Architecture

Why do so many horrible people want to build neo-Georgian houses?
Nice people renovate, nasty people imitate — architect Ben Pentreath on the trend for McMansions

Ben Pentreath

© Dan Mitchell

AUGUST 4, 2017 by: Ben Pentreath

“You’re completely suicidal” is a phrase I’ve heard a few times in the past couple of weeks as I’ve
talked to architectural friends. “You must be out of your mind,” said a more generous and fair-
minded estate agent. “Aren’t these precisely the people who are your bread and butter?” Well,
fair enough — but from time to time, some things need to be said. If the phone falls silent, so be
it. If I offend, may I proffer sincere apologies at the outset? But there is a simple fact, which
occurred to me first two years ago, and it’s a question that’s troubled me ever since: why do so
many horrible people want to build a new Georgian house?

The moment of revelation came at a job interview. I don’t go to many interviews, if I’m honest.
It’s great fun designing houses for people; it’s not fun being lined up in the beauty parade by
bossy but ultimately frightened “project managers”. But somehow I’d got roped in, against my
better judgment, and that’s how I found myself sitting outside a meeting room, waiting. Because,
needless to say, one of the things about horrible people who build neo-Georgian houses, is that
they HATE their own time being wasted, but they certainly don’t mind wasting the time of
others. So I waited a little longer, and longer, until finally I was called through.
I’d been asked to come and meet a couple who wanted to build a massive neo-Georgian house,
somewhere about an hour south of London, in the rolling hills of Surrey. The husband, I later
learned, spends his time operating militias for Middle Eastern dictators. Now it was time to send
their little girls to private school in England and hence to spend inordinate money on
something . . . durable. I suppose we classical architects reassure ourselves that great
architecture in the past was built on the back of sugar plantations or slavery so nothing could be
worse than that, but frankly that is never the greatest consolation for me now.

From the minute I walked in the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. A burly, dark-haired
man sat opposite me barking instructions to people left, right and centre, spending most of his
time punching messages into his vibrating mobile phone. To his right sat his timid project
manager and to the left, her chair pushed just a little out of the way, his attractive but somehow
sad wife, who was perhaps only now beginning to realise that her life wasn’t panning out as she’d
once hoped. And so the brief was outlined to me. He did all the talking. On the few occasions
when his wife wanted to speak, she was interrupted, contradicted or condescended to by him.
Nothing said was quite on the level of a moment, 15 years earlier, when an architect friend of
mine was with clients in a smart kitchen showroom in Holland Park and the bullying husband
managed to make his wife break down into sobbing tears within 10 minutes; but the general
tendency was there, like a snake in the grass: “DO NOT DISAGREE WITH ME. ANY OF YOU IN
THIS ROOM.”

My mind started wandering in a haze. Quite early on, I realised I couldn’t listen to a word this
man was saying. I started to concentrate on tiny details, such as his ever-so-slightly dirty
fingernails, or the ridiculously large golden signet ring on his bulging left hand, sporting a crest
that I couldn’t quite imagine being real. The vividness of his shirt was matched by the shine of
his shoe and the polish of the sunglasses on the table and by the braying of his voice. I focused
only intermittently on this voice, as it insisted that the job would be run to certain timescales
and budgets, and how he had fired a couple of builders before and enjoyed it, and how much he
hated planning officers (to which my usual response is “if planning officers didn’t exist you
probably wouldn’t have just spent £3m buying a house to knock down in this beautiful part of
the country, because it would have been ruined by people like you building hideous new houses
everywhere around you”). Most of the discussion concentrated on the need to fix my fee, or my
ability to meet deadlines, and the overwhelming need to be in the house by the start of a certain
school term. The clock ticked by painfully slowly, but at last we drew to a close. I left the room
and politely wished the project manager good luck on my way out, letting him know that I would
be declining to offer my services.
The architect’s dream is to build houses; the builder’s job is to construct them. Why should it be
the task of either of us to judge morality? Actually, it is not. But the fundamental rule, if you
want a happy life, is to work with nice people. And I’ve come to the conclusion over the past
decade that it’s not often that nice people have the wherewithal or even the desire to build brand
spanking new houses. Nice people generally like to restore old ones, to breathe new life into
decaying estates, or to extend and remodel, rather than to start entirely from scratch. And nice
people don’t often make their riches running private armies for dictators, or arms trading, or
making unexpectedly large fortunes in asset stripping; or in having that pathological ability that
you observe in some men (they are always men) to destroy their best friend to ruthlessly
promote their own aggrandisement.

