Upton House is located in Warwickshire, and the house dates from the end of the 1600s and was passed down through several owners. In the 1920s, the most famous owner who also updated the house and gardens to what we can see today was the Samuel family (also known as Lord and Lady Bearsted), who founded the oil company Shell. The house was donated to National Trust in 1948 and maintained by them, and the furniture and furnishings were donated by the family later on condition that they remain on show to the public.
Before visiting the house, I visited the gardens. During my visit last month, a singer was singing live music in the gardens at the back. The gardens were re-developed in the 1930s as they had changed little before then. The garden designer was Kitty Lloyd Jones, who became a close friend of Lady Bearsted during the re-design. She was responsible for the borders, rose gardens, orchard, and the pond.
The flowers were in full and beautiful bloom during my visit.
The walled garden dips down at the end of the main garden from the house, and below this (in the valley), is the pond and more borders and trees.
Upton House can be visited to timed entry, so it's worth arriving early in the day. One of the first rooms was the Long Gallery, pictured below. The room was filled with paintings from Dutch Masters and peasants working in the fields, which were conversation-starters. The room is very long and L-shaped with a piano used for entertaining and plenty of seating dividing sections for guests to mingle.
The library was where Lord Bearsted completed his work for his company Shell when he was not in London at the Shell building on the Thames (known as Mex House) in the 1930s. The family had become wealthy after importing/exporting luxury goods, and one of the items that they were known for was creating painted shell boxes; this is how the company ultimately got its name 'Shell'. The library room has an open balcony to view the gallery room on the floor below. Below this room are the art galleries with important paintings and a sports room with pool table. There is also a large doll's house being constructed of Upton House at present, which is due to be completed at the end of the year for a grand Christmas reveal.
The most interesting room in the house is probably the very unusual Art Deco bathroom suite. This unique design came from America and was short-lived because of the resources then used for World War II, and few of these examples survive. The style was preferred by the wealthy, and it was created using aluminum leaf. It was later covered over, but drawings of the design and clippings of similar examples of the design existed in magazines, so it was re-instated (repaired) in 2001, but the aluminum needed re-plating as it had been tarnished.
The bedroom below adjoins onto the Art Deco bathroom suite, and this was Lady Bearsted's room. It has many items from Asia. Her room is next to the maid's room, which was also quite comfortable and required her to be there at a moment's notice.
The advertising of Shell in the hallways is also significant as some of these illustrations are the originals.
Visitors who were invited to the house could stay the night as Upton is considered a country house and a fair distance from a town in those days. For this reason, some rooms exist with basic elements for visitors to stay.
The dining room is located in a more private part of the house and contains some of the paintings of farm workers, peasants, and country scenes.
The kitchen is located down the hall.
Have you ever visited Upton House? Although the house itself is nice to visit, I think that the gardens here are more attractive and require a visit, so this property is probably best to visit in the summer months.
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