This 16th-century Cotswold country house is filled with one man’s impressive collection of eclectic and extraordinary treasures
Miss Haddon’s Little School in Great Yarmouth was pleasant enough, as schools go. Six-year-old Charles Paget Wade would walk there each term-time morning, along the pier, beach, and via the jetty - the lifeblood of the town’s seafaring industry. The jetty was much-admired: John Constable even painted its battered timbers, complete with tilting yachts and great sailing ships tossed on the waves. Yet Charles – who loved nothing better than to lose himself in his own artistic endeavours – was a forensic spectator, too.
How was that jetty built to withstand storms? How did the bustling harbour berth those majestically rigged ships with their fascinating loads, or the drifters brimming with salty herring?
It was the same enquiring mind that Charles demonstrated at home, in austere Wellesley Road, where he had been sent to live with strict Grannie Spencer. An archetypal Victorian matriarch, she refused to let him play with other children or conventional toys. So he found his joys elsewhere.
Every Sunday, his grandmother would turn the key of a mysterious Chinese cabinet that stood in the darkest corner of the parlour. Painted with pagoda landscapes, birds, trees and insects, this lovely old black-and-gold secretaire was the keeper of family treasures. As the doors opened to the pervasive fragrance of camphor, Charles would be transported to a celestial palace of Cathay.
‘There was a little wax angel, with golden wings, from a Christmas tree when grannie was a child. Two musical boxes played airs with notes like ripples and clear cascades of falling water. A little bone model of a ‘Spinning Jenny’ with two ladies...’ he described in his memoirs.
