Lockdown diaries: aerial views of Waddesdon's roofscape with Pippa Shirley
Channel: Waddesdon Manor
Date: 08/07/2020

Another instalment of our lockdown diaries, showing you rarely seen views of Waddesdon. Taking advantage of the cherry picker being on site, Head of Collections and Gardens, Pippa Shirley, brings you an incredible aerial view of the Manor's roofscape and the countryside around Waddesdon.

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Every year, we carry out an inspection of the high level masonry, chimneys, finials, windows, slate and lead to check for any problems and so that we can schedule essential maintenance. Seeing John Iapino, Waddesdon's Facilities Manager, up aloft last week, Pippa persuaded him to take her up to have a look as well – fortunately, the cherry picker’s basket is large enough for social distancing! 

Once up, it is an amazing and rarely seen sight. Baron Ferdinand’s French architect, Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur designed a building that was like a jigsaw of details of various 16th and 17th-century French chateaux and palaces – there are elements from Chambord, Blois, the Louvre, and Chenonceaux to name but a few. His eye for detail was such that there are wonderful ornaments in places invisible from the ground, only seen by curious jackdaws. Much of the sculpture was carried out under the direction of another Frenchman, the sculptor M. Doumassy, whose name and the date, 1879, is carved on the central pavilion on the South Front. The actual building, though was constructed by an East End contractor, Edward Conder and Son. Conder was an unknown quantity – he hadn’t worked for the Rothschilds before -  but Ferdinand had nothing but praise for his management of the project, writing in his Red Book that  “I have never met a more trustworthy man of business”.