by Calvin Po

Going away to a National Trust property is one of those opportunities I cherish to escape the simmering sense that it’s all falling apart, and search for something a bit more sublime. In the utilitarian density of London’s streets, where I live, moments of architectural drama are few and far in between. In this department, the National Trust’s Dyrham Park does not disappoint. Its 17th-century Baroque mansion reveals itself as I descend from the main drive, nestled at the foot of the hill among the rolling hills of south Gloucestershire in a panoramic vista. It’s pure theatre, as architectural approaches go. It’s only when you get up close when all is not what it seems.

Dyrham House was built by William Blathwayt, a meteoric riser in the English government of the late 17th century, in a career that spanned law, diplomacy, to military and colonial administration. The house projects a power that befits his ambitious career: the east front of the house greets you with a regiment of sash windows set into a facade of honey-coloured limestone, speckled with the delightful patina of lichen. And at its climax, an eagle carved in stone, representing the Blathwayt family crest, sits atop the facade and surveys the grounds authoritatively.

Yet the east entrance is not in use, and entering the house involves a bit of delayed gratification. Circling around the orangery, I catch a glimpse of the three main parts of the house: the West front, the East front, and sandwiched in between, the Great Hall that was based on the footprint of the original Tudor manor Blathwayt inherited from his father-in-law. As I enter through the entrance hall on the east, a motion-activated gilded cage plays a recording of birdsong, which makes it feel a bit like a theme park. I catch a glimpse through a door of the Great Hall’s sumptuous wood-panelling, recently restored to its original appearance with a labour-intensive technique called ‘graining’, where the texture of wood is hand-painted to elevate the panelling by imitating the appearance of a more expensive hardwood such as oak.

But before I can take a closer look, their one-way system and cordons whisk me away to a darkened room to the side. Here, instead of fine graining, the wood panelling has been painted in a shiny, sickly taupe, serving as a projection screen for an introductory film. Prior to being allowed to enjoy the delights of Dyrham, we are urged to sit through mandatory re-education, where we are reminded that the collection of objects, interiors, and artwork are all tarnished by association with the malodour of the transatlantic slave trade, Blathwayt’s complicity in the colonial machine, and insinuations of corruption through accepting ‘gifts’ through his professional connections. Lest we try to enjoy Dyrham on its own terms, for its artisanship or historicity, we are instead made to partake in this ritual sharing of guilt.

Yet the film’s weasel words are not a coincidence: try as hard as I might, I was unable to find any objects in the house that the National Trust definitively identified as part of Blathwayt’s alleged ill-gotten gains. There is so little material to support this narrative that the Trust have contrived to reconstruct a scene of a ‘Dutch still life’ in the Slop’t Parlour, where a table laden with plastic food serves as a talking point. Dining tables of Blathwayt’s day were where “pathways of global trade collide” and that “eating is always a political act”. The display pontificates on how the production of some ingredients “drove the transatlantic slave trade and enormous human suffering”. A sugar loaf and a pot for drinking chocolate represent the products of “enslaved African people”, and a coffee pot is tainted with how Javan “local elites used forced labour of subsistence farmers” to pay the Dutch tribute. Commentary on the colonial provenance of pepper, and nutmeg are too served as just deserts for Blathwayt and his wealth. In the far end of the house, one of the staircases, panelled in American black walnut, is accompanied with the rather pointless statement: “North America was not empty when Europeans arrived.” Yet these are all generalities, where Blathwayt is guilty for being a consumer in a globalising economy. For the Trust, it’s no excuse – the description for chocolate comes with a finger-wagging reprimand: “William Blathwayt was under no illusion as to where such luxuries came from.” Apart from Blathwayt’s duties in the Plantations Office which were primarily bureaucratic, concerned with taxation and auditing, in terms of his direct links to slavery, the Trust admits that he briefly “considered investing in cocoa production” in Jamaica until he “abandoned his plans, believing the investment too financially risky.” In other words, try as hard as they might with insinuation and innuendo, Blaythwayt could not be pinned with the charge of having actually owned any slaves.

