Wonders & Blunders with Geoff Capes

I’m not a modernist sort of chap when it comes to buildings: give me a roaring log fire any day. I live in a house built in the 1700s. So I’m lucky to live in Lincolnshire, which is full of the kind of stately homes that an oldie like me is fond of.  

I admire Beaver Castle, sitting on the borders of Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire and Stoke Rochford Hall, now a conference centre for the National Union of Teachers, both of which were built in the nineteenth century.

But the house that I feel the most affinity for is Burghley House in Stamford. It’s everything that a stately home should be, including being accessible to the public. It’s a beautiful part of the heritage, created before precision tools and modern machinery, but still standing hundreds of years later.

When I was a copper, Burghley was on my beat and I used to go fishing in the lake when I was off duty, and I have been back to do the same since.

The family lived in the house then and I felt I had a personal connection with David Burghley, who was also an Olympian – he won the gold medal for 400m hurdles in 1928, and was the chairman of the organising committee of the 1948 Olympics. 

There’s nothing much I would take a wrecking ball to. I am not a fan of the sixties apartment blocks where people live in small cubicles and don’t know their neighbours. They were built as slums and so it has proved, judging by the rate at which they are to coming down today.

But the building that I am least fond of is one I sometimes passed when I was in Grantham:  Margaret Thatcher’s childhood home. I’m not a fan of hers, so when I looked at the restaurant that used to be her father’s shop front, I would cringe.

I think it was called The Premier. I’ve got nothing against the building itself, because it’s the kind of Victorian house that is still so desirable.

Wonder

One of England’s great estates, Burghley House was built for Sir William Cecil, aka Lord Burghley,  Elizabeth I’s chief adviser between 1555 and 1587. Built in the newly fashionable classical style imported from France, the house has been used as a location in the recent films of Pride & Prejudice and The Da Vinci Code.

Blunder

Number 1, North Parade, Grantham. Margaret Thatcher’s father’s grocery shop at is an attractive Georgian or early Victorian corner shop. Although Alfred Roberts owned two, this was the one above which the family lived. It is now a grade II-listed health food store.