This Obscure London Palace Holds One of the City's Sexiest Interiors
Plus, Barcelona considers banning all short-term rentals.
Many of you are new—welcome. The newsletter structure is simple: main feature on anything from a cool new hotel to an underrated destination, the Department of Grievances where I opine on recent topics in travel world, and then a bulletin of travel news. Also this is my first time recording audio of the main feature, so bear with me. I hope it’s useful. Enjoy!
As English country houses go, Eltham Palace isn’t much at first glance. A passionless revival-style wing bends into a medieval hall, and it's all joined with a slice of Tudor Revival. Frankly, it’s not much even if you sit there and stare at it. It’s borderline municipal and was once compared unfavorably to a cigarette factory.
Not much, that is, if you don’t know its tale. It’s a story that stretches to include medieval royal murder plots, Anne Boleyn’s alleged incest, a pair of gay architects, and an aristocratic divorcee with a mysterious snake tattoo slithering up her leg.
And once you step inside, you’ll realize that the palace’s somber exterior belies one of the most shocking and brilliant interiors this country has ever seen.
Getting to Eltham Palace is relatively painless. In the days of Henry VIII, the grounds may have extended for 1,200 acres, but time and London sprawl have reduced them to a few dozen. The mansion is a mere 10-minute walk from a train station serviced by the Southeastern Line.
A heat wave was roiling London the day I went, welcome ammo no doubt for a people who spend four and a half months of their life talking about the weather. Sweaty and eager to cool off, I bought my entrance ticket and then scampered across the ancient moat on a four-arched 1390s Gothic bridge whose construction was overseen by none other than Geoffrey Chaucer, then the Clerk of Works.
Merely glancing at the exterior–“yes, yes, lovely, yes”–I ducked into the entrance hall.
Climate-controlled environs weren’t the only reason I let out an audible sigh. We’ve all become especially visual travelers in the era of social media, and I first discovered Eltham when I saw an image of this very room: a sexy reuleaux triangle sheathed in blackbean veneer lit from above by a stark white concrete dome punctured with clear circles redolent of bulls-eye glass.
The blackbean veneer features elaborate marquetry by Jerk Werkmäster, including larger-than-life depictions of a Viking armed with a halberd and a Roman soldier. One’s imagination need not work overtime to conjure up the glittering start to a party here—and partying was something that Stephen and Virginia Courtauld were well known for.
In the handful of years the couple lived here–from its completion in 1936 until, weary of German bombardment, they decamped for good in 1944, returning it to the Crown–they played host to politicians like Conservative titan Rab Butler and artists such as Stravinsky and Gracie Fields. All its modern accouterments (having an equal number of bathrooms as guest rooms was considered a new-fangled luxury) made it a favorite of the aristocracy. Queen Mary visited twice.
“I must say that I thought some of the modern part a little overdone,” the future Queen Mother once said about nights at Eltham. “But it was all very interesting and my goodness what a good feed we had! And good champagne!”
It was a fitting renaissance for a palace that had been a moldering ruin when the Courtaulds got their hands on it. Centuries before, Eltham had been one of the greatest palaces in all of England, and its guests were even more distinguished than the modern era. Kings and queens from Edward II to Henry VIII resided here for parts of the year. It became the place to celebrate Christmas, and over 2,000 guests would dine under its famed hammerbeam roof in the great hall. It was here, over the holidays in 1404, that the Duke of York hatched a never-carried-out plot to kill King Henry IV. It hosted the kings of France and Armenia as well as the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos.
Dozens of princes and princesses were born and christened here, and Eltham was the childhood home for Henry VIII, the last king to really use it. It was here that he met Erasmus, who described the nine-year-old future king as having “a dignity of mind combined with a remarkable courtesy.” Childhood attachments proved feeble, however, as Henry eventually spurned Eltham for the more convenient Greenwich Palace. Eltham fell further out of favor once his grasping paws acquired Hampton Court and he commenced construction on the English version of Chateau de Chambord, Nonsuch Palace. (Nonsuch had a less glamorous fate–it was later torn down by a king’s mistress to pay off her gambling debts.) Plus, Eltham is one of the sites where Anne Boleyn and her brother allegedly committed incest.
