Finchcocks

Finchcocks. View of the rear of the house, from the garden

Finchcocks is an early Georgian manor house in Goudhurst, Kent. For 45 years it housed a large, visitor-friendly museum of historical keyboard instruments, displaying a collection of harpsichords, clavichords, fortepianos, square pianos, organs and other musical instruments. The museum was run by the owners of the house, Richard and Katrina Burnett.

The house

The house was built in 1725 and named after the family who lived on the site in the 13th century. It is noted for its brickwork and has a dramatic front elevation attributed to Thomas Archer. It is located in 13 acres (53,000 m2) of grounds. There is parkland to the front and a garden to the rear with wide lawns, mature shrub borders, an orchard for wild flowers, and a walled garden. There are extensive views over the Kentish landscape of park, farmland, and hop-gardens.

The house, with its high ceilings and oak panelling, provides an ideal setting for music performed on period instruments; the house and instruments have been used regularly for recordings by leading exponents of early music such as Trevor Pinnock, Simon Preston and Nigel North. There is also a jazz club which was founded by Alastair Laurence of the Broadwood Piano company and was developed by Roan Kearsey-Lawson into a premier jazz venue where international artists have appeared including Frank Holder and Duncan Lamont. The club has also been featured on BBC One television.

The Finchcocks collection

Finchcocks was acquired by Richard Burnett, a fortepianist, in 1970. The Adlam Burnett workshop (founded by Derek Adlam and Richard Burnett) was set up at the house and enabled instrument makers to produce copies of historical keyboard instruments in an ideal environment, learning from the construction of many originals. The building housed the Katrina and Richard Burnett collection of over 100 historical keyboard instruments; about forty of which were fully restored to playing condition. These could be seen and heard whenever the house was open to the public; it was one of the few collections of historical instruments at which people were welcome to play them themselves. With the Burnetts' retirement in 2015, the museum closed and many of its instruments are slated to be auctioned off for charity.[1]

There is also a collection of musical pictures, prints and an exhibition on the theme of London's 18th-century pleasure gardens such as Vauxhall and Ranelagh Gardens.

Historical instruments in the collection

View of the Kent countryside from Finchcocks

Clavichords

Harpsichords

Organs

Pianos

Others

Related publications

References

  1. ↑ "Finchcocks Musical Museum in Goudhurst set to close its doors". Retrieved 24 February 2016.

External links

Coordinates: 51°06′08″N 0°25′38″E / 51.1022°N 0.4273°E / 51.1022; 0.4273

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, April 21, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.