Blackwell’s allure

Blackwell, the holiday house designed by eminent arts and crafts architect Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott, is undoubtedly out of the way if you’re visiting from the capital. But the long, multiple-train journey is rewarded completely by the sight of the house, resplendently overlooking Lake Windermere in the heart of the Lake District.

Words Pamela Buxton

Baillie Scott designed the house for industrialist Sir Edward Holt and it was built between 1898 and1900. Since 2001 it has been open to the public after being acquired by the Lakeland Arts Trust, which carried out essential restorations. The house had been saved by benign neglect – its owners apparently lost interest in the house after the death of the their son and heir and simply rented it out before it ended up a school from the 1940s-70s. At this time and for years after, its fantastic decorative fireplaces and flourishes were simply boarded up – a tremendous stroke of luck.

The trust recently engaged a conservation architect and next year it celebrates its tenth anniversary open to the public with a Baillie Scott exhibition. Even before this special show, for the visitor the whole house is a walk-in exhibition. The key space is the main hall, a double-height experiment in open-planning so different to the conventionally tightly-planned accommodation of the day. My favourite room is the adjacent white drawing room, a decorative triumph with a particularly attractive inglenook fireplace. Like Macintosh’s white rooms at the Glasgow School of Art, this contrasts dramatically with the wood panelling of the corridors and the darker ambience of the great hall. Both of these rooms have inviting window seats, with great views of the lake down the hill from the house.

Blackwell may have lost its allure for the original owners, but visiting more than a century on, its appeal is clear. Not only is it Baillie Scott’s largest and most important surviving work in the country, it is also the only one open to the public and well worth the effort of getting there.
www.blackwell.org.uk