In this new blog series with a set of specially filmed tours, Lord Montagu gives you his insights on our new themed rooms at Palace House.
Palace House has been receiving paying guests since 1952 but, until this year, the permanent offering has never included sight of bedrooms. That was because these were all within the part of the house which my father occupied and needed for his many guests. His passing gave me the opportunity to reconfigure the private side of the house and add one of the bedroom wings to the public circuit.
The rooms were not exceptional spaces in themselves, so I decided to create a series of themed interiors which reflect aspects of Beaulieu and family history and brought something new to the house without detracting from its essentially Victorian character.
To realise this, I was delighted to start a collaboration with the students of the interior design course at Southampton Solent University. My brief was to create some remarkable rooms which visitors to Beaulieu will still be talking about after they had left.
The concepts produced by the third-year students resulted in a wonderful variety of decorative schemes which quickly made me wish I had more rooms for them to tackle. As it was, I worked with the course leader to distil the best of the ideas into plans for just five of the rooms. With significant preparation works to be done, I sometimes wondered if we would ever get to completion; structural alterations, rewiring, new plumbing and plastering all had to be done before the fun bit – decoration – could be started. The ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures, show just what a transformation has been achieved, especially in converting the 1950s kitchen to a bedroom.
In parallel with this, some of our antique furniture, used for generations and rather the worse for wear, was sent for restoration so the newly furnished rooms would look their best.
Follow the story, which begins here with the introduction to my video tours: https://youtu.be/LOWYNIPE5-A
Then keep an eye on our social platforms for next week’s Part Two.