A London local authority was aghast at the paint samples from the former home of the celebrated architect Sir John Soane: not only was the colour highly unusual – a splash of blood red in the centre of a pretty blue and white ceiling – but the paint was also highly toxic.
“When the tests confirmed it was realgar, a very unusual colour traditionally used by artists and really not at all by interior decorators, and that it contained a high percentage of arsenic, there was certainly some consternation,” said Clare Gough, director of Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing, west London. “Fortunately, it is now inert, and in good condition, so we don’t have to do anything with it except leave it well alone.”
Built by the architect of the Bank of England and the Dulwich Picture Gallery as a country retreat for his family, Pitzhanger is being stripped back to its Soaneian bones in an £11m project backed by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Soane originally bought the property and 28 acres of land in 1800, knocked down most of the old house except for the ballroom wing, and started again.
Already Soane’s original north wall is visible again after more than a century, as later additions are demolished. His conservatory is being recreated, and long-lost, characteristically quirky details reinstated, including amber glass skylights that lit the servants’ rooms and imitation marble internal windows. The restoration extends to the grounds, including the winding carriage drive that made the approach so impressive to visitors, and the kitchen garden which he marched guests over to inspect after dinner.
Soane’s town house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields has been a museum since his death in 1837, complete with a pagoda tomb for his pet dog and a hermit’s cell for an imaginary monk. It regularly has queues of hopeful visitors waiting in the street for opening time. Pitzhanger, however, is little known even by many Ealing residents, attracting only 30,000 visitors a year before it closed for restoration.
The Ealing house was sold in Soane’s lifetime, and his original paint colours are being excavated from layers added by later owners – including the daughters of Spencer Perceval, the only British prime minister to be assassinated. For more than a century, the property was a local authority library, museum and art gallery. Paint samples up to 10 layers deep have been taken for microscopic analysis by technicians from period interior specialists Hare and Humphreys.
“We were astonished at the realgar,” said Rosie Shaw, a paint expert at the firm. “It was much used by Renaissance artists, but it was a famously difficult pigment. As far back as Roman times there were warnings about how dangerous it was.”
Another rich blue paint could either be the fabulously expensive lapis lazuli, made by grinding down gemstones imported from Afghanistan, or one of the earliest known uses of a synthetic version of the colour. “Either would be a startling discovery. Again, these are artists’ colours which you would never expect to find in house decoration,” Shaw said.
Now on long lease to a trust from the local authority, Pitzhanger Manor is due to reopen in 2018.
