What do you think?
Rate this book
Ashcombe: The Story of a Fifteen Year Lease
- GenresMemoirNonfiction
148 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
96 people want to read
About the author
Cecil Beaton
173 books44 followersPeople noted sets and costumes of British photographer, diarist, and theatrical designer Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton for
My Fair Lady
on stage in 1956 and on film in 1964.
Cecil Beaton first styled his sisters decadently. His unique flair for elegance and fantasy led him to the most successful and influential portrait and fashion of the 20th century. From Adolf de Meyer, baron, and Edward Jean Steichen as sources of inspiration, he nevertheless developed all his own style. He worked for Vogue for more than a quarter-century and also as court official to the royal family in 1937. A constant innovator, Beaton worked for five decades to captivate some figures of his time from Edith Sitwell to the Rolling Stones, Greta Garbo, Jean Cocteau, and Marilyn Monroe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_B...
Cecil Beaton first styled his sisters decadently. His unique flair for elegance and fantasy led him to the most successful and influential portrait and fashion of the 20th century. From Adolf de Meyer, baron, and Edward Jean Steichen as sources of inspiration, he nevertheless developed all his own style. He worked for Vogue for more than a quarter-century and also as court official to the royal family in 1937. A constant innovator, Beaton worked for five decades to captivate some figures of his time from Edith Sitwell to the Rolling Stones, Greta Garbo, Jean Cocteau, and Marilyn Monroe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_B...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 18, 2022
Was unsure to begin with, but obviously an important book if you're interested in Beaton. His love of the house is apparent on every page, perhaps the most engaging were the war years, and the visit to Sickert's House near Bath. Perhaps the lamentable aspect is the lack of photography of the house and it's settings perhaps this was a cost element of the time when originally published. Glad to have caught up with this as its been on the shelf far too long.
April 24, 2013
Imagine spending visiting friends in the English countryside, and seeing a wonderful house, in decline, and realising how lovely it could be in the right hands. Your hands. And imagine being able to rent that house and renovate it, make it into exactly what it could be.
That is the story that Cecil Beaton told, a few years after his lease came to the end.
It was 1930 when he first caught sight of Ashcombe House, an 18th century manor house set deep in the Wiltshire countryside. He was smitten, and he was ready to act. The owner was located, and he was persuaded to grant a lease at a very low rent, in return for care, attention, and renovation.
The property and the tenant were a perfect match. Cecil Beaton transformed Ashcombe, making it a unique, baroque, elegant country home, set in beautiful grounds. He gave so much care , so much love, and the house became the home, the place in the world, that he hadn’t realised he had been looking for.
It was lovely to watch: the grand scheme and the emotional journey.
But I must confess that what I liked the most was the walk in the countryside.
“My usual walk took me down to the floor of Ashcombe valley. Passing under an arcade of gigantic beech trees with wide, silver, green, trunks one came to a less rugged, more vernal aspect of the downs, opening smoothly like a park. Resilient, velvety turf where harebells and wild scabii bent in the breeze, while rabbits scurried in every direction; tidy and compact trees bordered the green slopes and in the distance the interlocking hills reminded one of pictures of Paradise on nursery walls. Suddenly one came across a patch of fir trees and was reminded of Switzerland. Perhaps one decided forthwith to climb the steep grassy battlements and arrived, panting, on a tableland, sprinkled with shells, over which land-gulls circled. Thence walking on the flat green roof of the world, one came down by “The Postman’s” or “Lady Anne’s Way”, through the primeval woodland, carpeted with a pre-Raphaelite detail of foliage, across another valley, and so back home.”
Ashcombe became the place to go for Beaton’s social set. Socialites, artists, writers. At first the neighbours were taken aback, but they soon became used to the ways of the bright young things.
I was less interested in this part of the book, and so I’m afraid the names and details escape me now that the book has gone back to the library.
But I was interested in Edith Olivier, who was a wonderful writer and the friend Beaton was visiting when he first discovered his house. She would be a wonderful friend to him: warm, wise, knowledgeable and supportive. And when World War II came and changed everything she rose to the occasion, opening up her home to a swarm of evacuees.
It would have been worth reading this book just to meet her, and see her through her friend’s eyes.
The tone changes at this stage, as Beaton writes of friends caught up in the war, of his own war work in a government office, and of a dear friend who is lost. It is still light, but a shadow had been cast.
And it was not long after the war that the lease came to an end. The landlord, not unreasonably, wanted the house for his own family.
