Chris Upton discovers how the story behind the creation of one of the Midland’s finest buildings turned sour.
If you’re planning on visiting the chateaux of the Loire Valley on holiday, but don’t fancy the long journey – three hours to Dover, Channel Tunnel and onwards – then I have a cheaper and quicker alternative. Go to Droitwich.
A mile or two east of the town and just off the A38 stands a French chateau quite as bona fide as any on the far side of La Manche. The architect was French, the roofs as steep as any on the edge of Paris, and the name, too, sounds French with a twist. Il s’appelle le Chateau Impney. And we could put the word “hotel” at the end of the name and it would still sound French.
It is, of course, perfectly possible to hire a French architect and put up a chateau anywhere if you have the money. The question is, why would you want to ?
To get a truthful answer you would have to contact Mr John Corbett, who built Chateau Impney back in the 1870s. And since Corbett’s ghost is still said to roam the corridors near to his bedroom, this may not be beyond the bounds of possibility. Failing that, let me suggest a couple of explanations.
If you read last week’s article, you will already know much about John Corbett. Born in Brierley Hill in 1817, Corbett rose to become one of the most successful businessmen in the Victorian era. Corbett’s trade was in salt, and his Stoke Works outside Droitwich produced, at its height, 200,000 tons of it each year.
But it is John Corbett’s domestic life that concerns us here. In 1855, whilst on a business trip to Paris, John Corbett met (and later married) the daughter of the Secretary of the Diplomatic Corps. Hannah Eliza O’Meara (or Anna, as she was called) was everything a rich manufacturer could possibly want in a wife (that is, what he himself lacked). She was well-connected, beautiful, bilingual and a talented pianist.
Nevertheless, John and Anna tied the knot in 1857, and set up home at Stoke Grange, in what later became Avoncroft College. Five children came along, and the Salt King began to consider moving to somewhere larger.
How better to impress Mrs Corbett than to build his French educated wife her very own chateau? When John Corbett had ambitions, money did not stand in his way. He purchased (and demolished) the old manor house at nearby Impney, and enlisted French architect August Tronquois to draw up the plans for a replacement. And since Tronquois could not be on-site to supervise building, Corbett recruited English architect Richard Spiers to do just that.
Two years and £21,000 later, the masterpiece was complete. A Louis XIII chateau in the heart of Worcestershire.
If the exterior of Chateau Corbett is French in every aspect – spires and turrets, roofs and mouldings – the interior (even taking into account the work needed to turn the house into a hotel) is rather different. Here the Salt King introduced his own cultural background into the mix. A grand Jacobean-style staircase rises up through the heart of the building, flanked by mighty piece of Victorian stained glass.
Here stand the three English poets beloved by the Victorians – Chaucer and Shakespeare and Spenser – with a handful of classical poets thrown in for good measure.
It is this staircase that hints, perhaps, at what else was going on in John Corbett’s mind.
In 1868 Corbett entered politics, standing as the Liberal candidate for the Droitwich constituency in the general election of that year. To succeed, Corbett was obliged to un-seat the longstanding Conservative MP, Sir John Packington. Corbett failed, but, like everything else in his life, he just took this as an incentive to work harder.
Packington was one of the old-style Tories, as much a manorial landlord as a politician. His seat was at Westwood House, a mighty Jacobethan house on the edge of Droitwich, as large as any in the county.
So the path to electoral success, perhaps, was not so much policy as appearance. Maybe a grand mansion, a place to entertain and solicit, was the key. And if the grandest house in the county was already taken, then it was necessary to trump it with something even more splendid.
In the election of 1874, while Chateau Impney was still in process of construction, John Corbett had his second chance, and he took it, polling almost twice as many votes as his Tory rival. That Packington was both a Secretary of State and the local MP for almost 40 years is testimony to Corbett’s achievement. His party was not even elected to government.
The Salt King had, it appeared, everything he could possibly have dreamed of – a seat in Parliament, a wife and children, a hugely successful business and one of the finest homes in the country. What more could he want ? Happiness might be one thing.
John and Anna’s marriage disintegrated, and she took her children elsewhere, refused access to any of the Corbett houses. Inhabited solely by John and his servants, Chateau Impney became as silent as Corbett himself was in the House of Commons. All that effort, and he hardly ever stood up to speak. And, when the Salt King died in 1901, open warfare broke out in the family over the terms of John’s will. There was even in-fighting among Corbett’s good causes.
Within 30 years of being built, Chateau Impney was sold and its contents dispersed (apart from a few which still occupy glass cases around the house today). In 1928 it became a hotel and that - off and on – is how it has remained ever since. One can only hope that the couples who get married there, and the business people who meet to negotiate, have more luck than the man who built it.
