Clandon Park: National Trust to restore stately home in 'biggest conservation project in a generation'

The Grade I-listed site featured in the Keira Knightley film 'The Duchess' was ravaged by fire last year

Grade I-listed Clandon Park in Surrey will be restored to its former glory and its gardens returned to their original design (Rex)

The National Trust has announced the “biggest conservation project in a generation” when it pledged to partially restore the Grade I-listed Clandon Park stately home in Surrey, one of the finest Palladian homes in Britain which was reduced to a shell by fire last year.

After considering all options from full restoration to leaving it as a “romantic ruin” the Trust said the 18th-century stately home is to be reborn with its most historically significant rooms restored alongside modern exhibition space to create “heritage for the 21st century”.

Dame Helen Ghosh, director general of the National Trust, at Clandon Park (PA)

“I think something really good can come out of the disaster,” the Trust’s director general, Dame Helen , said, announcing the five-year plan to “breathe new life” into the mansion near Guildford, which suffered 95 per cent damage when it was hit by fire in April.

“We are paying respect to the legacy of the past and also trying to create 21st-century heritage for the future,” she added of the site that was popular as a wedding venue and a film location, including for The Duchess starring Keira Knightley.

The Palladian mansion, built in 1720, was one of five surviving buildings by Italian architect Giacomo Leoni in England. Fire started by a faulty electrical distribution board in the basement ripped quickly through lift shafts and voids and the strong wind spread the blaze across the property.

Over 400 significant objects were rescued from the fire but the house was left a shell and the roof collapsed. Dame Helen called the restoration work “one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken by the National Trust”. Costs are expected to run into the tens of millions of pounds, which will be largely met by the insurance policy.

The fire in April last year (Getty)

Issues with the lead roof and securing the building meant it was only in November that a full assessment of the damage could be made and salvage work is expected to continue for months. “That reinforced us in the view that were we able to restore parts of the building, we should. Given the money we knew we had to be focused on what was significant,” Dame Helen said.

Under the plans, the most significant rooms at Clandon, including the Marble Hall, Speakers’ Parlour and Saloon, will be restored to their former glory, with many features of the rooms recovered from the ashes.

“Given their historic and cultural significance, and the fact so many original features have survived, we believe we should restore the magnificent state rooms on the ground floor; the most architecturally important and beautiful rooms,” Dame Helen said.

A competition will be held later this year to find an architect to create modern rooms for events and exhibition space on the upper floor. The Trust said those rooms had been “less architecturally significant and had been considerably altered over the centuries”.

The Trust, a charity, is also looking at the electrics across its properties to make sure faulty equipment is renewed and prevented from causing damage.

Fire-damaged ceramic artefacts recovered (PA)

The plans could set the Trust in opposition to the family who gifted the house to the Trust. The Earl of Onslow said last year his ancestral home should not be rebuilt as it was “lost” and the insurance money should be used on another Grade I-listed building.

Dame Helen said there was a misunderstanding and the insurance money could only be used to restore Clandon. “There is not a large slug of money we could take and support somewhere else. And anyway we wouldn’t want to.” Earl Onslow was not available for comment on Monday.

As well as the restoration, following research the Trust is planning to return the gardens to their original design.