Prehistory
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On Saturday 27th March, the magnificent medieval chapel at the National Trust's Petworth House reopens to the public after the completion of a major restoration programme costing £1 million (partly funded by English Heritage) and lasting some three years. Britannia's History Editor, David Nash Ford, paid the house a pre-opening visit to find out more about this conservation work and the new discoveries it has uncovered. Petworth House is the late 17th
century stately home of the 2nd Lord Egremont. He
is a direct descendant of the great Northumbrian
warlord family of Percy who have owned the
property since 1150, when it was given to Agnes
Percy by her half-sister, Queen Adeliza, as a
wedding present. Owned by the National Trust, it
houses one of their greatest collections of works
of art and sculpture. The house stands in the
heart of the West Sussex town of Petworth within
a huge deer park,
In early 1995, work began on
removing the 8,500 books resident in the library.
The floor was taken up and the space below
cleared of centuries of rubble, including 19th
century clay pipes and 17th century shoes
(possible placed there for good luck). The site
that greeted the workmen was worse than expected.
The 17th century plaster chapel ceiling was, to a
large They erected a complex grid of
scaffolding, foam and acid-free paper to support
the precarious ceiling, while work began on
strengthening the medieval beams above.
Petworth House and Servants' Quarters Design by Unica Multimedia |
designed by Capability Brown, sweeping
out to the west and north. The high estate wall,
surrounding the park, can be seen stretching for
many miles before reaching Petworth and here, in
the town, it continues, slicing off a corner of
the very community with which it holds so many
ties. This seems a little strange, at first,
until one realizes how the position of Petworth
House reveals the very ancient nature of the
building. It stands in the traditional medieval
manor's slot, right next to the parish church,
where it could serve as a place of refuge for the
villagers in times of trouble. Where other Lords
have so often removed the local communities, in
later centuries, for being too close to the
estate, Petworth has retained its links with the
local people, and still does so today.
The building
we see today does not easily dispense details of
its early origins. The chapel is the only
surviving complete part of medieval Petworth;
and, even here, only the Early English Gothic
windows are obviously medieval. However, recent
work, undertaken by the National Trust, to save
this room from the ravages of deathwatch beetle,
has revealed an early 14th century Castle still
remaining at the core of the present house; and
fine structural details are now on view to
visitors.
Deathwatch
beetle thrives in the damp conditions which have
been predominant at Petworth for the last six
hundred years. Though the building was re-roofed
throughout in 1970s, this virulent little insect
has an incubation period of ten years and its
attack on the old chapel timbers was only
revealed during a more recent investigation. The
roof of the old medieval chapel has been hidden
within a ceiling space since about 1684 when the
so-called 'Proud' Duke of Somerset had 
the entire
room remodeled. An elaborate barrel plaster
ceiling was installed and the medieval
high-pitched roof, of 20 arch-braced trusses, had
its top sliced off to make way for a library
installed on a new floor above. Turner, the
artist, used this as his studio when he was
resident at Petworth in the early 19th century.
extent, no longer suspended from the
huge oak beams of the medieval roof and only its
arched shape was stopping it from crashing to the
ground! Specialist engineers were immediately
called in to find a solution to this unique
structural problem.
Access was
through the library. Existing beams were
reinforced with new timbers while seven and a
half tons of new steel supports were slid into
position to carry the load of the floor and books
above. Each piece had to be light enough for four
men to carry in the claustrophobic conditions
between ceiling and floor. Then the plaster
ceiling was invisibly fixed to the new structure
using a 'cat's cradle' of 9,000 fixings, 600
rods, 8,000 screws and 400 metres of strapping.
No wonder the work continued for some 185 weeks!
Restoration work elsewhere in Petworth
House has revealed an external mullioned window
dating from around the same time as the chapel,
now visible in situ on the oak staircase; and the
National Trust have opened the enclosed 'Chapel
Court' to show the outer wall of the medieval
manor. There is also the spiral staircase of a
medieval castle turret hidden behind some
panellingupstairs, revealing perhaps a fortified
look to the whole building at this period. This
is reinforced by the towered building depicted on
a 1610 map of Petworth (though the 8th Earl of
Northumberland had made major additions to the
medieval house by this time). Indeed, whole
medieval complex is believed to have been built
by Henry, Lord Percy of Alnwick, who was given a
license to crenellate his manor at Petworth in
1309. The National Trust had hoped to prove this
by dating the chapel's roof timbers using 
dendrochronology
(tree-ring dating). However, this was not
possible due to the fact that the timbers were
under thirty years old and had been grown using
the pollarding method. But you cannot pollard oak
trees, can you? Just another mystery of medieval
industry still to be solved.