Free Private Life in Britain's Stately Homes by Michael Paterson

not be dented even by disasters on this scale, ordered it to be rebuilt immediately. This took a further seven years, but this time stone was used and the tower stayed up – until 1825, when it collapsed for the third and final time. Here was an intriguing instance of history repeating itself. As readers of William Golding’s novel The Spire will know, medieval cathedral builders had faced the constant danger that ambitiously tall towers would not stand up. They had understood far less about structural engineering, and had had to proceed by trial and error. If Fonthill had been a genuine medieval abbey, it might well have suffered the collapse of its central tower. For this to happen so many centuries later implied that construction techniques had not advanced greatly over the intervening years, but then no tower of this height had been attempted by builders of any era.
    The house was finished, give or take the fine details, in 1813. As a largely friendless man, Beckford did not inaugurate it with a public celebration. He did not feast his neighbours, or invite royalty or aristocracy to stay. He lived there alone, occupying only a few of the numerous rooms, though his household staff would have filled the servants’ quarters. He dined alone, though he wished twelve meals to be prepared and sent in on each occasion, he chose one and the rest were returned. He hosted visitors only once; Lord Nelson and his mistress Lady Hamilton were his guests. In that year Nelson, having defeated Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile and thus put an end to French control of Egypt (Britain feared this would threaten the Indian Empire), was the greatest celebrity – and therefore presumably the most sought-after dinner guest – in the land. Thus Beckford’s only venture into hospitality at least netted him the country’s biggest celebrity. One winter he announced that he would not eat Christmas dinner unless it had been prepared in the new kitchens he had ordered to be built. His workmen rushed the job – never a sensible thing to do, especially when dealing with building on this scale – and the dinner was duly ready in time, though the kitchens fell down as soon as he had finished the meal.
    Beckford remained at Fonthill until 1822. His tenure ended not because of falling masonry but because he had to sell. In that year he was involved in a legal dispute over property in Jamaica, and was obliged to dispose of both his house and its contents. Though it might have been seen as a colossal white elephant – a single man’s dream that would not appeal to anyone else – he found a buyer in John Farquhar, an extremely wealthy maker of ammunition, who paid the colossal sum of £330,000 for the house. He was not getting much of a bargain. Three years later the central tower fell down again, wrecking one of the wings. The house was soon abandoned, and most of it demolished. Well before the death of its builder, Fonthill was a pile of rubble and dubbed ‘Beckford’s folly’. Its sheer scale made it too impractical to live in or to maintain. It is probably something of a mercy that it fell down. Though parts of it still exist, the cost of upkeep for the complete building would no doubt have proved ruinous.
    Beckford’s grand project in a sense heralded the arrival of a new era. Never in Britain’s history would so many great houses be built as in the nineteenth century. Never had such an influx of newcomers been able to afford the symbols, and the pleasures, of immense wealth. The nouveau riche far outnumbered those already in possession of property and land. They could have swamped the existing landowning class, changed it beyond recognition, remade all the rules. Yet they did not. The vast shift of wealth towards the middle class was no revolution. It did not see a redefining of social norms as the values of one class were replaced by those of another, nor any widening of the interests of the upper class. What happened instead was that the