When, in 1811, Elizabeth Lytton Bulwer encapsulated her hipped-roofed Tudor mansion with tall gothic battlements, she not only created one of the most unusual looking houses in the south east of England, she also created the equivalent of a porous bathtub over her head. One of my earliest memories of moving into Knebworth House in the early 1970s is of water pouring through the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall. I remember it splashing into tin buckets spread across the stone flagstones. Later, as a teenager, I was woken in the darkness of my bedroom by a gushing waterfall on the pillow next to me – as I remember it, I rolled over and went back to sleep (I was a teenager).
The weight of snow and ice this December caused water to break through again – this time into the northwest corner of the House, damaging one of the beautiful 18th Century beaded tapestries in Edward Bulwer Lytton’s study and the ceiling of the Library (but thankfully not its books). It reminds why we do a twice daily security walk of both the inside and the outside of the House – once we found a broken pipe spraying water around the Library like a sprinkler! Thus, the strange prayer group, just before Christmas, on their knees in State Drawing Room, armed with hairdryers and fan heaters – and the good New Year news that the beaded tapestry has survived, and is back on the study wall… hiding the water stains.
Henry Lytton Cobbold
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