These are just the sort of people who are often very keen to build a house that seems to be
something that it is not — one that offers a veneer of traditional respectability on a life that in
reality has spat on the values of respect, dignity and trust that they purport to occupy. Nothing is
new here; since the 19th century, and the arrival of the Victorian “millionaires”, self-made men
in mining or armaments or finance have turned to polite London architects to create their vast
piles and impart social respectability: classical mansions in Mayfair, Jacobean stately homes in
the home counties; neo-vernacular Scottish castles in the Highlands. Throughout English
history, newly wealthy men have bought estates and built houses and assimilated themselves
into the landowning aristocracy; the adage staying true that it takes three generations for new
money to become old. Time softens everything: no architectural style was brasher than that of
the early Georgians, living in stone temples set in Arcadian parkland, with gilded interiors of
vivid lipstick colours. The mania of the architectural copyist hit a high in the late 19th century,
fuelled by a booming economy based for the first time on commerce rather than land. Of the
thousands of such Victorian and Edwardian houses, remarkably few have stood the test of
architectural history. Even the finest, such as dozens of examples by Edwin Lutyens, have had a
restless, unsettled life, tending to pass through many owners in the short decades since.

In the 1960s, it held true that the “Bond villain’s lair”, which Edwin Heathcote has rightly
identified as an architectural genre in its own right, was a modernist marvel, perhaps fuelled by
Ian Fleming’s renowned disdain of the architect Erno Goldfinger (whose name was the
inspiration for the most evil villain of them all). Now, the circle has turned again and we can be
sure the “lair” would have walls of new bright-red brickwork, powerful pediments, lavish stone
mouldings, sash windows and acres of glossy timber panelling and shiny marble floors. The only
difference between the 1920s and today is that most neo-Georgian monsters are appallingly
badly detailed McMansions, whereas in the past architects knew their manners and their
mouldings. “Rich men’s houses are seldom beautiful, rarely comfortable, and never original,”
said Margot Asquith in 1922; things have generally got worse. Outside, on perfect chemically
treated lawns, beyond instantly created flower beds, tended by hands unseen (never by the
owner), freshly planted avenues stretch away in every direction to infinity.

This image of the English classical house is, of course, one of Britain’s great exports: as popular
in Russia, China or Dubai as it is in leafy Weybridge. Pathological megalomaniacs around the
world want the look, and badly. But how many of these shiny halls are ever occupied? Several
are the projects, in this cold empty world, where the clients are divorced before the house is even
completed; wife number two or three dumped to make way for a newer, younger model who
reasonably doesn’t fancy the taste of her predecessor.

I must admit, I’ve been fortunate enough in my

practice, and in life, largely to avoid such people.
I casually mentioned the
There is one notable exception, who coincidentally
subject of this piece to two
is the only client I have ever had who failed to settle
housebuilders at a drinks
a fee. Thankfully, there is another, more modest
party. Both visibly froze
tradition, made up of people who mourn the loss of
the old ways of building, and who love the essence
of the world of the English country house, who want to build something that belongs to its place,
and which has a sense of timelessness and repose in its setting. For whatever reason —
attachment to family land, or to a place that is special to them, or merely that strange and
wonderful desire to leave something beautiful for future generations — these are the clients that
want to build well, who value craftsmanship and who realise that being fair to those that work
for them is the surest way of guaranteeing a good result. Being fair to a builder, of course,
doesn’t mean acceding to each and every demand for more money (and let’s face it, some
unfortunate builders can bring their own greedy petulance to the party), but fairness depends as
much on saying “Good morning” to everyone on site as it does on recognising when not to be
penny wise and pound foolish.

And how do nice people make new money? By being smarter, not uglier. These are the
entrepreneurs or inventors, the people who had the little ideas that no one else did; the
computer expert, or the guy who didn’t go to university and who isn’t well-connected, but set up
his first business from his bedroom aged 14; the dyslexic who can’t spell but is brilliant at selling;
the woman who runs a successful skincare range; or the man who has designed a powerful
battery or a more efficient wave turbine. Each, in their own way, a creator, rather than a
destroyer.

Last month, I was at a drinks party in the heat of a glorious July evening at Highgrove,
celebrating the 120th birthday of Country Life magazine — the bible that documents this world
of the new country house as much today as it ever did, and which explains more clearly than any
other publication, present company excepted, “How To Spend It”. Among the heavy scent of
many flowers, I found myself talking to two housebuilders and casually mentioned the subject of
this piece. Both visibly froze. They looked at each other. They made me promise not to even
mention the conversation and then spent the next half-hour — hesitantly at first, then with
increasing confidence — listing the grievous behaviour of several clients. Doubtless, some of
these clients will be reading this very newspaper. Are you one? Who knows: maybe it is time to
call your architects and tell them, just this once, how much you love the job they did, instead of
only expressing disappointment; speak to the builder and tell him you appreciate how carefully
his men worked for you; and then, even, reach over and kiss your long-suffering wife, with
gentleness and meaning, and tell her just how much you valued her hard work in this process
too. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll begin to learn that the most powerful successes in building —
as in life — come wrapped in a cloak of modesty and grow from the fruits of collaboration and
never, ever from boastfulness, anger, bullying and confrontation.

Ben Pentreath is an architectural and interior designer

Illustrations by Dan Mitchell

Letter in response to this article:
Echoes of Soames Forsyte in the ‘horrible’ new rich / From Susan L Serbin, Media, PA, US

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