THE LUCAS FAMILY

Nan Ino Herbert Cooper, 9th Baroness Lucas and 5th Lady Dingwall, set up WW1's first 'country house hospital' when she opened her family home, Wrest Park, to wounded soldiers. In 1918 she hired Sir Edwin Lutyens to make alterations to Bell House.

Born in 1880 in Blandford, Dorset, Nan Herbert was a ‘resourceful and fiercely independent’ woman. Nan was said to be an ‘ardent theosophist’, interested in mystical and occult religions. Once she gave away a house in the New Forest that she had inherited to the ‘Purple Lotus Mother’ of the ‘Universal Brotherhood’ for a theosophist school. She lived for a while in the early 1900s in Cuba where she helped set up and was later director of the Cuba Raja Yoga School, part of a chain of theosophist schools.

When WW1 broke out in 1914 she set up and ran her family home, Wrest Park, as a hospital for wounded soldiers. It was one of the first and probably the best-run of the country house hospitals. Nan hired twenty nurses, noting in her diary: ‘an assortment of nurses came and went – two or three who drank, one who took drugs, stewardesses who wanted to do war work, and probationers who preferred sharing a chair with a patient to finding an empty one’. When the matron she had chosen proved unsuitable, Nan took that role on too, following basic training in nursing in London. In her diary she wrote: ‘No one had a matron in view, nobody could find one; so finally it was settled I was to step into the post experimentally, and retain it subject to the approval of the medical staff. My dream that night of a huge wave with crest breaking mountains high over my head, expressed my feelings’. Wounded soldiers were met at the local railway station and taken straight to the ‘louse house’ then to the wards. Nan operated a strict policy of moving soldiers on to local convalescent homes as soon as possible, in order to make room for the ever-arriving patients. There were three wards, an operating theatre and x-ray room and while Nan ran the hospital with an energetic and disciplined approach there were also activities to keep up morale such as amateur dramatics, cricket and billiards. Nurse Butler, an Irish woman with ‘wild blue eyes’ and an impish sense of humour used to dress up as an aristocrat and amuse the patients by regally touring the wards asking, ‘And how are you my poor fellow and where were you wounded?’. Nurse Butler also invented a game called ‘Shooting the Dardanelles’ where ‘one of the wheel-chair men’ had to ‘make his way down the length of the ward, whilst all the bed patients opened fire on him with slippers, pillows or anything else available’. A close family friend, J M Barrie of Peter Pan fame, was inspired by Nan to get involved, spending time with the patients and also becoming a sensitive sounding board when difficulties arose between members of staff. Barrie donated £1,000 to help support the hospital and on his regular visits he organised games and entertainments for the patients. Dr Sidney Beauchamp, another family friend, agreed to act as doctor and altogether over 1,600 injured soldiers were treated.

On 14 September 1916 a serious fire put an end to Wrest Park’s time as a hospital, though all the patients were safely evacuated. In November the same year Nan’s pilot brother, Bron, who had already lost a leg in the Boer War when he served as a Times newspaper correspondent, went missing when his plane was shot down over German lines. Nan rushed to her nearest family, cousins in Taplow where they waited for news and Nan was said to be ‘beyond telling good and brave’ every time a telegram came or the telephone rang. It wasn’t until December that they heard he had been killed. He was buried in France. Nan then succeeded as the 9th Baroness Lucas and the 5th Baroness Dingwall, as the titles descended in the female as well as the male. Female peers were not eligible to sit in the House of Lords until after the 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act and even then they had to take the government to court in order to exercise that right. They did not win their case until 1958 so Nan never got the chance to take her seat. She was, however, extremely wealthy, having inherited a large part of her father’s fortune and over £100,000 from her brother.

In April 1917 Nan was 37 years old. She took a lease on Bell House and in the same month she married Howard Lister Cooper. Their two daughters, Anne Rosemary and Rachel were born in Bell House. Howard, a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, left Bell House to return to the front line where he was mentioned in dispatches and won the Air Force Cross. Nan had brought some servants, like Frederick Ashton the chauffeur, from Wrest Park but after the war, like other chatelaines of large houses, Nan found staffing an issue. In October 1919 when advertising for a scullerymaid she took the step of mentioning the wages the person would be paid, a thing few adverts did at the time. The maid was to be paid between £24-26 pa and would report to the chef. Perhaps Nan hoped this honesty would attract more replies than stating the usual ‘good wages’.

Nan had Bell House and its coachhouse remodelled by Sir Edwin Lutyens. On 4 May 1918 Lutyens visited Bell House ‘concerning alterations with Lady Lucas’, and later submitted plans for the ‘elongation of the existing study towards the south and on the upper floor the construction of two bathrooms and a wardrobe room over an existing flat [roof]’. The application also included a proposal for the removal of the existing conservatory situated at the south end of the drawing room. The Estate approved the alterations but declined to allow the removal of the conservatory which they considered to be in good condition and attractive to future tenants. Nan added the beautiful fireplaces by Thomas Jeckyll, English architect and a leading figure in the Aesthetic Movement that can still be found in the guest bedrooms. In March 1919 Lutyens secured agreement to enlarge the entrance hall and provide another bathroom on the upper floor. In October Lutyens asked for ‘conversion of the principal portion of the stable block into quarters for married servants’. The plan entailed the formation of two small flats, one on the ground floor and the other on the upper floor with an estimated cost of £1,400. The Estate were happy because ‘there would still be a garage in the unaltered part of the building’. However, two rainwater pipes from the stable roof discharged into the yard of the house next door so the Governors approved the plans subject to the water from the stable roof discharging onto Bell House property instead. Lastly, in 1920 Lutyens submitted plans for alterations to the butler’s pantry, enlarging the servants’ hall and forming a new larder at a cost of £374. Lady Lucas also asked for deferred permission to add two new bathrooms and a housemaids’ pantry at a cost of £384. The Governors gave consent.

In 1921 the Estate granted Nan permission to let the house, fully furnished, to Simon Fraser, the 14th Lord Lovat, his wife Laura and their children (who included the future MP Sir Hugh Fraser) because Lady Lovat wanted to be near her father, Lord Ribblesdale, who was ill. The Lovats were here when the 1921 census was taken in June but cannot have stayed for very long as in February 1922 Lord Ribblesdale left Dulwich so presumably the Lovats did too. The Coopers left Bell House in 1923 to move to Sussex Square though not without a slight altercation with the Estate over dilapidations to Trewyn (now Pickwick Cottage but at that time part of the Bell House lease). Lady Lucas thought the dilapidation costs should be nominal as she had spent over £5,000 on Bell House. The Estate were unmoved and insisted on her paying costs of around £600 before she moved. Nan continued to be an active member society: in the 1939 Register she described herself as a member of the Women’s Land Army. She died in 1958 and her titles were inherited by her elder daughter, Anne Palmer.