We set off to have lunch in Albert Richardson’s old house in Ampthill in Bedfordshire, where he lived for forty years without electricity.   The National Trust rejected it, presumably because, like Roy Strong’s house and garden, it did not accord with current ideas of twentieth-century history.   But, even if a touch eccentric (he was carried round in a sedan chair), Richardson was a major figure, not least as the author of Monumental Classic Architecture in Great Britain and Ireland, published in 1914 and the bible of the classical revival.   The house is emptied of its contents.

The front door:-

The back door:-

The detailing in the saloon:-

The curtains:-

The scullery:-

The bedroom corridor:-

Looking out into the back yard:-

The path into the garden:-

The greenhouse:-

The garden temple:-

The two guardian sphinxes:-