It was a sad loss for Beaton, and though I had thought that I might not like him, his charm and his very real love for his home won me over.
“Every parent is apt to see in its offspring remarkable qualities denied to the eyes of others. So it is with our dogs and our homes. I must be excused if, in this book, because I found such pleasure in the sense of possession, I have been guilty of the familiar fault of eulogising what was mine, simply because it was mine. Yet I feel that people without a sense of possession miss one of the great pleasures of life. The joy of owning one’ own dining table, one’s own coal-scuttle and kitchen utensils is surely quite harmless; and yet how glowing!”
Sentiments like that endeared this love letter to a lost age and a lost home to me.
That is the story that Cecil Beaton told, a few years after his lease came to the end.
It was 1930 when he first caught sight of Ashcombe House, an 18th century manor house set deep in the Wiltshire countryside. He was smitten, and he was ready to act. The owner was located, and he was persuaded to grant a lease at a very low rent, in return for care, attention, and renovation.
The property and the tenant were a perfect match. Cecil Beaton transformed Ashcombe, making it a unique, baroque, elegant country home, set in beautiful grounds. He gave so much care , so much love, and the house became the home, the place in the world, that he hadn’t realised he had been looking for.
It was lovely to watch: the grand scheme and the emotional journey.
But I must confess that what I liked the most was the walk in the countryside.
“My usual walk took me down to the floor of Ashcombe valley. Passing under an arcade of gigantic beech trees with wide, silver, green, trunks one came to a less rugged, more vernal aspect of the downs, opening smoothly like a park. Resilient, velvety turf where harebells and wild scabii bent in the breeze, while rabbits scurried in every direction; tidy and compact trees bordered the green slopes and in the distance the interlocking hills reminded one of pictures of Paradise on nursery walls. Suddenly one came across a patch of fir trees and was reminded of Switzerland. Perhaps one decided forthwith to climb the steep grassy battlements and arrived, panting, on a tableland, sprinkled with shells, over which land-gulls circled. Thence walking on the flat green roof of the world, one came down by “The Postman’s” or “Lady Anne’s Way”, through the primeval woodland, carpeted with a pre-Raphaelite detail of foliage, across another valley, and so back home.”
Ashcombe became the place to go for Beaton’s social set. Socialites, artists, writers. At first the neighbours were taken aback, but they soon became used to the ways of the bright young things.
I was less interested in this part of the book, and so I’m afraid the names and details escape me now that the book has gone back to the library.
But I was interested in Edith Olivier, who was a wonderful writer and the friend Beaton was visiting when he first discovered his house. She would be a wonderful friend to him: warm, wise, knowledgeable and supportive. And when World War II came and changed everything she rose to the occasion, opening up her home to a swarm of evacuees.
It would have been worth reading this book just to meet her, and see her through her friend’s eyes.
The tone changes at this stage, as Beaton writes of friends caught up in the war, of his own war work in a government office, and of a dear friend who is lost. It is still light, but a shadow had been cast.
And it was not long after the war that the lease came to an end. The landlord, not unreasonably, wanted the house for his own family.
It was a sad loss for Beaton, and though I had thought that I might not like him, his charm and his very real love for his home won me over.
“Every parent is apt to see in its offspring remarkable qualities denied to the eyes of others. So it is with our dogs and our homes. I must be excused if, in this book, because I found such pleasure in the sense of possession, I have been guilty of the familiar fault of eulogising what was mine, simply because it was mine. Yet I feel that people without a sense of possession miss one of the great pleasures of life. The joy of owning one’ own dining table, one’s own coal-scuttle and kitchen utensils is surely quite harmless; and yet how glowing!”
Sentiments like that endeared this love letter to a lost age and a lost home to me.
December 12, 2019
A Wonderful gentle read about the discovery of a semi derelict country house, its repair, its visitors and its owner.
A gentle memoir which was a delight to read.
A gentle memoir which was a delight to read.
July 17, 2020
This is one of the very few books I have read twice so it must be good.
September 16, 2025
I read this after seeing Luke Edward Hall speak about Cecil Beaton at the Garden Museum. He mentioned the book, and I thought the title was so good I had to read it. It just did not do much for me though - Beaton’s writing style didn’t appeal to me, and I feel like there are much better books that capture the interwar feeling. I’m not clear on who the audience was supposed to be and it may be that it was never intended to be read by me - but it felt quite weren’t we so brilliant and an insane amount of name dropping of people I simply have not heard of. I liked the bits about the gardener except there was perhaps a slight paternalist landowner vibe
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews