Houses open to the public usually fall into three categories: owner occupied, National Trust and English Heritage.
The owner occupied properties are more often than not supported by substantial estates, like Alnwick (Duke of Northumberland), Chatsworth (Duke of Devonshire), Arundel (Duke of Norfolk) and Holkham (Earl of Leicester). Funny how two of the dukes don’t live in the counties from which they derive their titles. Even the Duke of Windsor had a home in Windsor prior to abdication. National Trust and English Heritage properties can be impersonal and more like museums than houses.
My grandfather was the younger son of a fourth son, so an unlikely candidate to inherit Barmeath and the Bellew titles (the “s” is so prestigious!). “Gerry” Wellesley was similarly a long-priced outsider when he inherited many more titles in 1943 – a third son who inherited from his nephew who was killed in the war. He became the 7th Duke of Wellington. Although he had a career in the Foreign Office and served in the Grenadier Guards he was an architect and a connoisseur of the Arts. After the war, realising the difficulty of paying for his London residence, Apsley House, he took action and did something imaginative and unique.
He transferred ownership of Apsley House by Act of Parliament to the State – so now it really is a Stately Home. The Wellington Museum Act, 1947, is a well drafted piece of legislation. It transferred ownership of the building, the forecourt and the garden to the Minister of Works. The contents of the house, the chattels, were vested in the Minister of Education and the Dukes of Wellington, for so long as the title should continue, retained some chattels and the right to reside in a part of the house. Technically Apsley House is called the Wellington Museum and, like Buckingham Palace for example, is exempt from Rates. Gerry negotiated a sweet deal that must be be the envy of many another Duke.
This Act of Parliament probably saved the house when so many others were demolished when Park Lane was turned into a dual carriageway and the roads around Hyde Park corner widened. In any event it sits alone facing, appropriately, the Wellington Arch and has the Intercontinental Hotel as its nearest, incongruous neighbour. You should visit because it’s a beautiful example of an unspoilt house filled with some world class pictures; and if you are a military history nerd you will be in Nirvana (like heaven it is not on Google maps). The story of how the pictures came to belong to the Iron Duke is complex and interesting; you probably roughly know it. Something you probably did not know – look closely at the gilt identifiers under them and if there is a tiny star, it looks like a spider, in the bottom left corner it is from the Spanish Royal Collection.
I have my own modest memorial to the Duke. It is this print of him saluting a statue of Achilles in Hyde Park. It is of interest because it was published, by Rudolph Ackermann, on 14th September 1852, the day he died.
The inscription on the statue reads thus:
To Arthur Duke of Wellington
and his brave companions in arms
this statue of Achilles
cast from cannon taken in the victories
of Salamanca, Vittoria, Toulouse, and Waterloo
is inscribed
by their country women
Placed on this spot
on the XVIII day of June MDCCCXXII
by command of
His Majesty George IIII.
If you’d like a copy of the print, it is available from the admirable Meisterdrucke in Austria.
I recall reading somewhere that the 1st Duke of Devonshire had intended to take the title Duke of Derby(shire?) but had to change his plan after a strong objection from the Earl of Derby. By then he had commissioned plates or silver with a capital D so he chose Devonshire instead. He couldn’t be Duke of Devon (as the county is usually called) because there was (and still is) an Earl of Devon!
The statue in the print is missing its sword. When the statue is viewed from a particular angle the sword looks like a tribute, by the women who erected it, to the virility of the Duke.