaled dining room, hung with a gold damask, and with the finest eighteenth-century portraits, looking through towards the principal drawing room.

‘When we bought the house we did spend some time just getting to know it before we made major decisions.’
RITA GALLAGHER

Mrs Gallagher says: ‘we are still working on some aspects of the house, but I feel it is very much our home; when we bought the house we did spend some time just getting to know it before we made major decisions; I walked and walked around the house, just looking and looking. Our previous home in Warwickshire was a Victorian house so this represented a different challenge in many ways. We have also restored the old service wing, which provides a lot of the practical rooms. It is important to make these houses function well both for our own life and also for entertaining.’ The 1820s orangery is surprisingly modern in its simplicity and ‘indoor-outdoor feel’, and is used especially in conjunction with the formal dining room it adjoins. The orangery also frames the east-facing courtyard.

Mrs Gallagher has enjoyed weaving in historical references, and has had reproductions of illustrations from Repton’s Red Book for Sarsden framed and hung in the corridors. In the screened entrance hall there are portraits of the members of the Langston family responsible for the two phases of remodelling in the 1790s and 1820s. The original saloon, a light room facing east, has been adapted as a comfortable modern family kitchen, but also hung with a large number of paintings collected over the past ten years, including several works by Ken Howard RA, notably a large view of St Mark’s in Venice in the snow.

Mrs Gallagher and her husband are keen collectors, of both contemporary and historic paintings; ‘I have tried to collect paintings which suit the scale of the rooms here,’ she says. Many of the best paintings hang in the library, with eighteenth-century portraits in the dining room. Library and dining room, and intervening anteroom, have a degree of richness in their curtains and (with the latter two) silk wall hangings in blues and golds, that immediately conjure up the decorative and comfortable country house world of the early nineteenth century.

Rita Gallagher in the long loggia of Sarsden House.

The principal family kitchen which looks eastwards out into the courtyard and is hung with many contemporary paintings, including works by Ken Howard.

Looking towards the organ in the church of St James which has recently been restored by the Gallaghers.

Inset bookcases in the main drawing room.

A detail of the gilded architrave in the anteroom.

The chinoiserie decoration of a guest bedroom.

A corner of the carved marble chimneypiece in the drawing room.

A detail of the blue curtains, also in the drawing room.