Monkton House, West Dean
Monkton House, West Dean, West Sussex is an English country house designed in 1902 by Edwin Lutyens for Willie James. It was extensively remodelled for his son, Edward James, in the 1930s. Working with Christopher Nicholson and Hugh Casson, and assisted by Salvador Dalí, James constructed what has been called "the only complete Surrealist house ever created in Britain". The collection of Surrealist art and furniture which James assembled at the house, much of it by Dalí himself, was "one of the largest and most important in the world". A private residence, Monkton is a Grade II listed building. History Willie James (1854–1912) was the third son of Daniel James (1801–1876), an American-born businessman who had made his fortune as a founder of the trading firm Phelps Dodge and moved to Liverpool to manage the English end of the firm's operations. Willie eschewed a business career, and following a youth spent travelling, established himself as a country gentleman, purchasing the West Dean estate in 1891. In 1902 he commissioned Edwin Lutyens to design Monkton House as a shooting lodge. The house acted as a trianon to the larger property. James' wife, Mrs Willie James was a noted Edwardian hostess and the Prince of Wales was a regular visitor. Willie James died in 1912, and was succeeded by his son Edward, then a boy of five. Marrying, and subsequently divorcing, the dancer Tilly Losch, the bisexual James' greatest passion was Surrealism. An early supporter of Salvador Dalí, he engaged Christopher Nicholson and Hugh Casson to redesign Monkton and employed Dalí to decorate the interiors. Designed in extreme reaction to Lutyens' "cottage-y" style, Monkton has been described as "the only complete Surrealist house ever created in Britain". James stopped living at Monkton in the 1930s, returning for only brief visits, and the interior was left largely untouched. In later years James used the house to store the contents of other houses he had acquired. James established the Edward James Foundation in 1964 and founded West Dean College in 1971. The college teaches courses in historic crafts and preservation. James sold some of his surrealist paintings to fund the college. On James' death in 1984, Monkton House passed to the Edward James Foundation. Sale In 1986 the foundation announced it intended to sell the house and its contents. The foundation’s trustees insisted that the sale was financially necessary, Christopher Gibbs saying that they "[couldn't] go into an open ended liability running a museum of surrealism". A campaign, 'The Monkton Appeal', was launched by The Thirties Society and Save Britain's Heritage to purchase both for the nation, with the aim of raising £1.6 million () by June 1986. The two groups secured a commitment from English Heritage to run the house and open it to the public if £650,000 could be found for the house and an additional £950,000 to purchase its contents. The chairman of English Heritage, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, said that he was prepared for his body to run the house