Camellia House, Wollaton Hall

The location for this project and which inspired me to do this project is the Camellia House at Wollaton Hall. An unlikely place to get a connection i know but it made sense to me.

The glasshouse was built for the Willoughby family in 1823, the owners of Wollaton Hall at the time. It was designed specifically to house their stunning collection of Camellia Plants. Sadly by 2004 the building was closed to the public due to vandalism and it's state of disrepair.
It has now undergone extensive restoration and was reopened in 2007.
The building itself is laid out with four quadrangles each of which is covered with a glass pitched roof. The water from the roof was drained through the supporting columns and stored under the glass house to heat and keep the humidity high. Two of the four perimeter walls are fully glazed with the other two walls being rendered brick. To the rear where the wall form a retaining wall there is a boiler house. This is where it is believed that the rainwater would have been heated the keep the atmosphere hot and humid.

Hot air was circulated throughout the building via an ingenious system of pipes, underground gullies and vents as well as through brick vaults under the beds themselves. The design of this building is unique and incredibly sophisticated. 

The overall restoration project cost roughly £1.1 million and the work lasted just under two years. During the restoration the Camellia's were left in situ and were thankfully undamaged and in flower by the time it was reopened.

Wollaton Hall itself was built in 1580 and took 8 years until it's completion. It was comisioned by Sir Francis Willoughby from the architect Robert Smythson. Francis had a very unhappy marrige and had six daughters several of whom ran away to be married.

In 1801 the building was repaired and remodelled by Lord Middleton, the head of the Willoughby family. In the original grounds there was also an orengery which no longer exists.

This building also underwent extensive restoration around the same time the Camellia house was brought back to life.