page_title: Clandon Park House
section_title: 2015 fire
hierarchical_section_title: Clandon Park House / History / 2015 fire
caption_attribution_description: English: Fire at Clandon House.
context_page_description: Clandon Park House is an early 18th-century grade I listed Palladian mansion in West Clandon, near Guildford in Surrey.
  It stands in the south east corner of Clandon Park, a 220-hectare agricultural parkland estate which has been the seat of the Earls of Onslow for over two centuries. The house and gardens were given to the National Trust in 1956, but the park remains in private ownership. Some of the house's contents have also been acquired by the Trust in lieu of estate duty.
  Construction of the house, designed by Italian architect Giacomo Leoni, began about 1730, and the interiors were finished by continental sculptors and plasterers in the 1740s. It replaced an Elizabethan house. The park was landscaped by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown in 1781, and there are two formal gardens on either side of the house. Nearby is a Māori meeting house, one of only four outside New Zealand, that was brought to England in the late 19th century. After being transferred to the National Trust, the house underwent restoration before it was opened to the public, and later became a wedding venue and filming location for period dramas.
context_section_description: On the afternoon of 29 April 2015, a fire started in the house's basement and quickly spread to the roof. At 16:09, Surrey Fire and Rescue Service received an emergency call, and the fire was subsequently attended by a total of 16 fire engines and more than 80 personnel. While fire fighters tackled the blaze, National Trust volunteers were joined by conservators in salvaging furniture and works of art. Items were first stored on the lawns then placed in bubble wrap and sent to a local storage unit. After the fire around 600 "significant items" were rescued. The fire and rescue service remained at the property for a further ten days until the fire had been fully extinguished and then began an investigation into the cause of the fire.
  A significant number of items were salvaged, but the house was left "essentially a shell" according to Dame Helen Ghosh, director general of the National Trust, with the roof, ceilings and floors having fallen into the basement, leaving just one room intact. One of the footballs kicked across no-man's land on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 were among the thousands of historic items destroyed, but the six Victoria Crosses thought to have been destroyed were replicas – the originals were held in a bank vault. Although some paintings and furniture were rescued by staff, many tapestries and some items of porcelain were heavily damaged. A large portrait of Richard Onslow, 1st Baron Onslow who was Speaker of the House of Commons in the early 18th century, was saved after being cut from its frame. An official investigation concluded that the fire was probably caused by a fault on an electrical distribution board in the basement.
caption: House on fire in April 2015
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