Staircase | Author, Jane Lark's stories

I’ve been meaning to post this little story for over a year and not found time, but now I have time! So here you are. Before you read on, though, it might be worth stepping back to read my post about Kew Palace that was a house initially rented and then bought from a silk merchant and turned into a palace.

This story flows from that of Kew Palace because when I stayed in Kew last year to explore both the palace and gardens – which I have now fallen in love with and already visited once more since – on the way home I decided to visit another period property that was open to the public, Ham House. Only to discover that Ham House had been owned by the Royal family until 1600s, and in an odd opposing point was given to courtiers by Charles I. It would have made a much smarter home for The Royal House of Hanover had they returned to this house rather than moving in basically next door.

Ham House and Kew Palace are literally ten minutes apart by car, so isn’t it odd that one Royal, Charles I, rented out his property on this area of the bank of the Thames and then the Hanovers, George II, came along and rented the estate almost next door.

One of the things I found so charming about Kew was that it was such a humble place for a palace, and they had even toned decoration down from the former 17th century decoration. As I said in the Kew post, in areas not in the family spaces open to the public, there’s a wall painting that indicates a smarter but still not that grand decoration before it became a palace.

And then I walked up to through the gates of Ham House… This is what I had expected to see inside Kew Palace.

Ham House is palatial.

William Murray who was given Ham House was a very close friend of Charles I from childhood onwards. It was in 1626 when Charles I was aged 25, that he gave his friend William Ham House and the surrounding lands. The property had only been built in 1610. It sits just along the river Thames from Hampton Court as well as Kew, and as travelling by boat was often the quickest option at the time it would have made it easy for the King to reach his friend from Hampton Court or from the old Palace at Whitehall (that no longer exists) in London.

William and his wife Catherine, then spent a lot of money decorating the house, and much of the decoration they commissioned and the items they bought 400 years ago are still adorning Ham House today.

Even as I waited in the porch for the house to open for the day, I noticed the art work on the plaster in the porches. Murals that sought to create views within the porches. The fashions were to paint every space possible until the 1700s – inside and outside.

Then I walked into the hall, and saw the ceiling and wall paintings that were as good as any painting you would hang on a wall. This was a space you could imagine a royal family living in.

Ham House is a fantastic time capsule of pre English Civil War times. With the sort of decoration I expected to find inside Kew Palace, with plenty of gilding. It also made me smile when I saw the staircase was a wooden version of the one that had been painted onto the wall to save money in the behind the scenes spaces in Kew Palace.

The Ham House staircase

The remnant of the wall aspect of the staircase in kew Palace before it became a palace

This makes me wonder if the silk merchant who owned Kew Palace before the Royal Family, had this painted decoration done to match his grander neighbours’ actual staircase.

What a fantastic gem of a house, though, and such a surprise settled in between Kew and Hampton Court. My mind was spinning with imaging how life flowed along that little stretch of the river Thames in the 15th-19th Centuries. So many stories in there… One day I’l write at least one story about this fascinating period. I did have one particularly good idea but I will keep that to myself. 😉

Like the last house that I wrote about, Chastleton House, Swarthmoor Hall has a particular charm.

When you look at the front door that you walk up to now, Swarthmoor Hall does not look at all grand. It just looks like a large house. But this large house was originally an Elizabethan Manor and it has a very special story and a wonderful atmosphere.

It has changed a lot since the picture on the lower left side, above. But the setting of the property, on the top of a hill in northern England, near the coast on the edge of the Lake District, gives it a very Brontë Sisters feel.

But it is not only the position of Swarthmoor Hall, it is also the stone flags on the floors and the dark wood panelled walls. It has the look of a set from a Brontë Sisters story. A middle class home. With large drafty, cold rooms. With dark corners, and flickering candle flames.

But unlike a Brontë Sisters story, this house has a wonderful sense of peace. When I say Swarthmoor Hall has a special story, it has a claim to an important step in history. The Quaker movement began at Swarthmoor, and the family took their religious beliefs to Pennsylvania and began the Quaker movement there too. Perhaps that is why it feels so peaceful.

Compared to Chastleton House, Swarthmoor Hall has a sense of being a home. A peaceful welcoming home. So, when I walked around Swarthmoor Hall, in my head the lost-in-time house for my character, that had first come to my mind at Chastleton (in a stark, almost lost, property that reminded me of Miss Havisham’s home) became a quiet peaceful place that oozed love from its dark panelling. Every room became a room that my character would think was precious.

You will spot some direct reflections in Treacle Moon, for instance, the Porter’s Chair. The hooded chair in the top left picture. I sat in the chair, and it had a very different feeling sitting in a enclosed chair that protected you from the drafts and felt like it hugged you.

I love old staircases too. The shallowness and width of the steps. The way that steps have been worn down by use, and the imperfections of staircases in the oldest houses. The number of times I try to capture what old staircases look and feel like in books, and yet I never feel as though I quite express it for someone who has never walked up them. But, hey, stairs do not play much of a part really.

The hallways, though, and the transfer from room to room, express a very different atmosphere from the atmosphere in a stately, grand, home. The halls and stairs I usually depict are lined by echoing marble and polished stone or wooden cantilever staircases wrapping around walls in large rooms.

Jacobean and Elizabethan stairs, creep through the house. Georgian staircases stride.

Of course Swarthmoor has another special point of interest in the hall, graffiti on the wall. Graffiti that has no story behind it, anymore than any other name that has been carved into a wall. Except that this was carved in the wall of the hall, in a period when the property was lived in.

So this is the property that turned my character’s house into a home. A place that is loved and kept locked in one point in time because they could not bear to change a thing, not just because of poverty.

Just one more house to tell you about, next week.