Its last famous guest was the artist Anthony van Dyck, who, as the official court painter for Charles I, was given apartments here in the 1630s. In 1651 Parliament sold the property to Colonel Nathaniel Rich, who tore down most of the palace. Over the centuries its ruins provided a backdrop for artists, and by the 20th century, all that remained were the great hall and a few Tudor dormer windows incorporated into newer buildings.
Stephen and Virginia Courtauld were very much the odd couple. She was an outgoing half-Italian, half-Romanian divorcee with a snake tattoo on her leg that finished, it was said, only Stephen knew where. She raced cars while dressed as a man. He was an heir to a textile fortune recently buoyed by being the first to commercially produce rayon. It was said of the taciturn Stephen that he was “never using two words when one would do.” He did have a cultured side--he was head of the then-new Ealing Studios. They both could be extravagant. Stephen once had his wildly expensive Mercedes brought all the way to Istanbul where he was yachting. Arriving after finishing the weeklong journey from London, the driver was told, “Oh, I don’t think we need the car. Take it back.”
In 1933 they procured a 99-year lease on the ruins of Eltham Palace from the crown and permission to add a mansion on top of the ruins so long as they restored the great hall. Their taste for the extravagant–and the modern–gave England one of its most spectacular interwar homes.
The couple turned to the firm of John Seely and Paul Paget, a pair whose connection is believed to have gone far beyond commercial partnership. They met in college and remained together as a couple until death forced them apart. They used “partner” to refer to each other, and “the partners” was the shorthand others used. In their home, they installed parallel bathtubs so they could soak in each other’s company.
The English Renaissance house they gave the Courtaulds was elegant in many respects but ill-received at the time. After picnicking at the estate, architectural giant Howard Baker twisted the knife in a letter to The Times, sighing, “Romance has gone from Eltham.” Country Life covered the house in three separate issues, but when it came to the exterior, critic Christopher Hussey was far from ebullient in his judgment. The cigarette factory comparison was made by historian George Young.
Luckily, and much to the bitter dismay of Seely and Paget, the Courtaulds withheld the design of the mansion’s main rooms from the pair. Instead, they handed the entrance hall to the Swedish architect Rolf Engströmer and the other important rooms to the dashing but mysterious Italian aristocrat Peter Malacrida, who between the wars became one of London high society’s brightest stars. The Marchese Malacrida was a playboy turned decorator to the stars who wrote a number of incisive and cutting pieces for Vogue that attempted to free England from its dreary revivalism. He was besotted with his wife, Nadja, a poet, aviatrix, and racing driver.
“Gossip columnists took care to mention her in their columns,” writes Adrian Tinniswood in Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House. “This golden couple was seen in the right places … It seemed that whenever there was a masked ball or a society wedding or a fashionable Mayfair tea party in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Marchese and Marchesa Malacrida were on the invitation list.”
In the fall of 1934, shortly after Peter received the commission for Eltham, Nadja died in a horrific crash while returning to London from a friend’s country house. Eltham would end up being Peter’s final project. After that, he largely disappeared from public life.
But what a swan song!
Off the entrance hall, one finds his neo-grec Art Deco dining room of Belgian black marble and bird’s-eye maple. Add in the silver ceiling and recessed lighting and the whole thing feels like something out of a sexy movie set. (In an interview late in life, Paget spoke dismissively of the room: “Not really quite our taste.”) Next to it is the drawing room done up a bit in the “Hollywood-Italo-Spanish” styles Malacrida mocked in his Vogue column, but it housed the couple’s works by Italian masters. Don’t miss the fabulous plaster reliefs by Gilbert Ledward in the window recesses.
Upstairs can be found Malacrida’s masterpiece, Virginia’s bedroom suite. Oval in shape, its walls are lined with a weathered sycamore veneer and maple flexwood. Country Life described it as “modern Swedish rococo” but the ceiling of concentric circles is pure Art Deco. And in some ways the bedroom is a mere appetizer for the entree–a vaulted bathroom encased in onyx with a bathtub overlooked by a copy of the Psyche of Capua in a gold mosaic recess.
