The photographer and costume designer Cecil Beaton was a mainstay of British high society from the post-WWI era of the Bright Young Things down to his death in 1980. His photographs record the glamorous, unchained lifestyle of socialites in the interwar period, and interest in his life, and in that period, has recently been revived by the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition 'Bright Young Things', which opened in March and was forced to close by the coronavirus lockdown. (You can watch videos of the exhibition, presented by curator Robin Muir, on the NPG website.) Further interest is sure to be caused by the sale of his last home, Reddish House in Wiltshire, where he was photographed by House & Garden in 1962.
MAY WE SUGGEST: From the archive: Cecil Beaton's Redditch House (1962)
Beaton bought the three-bedroom house near Salisbury in 1947 for £10,000, moving there from another Wiltshire house, the grand, Georgian estate at Ashcombe (later owned by Madonna and now by Guy Ritchie). The 1962 House & Garden article describes it thus: "The visitor comes upon Redditch House so unexpectedly, even after directions from a villager, that first appraisal of the small, grand façade can easily be scamped. Yet that would be a pity, for there it is, handsome as an elevation for a Whig palace, but all scaled down so that the visual impact is one of charm with nothing of pretension. Weathered stone pilasters and ancient brick combine in an unusually harmonious contrast of texture and colour."
Beaton entertained everybody who was anybody at Reddish House: Greta Garbo moved in for six weeks in 1951, and the Queen Mother, Mick Jagger, Truman Capote, David Hockney and Lucian Freud were all visitors. Since Beaton's death in 1980, the house has had two owners, Ursula Henderson, once Countess of Chichester, and the musicians Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox, the latter of whom claims that the house is haunted by Beaton's ghost.
For anyone with a spare £4 million to spend, the house, located in the village of Broad Chalke, is sure to be worth the price, with seven bedrooms, six acres of grounds, including the gardens Beaton planted, and two cottages included. It even has its own summer pavilion and water meadow (or 'Elysian field', as the Savills listing describes it). If you want it, you'll have to be quick–the agents call it "one of the most beautiful houses in England", and we can't argue with that.
MAY WE SUGGEST: The delightful Cotswolds home of Vogue contributing editor Robin Muir
