Uppark and the Great Fire

On Monday 27th February, George's men gathered at the Vicarage for a talk by Fr Ray Chapman on Uppark and its fire. Many of us had visited Uppark both before and after the fire in 1989, but were amazed to learn of the restoration processes undertaken at that time.

Immediately the fire started all hands including visitors were pressed into rescuing many of the priceless works of art which had been collected over 3 centuries by the families of the original owner, Lord Grey of Wierke, and subsequently the Featherstonehaughs. The adjacent stables were put into service as a storage and a chain of helpers succeeded in saving over 90% of these artefacts.

The fire had started on the very last day of roof repairs when, it is assumed, a blow lamp was left burning and directed onto some combustible material. The August day was hot and a strong breeze was blowing which fanned the fire. The fire was very rapid in its expansion and very soon the roof fire had fallen through the building to the ground floor to set the whole building ablaze.

Fr Ray had many slides to show and several of these showed the destroyed building still with most of its windows intact. Ray explained that this was because the direction of the fire became upwards through the main staircase and all its force was spent in that direction rather than outwards through the windows. 27 fire engines attended the fire using water from the local fishing lake, the swimming pool and the main a mile away at Harting.

The following day, after the initial rescues, the National Trust executive based at Polesden Lacey made some very speedy decisions that the building must be rebuilt "! not just rebuilt but rebuilt to exactly the same standard as before the fire, even to the extent of matching faded wall coverings with replacements, new coverings but artificially faded to match. An example of this was a section of wallpaper where hanging pictures had preserved the original red colour, but the outsides had faded to a brown tinge. The replacement had to have both the red and the brown in exactly the same hues.

Every scrap of salvage was collected "! most of it had fallen to the very basement and become engulfed in some of the thousands of gallons of water used to put out the blaze. 3860 huge bins were used to collect the items from stone cornices to pieces of carpet and strips of burnt wallpaper. Ray showed a picture of all these labelled bins lined up outside the burnt out shell.

Professional companies were interviewed to assess their skills at replacing ceilings, walls, woodwork etc. to the exact same standard. Most admitted that the skills required for this work were long past and that they had little actual expertise. However they employed and trained staff specifically for the work and even today they are the very few capable of exercising such expertise. The subsequent fire at Windsor castle benefited from these new experts when the turn came round to rebuild after that fire.

Fr Ray presented a fascinating insight into the history of the building, and the renovation work, backed up by some excellent slides. Fr Ray is a keen advocate of the National Trust and does a lot of voluntary work on its behalf. He highly recommends membership particularly at this time when support for the NT is dwindling. He also inspired most of us to revisit the house at an early date and see if we can spot some of the renovation work for ourselves.

Tony Rice-Oxley