The yellow house in the heart of the country.

One of the most interesting colour schemes for a stately home is that Polesden Lacey. It has stables used now for catering, an expansive garden plus a huge lawn that requires the attention of a lot of gardeners. They will now doubt be needing the services of a company that deals in Mountfield Spares to help them. Why is this stately pile the colour that it is?

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The first house goes back to 1336. It wasn’t yellow and it looked nothing like the house today. Polesden Lacey as a site has seen several different properties on top of it as each owner wasn’t happy with the previous one, or so it seems. The current house is a Thomas Cubitt creation and its the one that’s stuck. Sir Clinton Edward Darkins got the place in the early part of the twentieth century and he decided to keep all of Cubitts bits and get Sir Edward Poynter to extend it. Darkins only got to enjoy it for a bit, dying soon after it was finished.

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When Ronald and Margret Greville saw the place they literally jumped for joy (unlikely as they were Toffs so they probably  just said “Good show!”). It was the perfect place to show off all of their artistic pieces they had collected. This they did and, true to form, Robert died two months afterwards. Why’s it yellow? No one knows.