Home is where the party is... (From Living Northeast)

Home is where the party is...

12:12pm Saturday 18th April 2009

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Sarah French meets James Allison, a man who’s the life and soul owner of the party after he came up with an ingenious plan to preserve his family estate.

EVERY weekend, partygoers sweep up the drive to James Allison’s Georgian manor, clatter into the hallway and prepare to party.

After a welcome drink by the fire when it’s winter, or on the terrace when it’s not, they go up to their rooms to unpack before joining their host in the bar and heading into dinner.

James, 30, owns the ultimate bachelor pad and by all accounts hosts the best weekend parties around. The difference is that the partygoers are paying guests and, for James, these weekend shindigs in his home are work.

James grew up at Middleton Lodge on the edge of Middleton Tyas, near Scotch Corner, and enjoyed an idyllic childhood roaming the 200-acre estate, climbing trees and no doubt getting up to other boyhood mischief with his two brothers and three sisters.

The family moved there in 1980 after James’s dad Jeffrey, a mining engineer, bought it.

The house was built in 1780, like most of the big houses in and around Middleton Tyas at a time when there was plenty of money being made from the area’s significant copper supplies. Later, members of Darlington’s prominent Pease and Backhouse families rented it until 1947 when it was sold to the Ropner family, from whom James’s parents bought it.

Middleton Lodge clearly did its job as a family home for the Allisons, and since his father, now 70, had his eye on fresh adventures – he’s currently sailing solo somewhere in the Atlantic – four years ago James bought it from him.

After graduating from Oxford University in engineering, James followed it with a construction course at Darlington College with a view to going into the family business, the while pestering his dad to do something with the house.

At 26, becoming the owner of a sizeable country estate and historic mansion must have been exciting, but daunting at the same time. For James, it was an opportunity to make improvements and preserve the house for the future.

He admits that running a property of the age and size of Middleton Lodge – the heating bills alone are up to £15,000 a year – let alone carrying out conservation work, is not cheap.

So he came up with a plan – offering the house for private parties where guests would come and stay and have use of the house as if it were their own, with James as host, butler, barman and sometimes even cook.

“I didn’t want to change it from being my home, but at the same time I was realistic,” he says. “This way it was fun. I was basically having a party every Saturday night.”

Things progressed from there pretty quickly.

“People were coming and hiring the house and having marquees put up in the garden for functions. I thought ‘I can do that’ so I bought a marquee which can seat up to 200 people, got a bar licence and a civil wedding licence and now we offer weekend weddings with guests staying at the house.

“Because people have the run of the place, it makes it feel much more like a family party than a conventional wedding venue. It’s not a hotel where there are locks on the doors.

“It works with me being here to greet the bride and groom, their close friends and family the night before. It would change it quite a lot if I had a wedding co-ordinator or manager running things.”

James now employs an outside caterer and has regular staff to help serve guests, as well as a housekeeper, gardener and maintenance staff. They’re kept busy. Middleton Lodge has become so popular that it’s full virtually every weekend until the autumn.

James is also helped by his sisters, while his brothers run other parts of the family business.

Most clients come from London. They hear about it through word of mouth, so if they’re not actual friends of James, they often know people who are.

Slowly the word is getting around locally, too. Recently, Steve Rose, chief executive of Darlington Partnership and Kate Culverhouse, acting regional director for Groundwork North-East, were married there in a snow-dusted wedding.

Unlike hotels where wedding parties are restricted to one function room perhaps with an ante-room bar, Middleton Lodge is fantastically sociable thanks to its architecture.

Designed by the eminent architect John Carr, the reception rooms lead off a breathtakingly impressive central hallway with a grand curving staircase, mezzanine and elongated oval ceiling with beautiful plasterwork.

The Yorkshire-born son of a quarry owner and stonemason, Carr was renowned for his work during the 18th Century on a number of historic buildings across the country, including Doncaster racecourse grandstand, parts of Harewood House and buildings on the estate near Leeds, Leeds General Infirmary, York Assize Courts and Fairfax House, also in York, the city of which he eventually became mayor.

At Middleton Lodge there are few corridors, and the dining room, which can seat at least 50, the lounge and drawing room are accessed from the hall, while the library- cum-games room and bar are just a short walk through another stone-flagged hallway. The books in the library, incidentally, nod to the many roles James fills, covering everything from cookery to estate management through the tax system and gardening to the ascent of Everest (he’s clearly got his father’s adventurer gene, having sailed the North West Passage in 2007).

Interior design is another talent. James has redecorated throughout using fashionably muted tones which work well with the heritage of the house. The furniture, too, is in keeping with the Georgian style but James is keen to develop the contemporary twist he’s begun with artwork. Modern furniture would look badly out of place, but contemporary portraits bring the house into the 21st Century.

But given it’s first and foremost his home, what’s it like having guests (especially those who’ve spent too long in the gentlemen’s club-feel bar he’s created) wandering about and treating the place like it’s their own?

Laid-back James is comfortable with it, putting his guests at ease straight away and making them feel at home. In fact, he’s more than likely to encourage guests into the bar to try one of his chilli passion fruit martinis.

He has kept one third of the house private, but that still leaves 17 bedrooms for guests. They’re all large and most have fireplaces. The grandest are on the first floor of the main part of the house, then there are more in an 1842 extension.

New beds are one thing in which James has invested heavily. Everything else forms part of his maintenance schedule. “It’s getting easier, but you do so much and realise that there’s still so much to do to keep on top of things, which you must when you’re inviting in guests. Every year we’ll try to redecorate a quarter of the house.”

He’s also determined to continue raising the specification and was encouraged recently when one guest compared it to the much longer established and prestigious Babington House in Somerset.

Middleton Lodge has undoubtedly benefited from James’s touch and its new role, which means it can pay its way.

He says: “We don’t do a set package because it’s still very much a private family house. People get their friends and family together here and are able to act as if it’s their place while we run it for them for the weekend.

“But it’s still just my house; it’s just home.”

■ Visit middletonlodge.co.uk or call 01325-377977.

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