There are a number of lovely rooms done by Seely and Paget (Stephen’s turquoise-tiled bathroom, for instance) and the restored great hall is a wonder. But after seeing the rooms designed by Malacrida and Engströmer’s entrance, that line from Howard’s End–“that isn’t all the house really, but it’s all one notices”–comes to mind. Yes, the house, its history, and its charming gardens are all worth the visit. But these rooms that remain singular not only for England but globally, make coming to Eltham a must.
DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES
We’ve been on this collision course for a while, but there were two stories this week that really make it clear. First, Barcelona is considering banning all short-term rentals beginning in 2029. Even if I’m skeptical of such hammer-like solutions, I sympathize with the driving forces. But then there’s this fascinating Wall Street Journal article: Europe Has a New Economic Engine: American Tourists. It’s a little on the rosy side, but some anecdotes are startling.
In Lisbon: “business is so good that Mayor Carlos Moedas recently slashed local income tax for residents. With economic growth of 8.2% last year and a 20% rise in tax revenue from prepandemic times, he’s also made public transportation free for young people and the elderly.”
While Germany’s economy is flatlining, Spain is Europe’s fastest-growing big economy. Nearly three-quarters of the country’s recent growth and one in four new jobs are linked to tourism.
Though it is home to just 5% of the world’s population, the European Union received around one-third of all international tourist dollars—more than half a trillion dollars—last year. This is up roughly threefold over two decades, and compares with about $150 billion for the U.S., where tourism has been slower to rebound.
I love the work of Mexican architect Frida Escobedo. But I’ve got to say I agree with the Twitter chorus mocking the plans after it was announced Escobedo and Moreau Kusunoki Architectes won the bid for the Pompidou overhaul in Paris. The two studios are refreshing the iconic museum designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, and they’re putting in … bleacher stairs. “This is like the architecture equivalent of adding break dancing to the Olympics 30 years after it stopped being popular,” tweeted one critic. “Big stair for being on trend 5 years too late,” opined another. I personally find bleacher stairs horribly uncomfortable and rarely used like they’re imagined.
To live in and love Washington, D.C. is to constantly find oneself on the defense, especially when dealing with New Yorkers who feel some deep need to, unsolicited, crap on it. But one thing I cannot defend are the people movers at Dulles Airport. They’re horrible and I’m filled with dread every time I land from a long-haul flight. I would rather walk a tunnel the length of the airport than go in one of those. Plus, they have screwed up the entry and exit so everybody who knows what they’re doing fights to stand right at the front of the car, blocking more people from going on. Well, it turns out they’re not going anywhere anytime soon as the airport is keeping them in use for at least THE NEXT 20 YEARS and is spending $160 million to refurbish them.
I’m a simple guy when it comes to rewards programs. You will not find me gaming out credit cards and such because I find the mental work and the contortions required to hit certain goals on those to be as costly as any money I’d save. It’s why I used to love the old Hotels.com program (every ten nights you get a free night that is an average of those ten) until it was gutted by Expedia’s One Key rollout. But because I work in the travel journalism industry, I stay abreast of the various offerings. I have to admit I always thought Bilt Rewards sounded too good to be true and there had to be some kind of catch. It turns out, the catch wasn’t on the customer, but on Wells Fargo, the issuer of the card.
JSX Airlines is genuinely one of the few good things out of the aviation industry in recent years. If I’m flying out west, the first place I’ll look to book is on JSX—the ease of the experience is well worth the couple hundred dollars more. You can roll up 15-ish minutes before your flight, everybody is friendly, and the hangars conveniently located. Of course, the big airlines have been fighting hard to get the government to make such competition less competitive. I don’t know what will happen in the long run, but this week the FAA announced it’s going to be tightening a loophole that allows JSX to operate out of private plan terminals.
TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS
Amtrak is set to break its ridership record this year. Of course, the seemingly constant problems around New York’s Penn Station might prevent that.
LVMH just bought one of the most famous restaurants in Paris. “And so the tentacles extend....” tweeted Vanessa Friedman, the New York Times fashion critic.
Casa Monti, a boutique hotel from the same group that owns La Fantaisie in Paris, just opened in Rome.
What Went Wrong with CLEAR (& When Will It Get Better)?
Zermatt has been closed off due to flooding.