Life in a baroque home
John Parkinson, Calke Abbey
Calke Abbey was built in 1704 for Sir John Harpur. It was built on the site of a Tudor building, which in turn had been built on the site of a medieval priory. It was never an abbey – the Harpur Crewe family just added that to the name to make it sound grander. I came to work here as a house manager in 1997, and most of my family has grown up here.
I was particularly attracted to the property because of the huge collection of artefacts it houses. Various generations of the Harpur Crewe family were very reclusive. They were true hoarders and collectors and the house is full of natural history specimens, such as taxidermy, minerals and butterflies.
When Vauncey Harpur Crewe died in the 1920s, the family retreated to a small corner of the house and closed the door on the rest. Much of the collection was sold, and a lot of the staff were laid off.
The last occupants of the house were two brothers without any direct family. Due to continuing problems with death duties, the family finally gave the property to the National Trust. The trust took it on as a really good example of a country house in decline, and we've been trying to preserve it in the state we found it in ever since.
The baroque facade of the house has been covered by a later, Greek-revival portico affair. At one point there was a staircase up to the portico, and the main entrance to the house was on the first floor. The original 1704 building is still very much evident in the layout, the size of the rooms and certain details, such as some of the down pipes, which still have the date on them.
We had serious flooding in June 2007 after a sudden heavy rainstorm, which overwhelmed the gullies and downpipes. When subsequent repairs and improvements were made to the drainage of the courtyards, we uncovered some skeletons – their feet were underneath the foundations of the house, so they obviously pre-dated the present house. We decided to leave them in the ground as we found them and divert the drain around them. We covered them up again and left them in peace.