For those whose experience with English country house hotels is limited to TV commercials for Schweppes tonic water, Stapleford Park Country House Hotel and Sporting Estate may come as a bit of a shock.
Set in the heart of Leicestershire`s open, rolling hunt country, this newest, largest and most ambitious country house conversion to date is presided over not by a proper, if impoverished, peer of the realm, but by an exuberant, free-wheeling millionaire expatriate American pizza king.
Bob Payton, the current squire of the manor, is intent on blowing the dust off the traditional English country house experience with his $9 million renovation of this 500-year-old stately home and its 55-acre park that officially opened April 29.
”These houses are usually treated as religious shrines,” sniffs Payton. ”This isn`t a religious shrine-it`s our house.”
A tall, portly ex-Chicagoan who favors plaid shirts, stocks Oreos in his kitchen and sports a gold signet ring with a pizza motif on his pinkie finger, Payton, 43, delights in reverse chic, such as his intention to retrieve guests at the train station not in the requisite creaky antique Jaguar but in a mud- spattered, bone-jolting Land Rover, whose tape deck plays tapes of Chicago radio stations.
RESCUED FROM RUIN
That this historic registered building now has an American master, let alone what may be the most amazingly efficient heating and plumbing system in the county-not to mention Cable News Network satellited into every bedroom-may send shivers through English country house purists. But they may also take comfort in that it has been preserved from almost certain ruin. The fourth owner in 500 years, Payton bought Stapleford Park from Lord Gretton in 1986. Payton and his wife, Wendy, took up residence here last fall.
Purchasing a house in sad decline, Payton has spent considerable time and a substantial portion of the almost $9 million he and his investors have placed in Stapleford Park in restoring the house in a manner befitting a national treasure.
The honey-colored stone facades of the house, parts of which date from the 16th through 19th Centuries, have been carefully cleaned and repaired and the low stone walls surrounding the gardens once again made whole. Elaborate wood carvings of fruit and flowers in the dining room, attributed to English master woodworker Grinling Gibbons, have been restored so that the delicate detail can once more be appreciated. The crewelwork-covered chairs are reproductions of those once used by the Gretton family. A premium has been put on craftsmanship of all kinds. ”Maybe they`ll never do them again, but I put in mahogany sinks and bathtubs,” notes Payton. ”Will they ever pay? I don`t know.”
The unspoken ”And I don`t care” lingers in the air. But, although it`s certain that the businessman in him cares very much, it`s just as certain that the Anglophile in him is doing it for love and the chance to become a part of English history itself. Indeed, he is fond of pointing out to visitors the stone inscription on the oldest part of the house that says: ”William Lord Sherard, Baron of Letrym, Repayred this building, Anno Domini 1633.” When this 20th Century renovation is completed, Payton plans to add his own plaque reading: ”And Bob Payton Did His Bit, Anno Domini 1988.”
”My biggest thrill about the whole thing is walking around the house and thinking, just 10 years ago, all I wanted was to make a decent pizza. Now, I own the most spectacular house in England,” says Payton, surveying his 100-room manse with boyish glee.
A HAPPY EXPATRIATE
Twenty years ago, armed with a master`s degree in advertising from Northwestern University, Bob Payton was an advertising executive with J. Walter Thompson in Chicago, which transferred him to London in 1973. When he was ordered back to the U.S. in 1977, Payton, an ardent Anglophile, balked.
Instead, he stayed on in England, that year opening the first in what was to become a chain of American-style restaurants with names like the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory, the Chicago Rib Shack, Chicago Meatpackers, the Windy City Bar and Grill and Henry J. Bean`s But His Friends All Call Him Hank Bar and Grill. Located in Barcelona, Paris and in major cities in England and Scotland, Payton`s restaurants (there are now 11) will number 14 by the end of the year.
These days, Payton leaves the day-to-day operations of the restaurants to others. Stapleford Park, which he first saw while riding to the hounds, has become not only his home but his passion.
”As big as the house is, it`s on a very human scale and people can identify with our story,” he says. ”We`re just folks who went out and did something.”
Well, yes and no. There`s no doubt they have done something, but the Paytons are hardly ”just folks” in any sense of the expression. One of the best-known and least shy Americans in England, Bob Payton is an entrepreneur, marketing maven and showman to a degree still rare in Britain.
In March, when the Paytons` 10-year-old giant schnauzer, Gunther, finally emerged from the mandatory six-month quarantine after arriving in England, his triumphant release was covered like the return of royalty from exile; pictures of the dog, his owners-and Stapleford Park-were splashed across local newspapers and television screens.
