VISITORS COMMENTS

Island Hall has been open to interested groups for over twenty years and the Vane Percys are always pleased when people have enjoyed their visits:

"Island Hall is the most beautiful house in Huntingdonshire"
Lord Renton, the former MP for Huntingdon, 1993

"Island Hall sums up that quality of the well built Georgian house that is surely every Englishman's dream. The Vane Percy's charm and kind welcome added to the pleasure of the visit, as did cups of tea in that handsome hall, the perfect place for a relaxed party."
Jeremy Musson, writer, broadcaster and tour leader for Flagstones's visit, April 2008

"Island Hall is one of the most charming private houses open to visitors through Invitation to View, memorable for both its unexpected interiors, sense of history and beautiful gardens."
Hew Stevenson of Columbine Hall, former chairman 'Invitation to View', August 2009

"What a lovely setting you have, the gardens were a delight and your house so interesting . . Altogether a most successful visit which are members really enjoyed."
Joyce Lunn of the Holland & Kesteven Antiques & Fine Arts Society, June 2008

"I have received many comments expressing how all the party enjoyed this visit and in particular your descriptive and entertaining presentation of the house and garden."
Clare Downie, Whittlesford Gardening Club, June 2008

"Your illuminating commentary on the house and garden and their history very much added to the pleasure of our visit, and we also enjoyed the tea in such beautiful surroundings, and so charmingly served."
Louise Sheppard, The Art Fund, Northamptonshire, July 2008

"Thank you for a most interesting afternoon and elegant hospitality. I have never known 'my lot' to be so appreciative and enthusiastic."
Ann Hawker, Norwich Union, July 2009

Apprection in magazines:

COUNTRY LIFE
"[Mr Vane Percy] has completed the house's restoration: not only has it been redecorated but the 18th century cupola over the stables has been rebuilt, the island bought back and the Chinese bridge reconstructed. The long task of returning to the garden to the vision of the 'stillest repose' which Octavia Hill enjoyed is now well advanced. She saw the house as a reminder 'of what that deep attachment is to an inherited spot of old earth, rich with memories of days long ago.' By some miracle, that attachment has endured."
Michael Hall, Country Life, February 26, 1998, with photographs by June Buck

ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST
"I silvered the columns, then stippled them with the blues of lapis. I gilded the woodwork, then gave it a grain finish. For that, the school of safe good taste would probably have taken me out and shot," says Christopher Vane Percy, "but my house needed something bold. Island Hall may be mid-eighteenth century, but the architecture looks back to the seventeenth century, a gutsier era when all the great Baroque houses were over the top."
Elizabeth Lambert, Architectural Digest, 1996

CAMBRIDGESHIRE JOURNAL
"For Christopher and Lady Linda Vane Percy their magnificent Georgian home in Godmanchester has become like an additional family member - a sentient being that reacts to people and events. Never did the label 'home' seem more appropriate."
Andrew Whittaker, Cambridgeshire Journal, September 2003

SUNDAY TIMES COLOUR SUPPLEMENT
"With the flair for which CVP designs is famous, the formal dining room is a room designed to look magnificent by candlelight. A huge portrait of the Duke of Rutland, deliberately over scaled for the room, is a brilliant coup de theatre."
Ros Drinkwater, Sunday Times, 2001