Dorneywood House
A slight deviation to my proposed Research Project found me at the country home of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Dorneywood House sits within 215 acres of beautiful gardens in the tranquillity of the Buckinghamshire countryside and was gifted to the Nation in 1942 by the philanthropist Lord Courtauld-Thomson. The gardens are open to the public for two weeks each summer, but for security reasons photography is forbidden. Pleasingly this ban was waived for my private tour.
1874 saw the arrival of Courtauld-Thomson, the 137th pupil, at Summerfield (as was the name). He moved on to Eton in 1879 and from there to Magdalen College, Oxford. He decided to memorialise the key events of his life with a series of five stained glass windows and in the centre of the five is this lavish and rather touching tribute to his time at Summerfield. Interestingly, his years at Eton and Magdalen College are squeezed onto a single, rather plain window – for which I spared very little time in post-production.