MISTRESS OF THE HOUSE
Petite, elegant and soft-spoken, Wendy Becker Payton, 38, is quite the opposite of her husband, whom she met in London`s Chicago Rib Shack, but no less dynamic. As mistress of Stapleford Park, she has overseen much of the restoration and decoration and plans to handle the roles of hostess and chief gardener at the house, while continuing to run Chicago`s Caisson Corp., a construction firm owned by her late first husband.
Dressed in full hunting regalia, the Paytons were wed last New Year`s Eve and rode on horseback from the registry office to the quarantine kennel to inform Gunther and then on to Stapleford Hall to celebrate. Married to a man in love with fox hunting, Wendy Payton gamely took up the sport a year ago. The Paytons keep their five horses at Stapleford.
Clearly, neither Payton has much patience for stuffiness, whether in English country houses or anything else.
”The whole house is a Victorian folly with little witticisms and jokes, like Gunther on the wall,” says Payton, gleefully pointing to a trompe l`oeil panel in a marble-paved gallery that has become the hotel`s tea room. There, painted into a traditional hunting scene, starring Payton himself on horseback, is the faithful giant schnauzer, an American flag bandanna knotted jauntily around his shaggy neck.
And in his pluckiest move of all, Payton chose to have the guest bedrooms decorated not by one company, but by an eclectic collection of companies and friends, many of whom had little or no experience in interior design, including the wife of the local master of the hounds.
SCARVES AND SUSPENDERS
Take for instance, the bedroom designed by the prestigious London shirtmaker Turnbull & Asser. For 100 pounds (about $185) a night, one may gaze through windows whose curtains are made from green velvet smoking jackets tied back with white silk scarves. The walls, of course, are covered in Turnbull`s signature red-, blue- and green-striped shirting fabric, a suitable backdrop for paintings hung from suspenders.
Although such proper interior designers as Nina Campbell, George Spender, Annie Charlton and Michael Szell, fabricmaker to the queen, have put their talents to work at Stapleford, other rooms have been done by the American jeweler Tiffany & Co., the London department store Liberty`s, the venerable English china business of Wedgwood, the toiletries company of Crabtree & Evelyn and Lindka Cierach, the designer who made the Duchess of York`s wedding dress.
Opening with 23 bedrooms, the house will have 30 by the end of this year and 50 at the end of three years. Most of the bedrooms are spacious, all of them have fabulous marble and mahogany bathrooms and many command sweeping views of the parkland, including a triplex suite, carved from the space once occupied by the Hall`s ballroom, with two stories worth of mullioned windows, which goes for 325 pounds ($600) a night.
Outside, on the 55 acres of parkland surrounding the house, Payton has the space to offer an eclectic selection of guest activities, including tennis, croquet, horseshoes, basketball, volleyball, jogging, hot-air ballooning, game and clay pigeon shooting and, as a particularly Paytonesque contribution to English country house life, miniature golf.
For the equestrian-minded, there is carriage-driving, riding and, in season, the opportunity to ride with one of the local hunts.
Overseen by a chef from Yorkshire, meals at Stapleford Park begin with breakfast served on Wedgwood`s Peter Rabbit china. Generally, the food is a blend of English and American favorites, drawing on the immediate area`s resources, such as fresh game, fish and fowl and Stilton cheese. In Payton`s plan, picnics of barbecued ribs will have as much place at Stapleford as kippers and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding.”What I want to do is take traditional English cooking and mix it with an American sense of flair and style,” he says.
With the exception of the suites, priced from 200 to 325 pounds ($370 to $600), all the rooms at Stapleford Park feature either a king-size bed or two twin beds. Some of Payton`s inveterate whimsy comes through in the room descriptions, if not the prices. Prices start at 85 pounds ($157) for a
”deluxe” room and spiral upward through 100 pounds ($185) for a
”superb” room and 125 pounds ($231) for a ”premier” room, to 150 pounds
($277) for a room rated ”outstanding.” Such prices cover one or two guests and include continental breakfast and a morning newspaper, but not the Value Added Tax, which will add 15 percent to the final bill.
Located about 100 miles from London, Stapleford Park can be reached in about two hours by car or in about an hour and a half by train to Leicester or Grantham.
From the United States, reservations may be made using a toll-free number, (800) 223-5581, or by calling the hotel directly at 011-44-57-284-522 or by writing to Stapleford Park Country House Hotel and Sporting Estate, Stapleford Park, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire LE14 2EF, England. –
