Marshcourt

Construction

Lutyens built Marshcourt for Herbert Johnson, a trader on the London Stock Exchange, where he had accumulated a fortune of half a million pounds. He bought a hillside site overlooking the River Test, and approached Lutyens after seeing his work portrayed in Country Life. They became lifelong friends.

The house was built on the hillside out of locally-quarried chalk cut as ashlar, known as clunch. Lutyens interspersed pieces of black flint and red tiles in the masonry. The exterior design of the house is Tudor, with mullioned and transomed windows, and twisted brick chimneys. "Elizabethan bricks" were supplied by the Daneshill Brick and Tile Company, an enterprise set up by another Lutyens client, Walter Hoare.

The north, entrance front on the higher ground is two-storey, in an E-plan with the facades displaying predominantly horizontal lines. The south, garden front is taller, less symmetrical, and with emphatic vertical lines. The west end of the south front is dominated by chimney stacks. At the east end of the south front, a wing projects forward, enclosing a service courtyard.

Internally, a long corridor runs east to west, with the main rooms all south-facing. The interior design is neoclassical. The oak-panelled hall features two friezes carved in chalk, with classical festoons. The dining room is panelled in walnut veneer. Ceilings have highly decorative plasterwork. There are chalk fireplaces and even a chalk billiard table. Lutyens also designed the light fittings.

Wartime use

In the First World War, Marshcourt became a 60-bed military hospital, run by Johnson's wife, a local widow who had been known as Violet Bertram before their marriage in 1912. She also ran a military hospital in Stockbridge. In 1919, Herbert Johnson instigated the construction of the Grade II listed Stockbridge War Memorial, designed by Lutyens and unveiled in 1921 by Violet Johnson, and King's Somborne War Memorial, also designed by Lutyens, unveiled in 1921 and Grade II listed. Violet Charlotte Johnson was awarded an MBE, but died in 1923. Lutyens designed her Grade II listed memorial in Winton Hill cemetery, Stockbridge.

Later years

In 1924–6, Lutyens added a ballroom to the southeast corner of the house, in the same architectural style. Johnson later installed a full-size organ there.

In 1932, after falling on hard times Johnson sold Marshcourt for £60,000, having paid £150,000 originally. It later became a preparatory school, known as Marshcourt School.

In 1993 Marshcourt was bought by the Belgian car importer Joska Bourgeois for £630,000. Bourgeois allowed the British businessman and politician Geoffrey Robinson to appear as the owner of the house, he would eventually inherit it after her death, some eight months later. Robinson sold Marshcourt in 1999 to its present owners.

Gardens

Gardens with terraces, pools and pergolas surround the house, connected by paths paved in stone inset with herringbone pattern brickwork panels. Main gardens include the Piazza, a lawned area immediately to the south of the house, with a central sundial, and a sunken pool garden adjacent to the Piazza to its west. There are extensive views from a west-facing loggia over the Piazza and the sunken garden towards the Test valley, an arrangement similar to an earlier Lutyens work, Orchards in Surrey, and other Lutyens houses.

The sunken garden has a rectangular pool containing a dolphin fountain and surrounded by concentric stone steps and flowerbeds. It is Grade II* listed. Sculptures of seahorses and tortoises around the pool were created by Julia Chance, the owner of Orchards.

A dry moat running around the forecourt to the north of the house is crossed by a bridge. These were both designed by Lutyens, and are Grade II listed.

In media

An episode of the 2011 BBC series The Country House Revealed was dedicated to Marshcourt.