Thankfully, the rest of the displays were spared this commentary; I was allowed to enjoy the spectacular rooms in peace. While the Great Hall occupies a central position, Dyrham’s treasures are in its apartments. Take the Diogenes Room, the reception room for the guest apartment: the two of the room’s walls are almost entirely covered by a pair of magnificent 17th-century tapestries depicting Diogenes the Cynic in his barrel, made in a royal workshop in Mortlake, London. Elaborate Delftware vases are a curious material testament to east-west cultural influences: these pieces of earthenware are glazed and decorated with chinoiserie motifs designed to imitate Ming-dynasty porcelain, but they give way their Dutch origins by the fact they are studded with receptacles for holding tulips. In the adjoining Damask Bedchamber is perhaps Dyrham’s most opulent object, the State Bed: a soaring four-poster bed from the early 1700s with an ornately-carved canopy, in anticipation of a never-realised royal visit by Queen Anne. All of these rooms are arranged in a dramatic enfilade that emphasises the sheer size of the house. On the other side, the enfilade ends with a Hoogstraten trompe l’oeil painting that makes the house appear grander still.

As always, it is the National Trust’s volunteers that really make the experience. Their deep knowledge of the property and their attentiveness leaves little to be desired. One volunteer shows me the one remaining panel in the Great Hall where the original graining was preserved, and recalls the process of craftsmen regraining the Hall based on this one panel, which he witnessed firsthand. Another, in the Vestibule, explains the step by step process by which gilt leather is fabricated, a sublime wall finish that covers the entire room, consisting of leather panels embossed with floral patterns and coloured silver leaf. Yet sadly on the day of my visit, the entire upper floor had to be closed to visitors because of a shortage of volunteers. With plummeting volunteer numbers across the National Trust, in part due to disagreements with the Trust’s leadership, I worry that not getting the full experience might become a regular occurrence for visitors to great houses like Dyrham.

It seems that due to a shortage of volunteers they can only show half the house at a time – an acquaintance of mine, visiting a few days after, sends me pictures from her visit to the upper floor. Here, in Blathwayt’s personal apartment lies perhaps the juiciest hunk of red meat for the National Trust’s cultural revolutionaries: a pair of stands featuring sculptural enslaved men holding up dishes and chained at the ankle. It is no surprise that this comes with a sombre health warning: “Alternative visitor routes are available should you wish not to encounter these objects.” If this is to be the new curatorial standard, of allowing objects that offend our modern sense of morality to be avoided, I’d hate to be the one planning alternative visitor routes around instruments of violence, depictions of pederasty, and various human remains that fill any major history museum. The Trust’s offer to provide “interpretation on the historic context of the stands” is nowhere to be seen, missing the opportunity to reflect on depictions of slavery and Africans in 17th century decorative arts, and ask questions such as: Who made them? How common or exceptional were these objects for their time? What was their sociocultural and aesthetic appeal? Instead, they are tangentially used as mere visual aids for pious yet non-specific condemnations of the transatlantic slave trade, with a cursory mention of the “12.5 million individual stories” behind 12.5 million enslaved Africans. The Trust also makes a promise that “the coming months and years will see ongoing work to ensure black voices are represented at Dyrham Park.” What I really wanted to know is what Mary Sarah Oates, who became lady of the house at Dyrham at the turn of the 20th century and herself of mixed African heritage, would have thought of these stands. All we can say for sure is that they continued to remain in the house’s collection during her residence.

On my visit, I noticed on a couple of the windowsills were curious contraptions with viewfinders and etched glass screens, designed to give the viewer an impression of what the lost formal gardens of Dyrham would have looked like. A volunteer shows me an etching from 1712 of an aerial view of Dyrham with the formal gardens and water features in their full glory. All I see through the viewfinder today are grassy mounds where the Best Gardens once stood, with only a statue of Neptune remaining. Apparently the gardens were lost in the 1800s when they fell out of fashion and Blaythwayt’s descendants decided their upkeep was not worth the cost. I can’t help but feel this is a cautionary tale for the National Trust: conserving our nation's heritage is a relay race across centuries and generations. And in cases like the National Trust’s Clandon Park, it only takes one generation to drop the baton. But the gardeners here haven’t given up: they are in the midst of recreating a fragment of the lost gardens in the forecourt of the East Front, based on the etching and other documents that remain – perhaps it will be ready when I next return, I hope, with Dyrham looking a bit more like its good old self.