Did an arsonist devastate one of England’s greatest houses?
It’s been part of our heritage since the Civil War. Now its owner, a colourful hedge fund boss, has seen it reduced to ashes – and the police are thinking the unthinkable . . .
THE pall of smoke rising from the ruins of Parnham House in the Dorset countryside was finally damped down by firefighters four days after the inferno tore through it. But the acrid smell of its charred remains still hangs heavily in the air — along with a growing whiff of intrigue about exactly what caused the fire that gutted the 500-year- old stately home in the early hours of Easter Saturday.
When the Mail visited this week, all that remained was a stark silhouette of blackened walls, with no roof or floors. The Grade I-listed building truly looked a ghost of its former self.
Just after news of the fire broke, the widespread assumption was that some domestic accident such as an electrical fault must have started it. That, after all, was the reason for a similar disaster that occurred when Clandon Park, a National Trust mansion in Surrey, burned down two years ago.
But as the week has gone on, an extraordinary suspicion has been growing: that someone purposefully set fire to this glorious house in an appalling act of sabotage.
Walkers on surrounding footpaths and locals in the neighbouring village of Netherbury and the larger town of Beaminster have been absorbed with this disturbing suggestion.
One elderly lady was close to tears. ‘It was such a wonderful place,’ she said. ‘Why would anyone do something like this?’ Why indeed — and, more pressingly, who?
That is a question which the police are now investigating. In a dramatic development, a 68-year-old local man from the Beaminster area was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of arson, and has been released under investigation.
As detectives continued their inquiries yesterday, the mystery of what led to the destruction of such an architectural gem was fast becoming as grimly compelling as the plot of an episode of television’s Midsomer Murders.
Tantalising titbits of gossip abound in the rural community. A jerry can carrying as much as 25 litres of petrol was abandoned on the lawn, say some. Then there is talk of the fire having been started in five separate places. Others have heard that a host of silver antiques and other valuables were piled outside an entrance.
POLICE would not comment on any of this. In fact, all that has been officially confirmed is that the fire brigade were called at 3.50am on Saturday by a member of the public.
I understand that was a milkman on his early round. Police were called by the fire service for assistance at 4.10am. Twenty fire crews battled the blaze, which was only confirmed to have been fully extinguished on Wednesday.
Thankfully, no one is thought to have been inside at the time of the fire.
Parnham House is owned by hedge fund manager Michael Treichl, a scion of a wealthy and highly regarded family of bankers.
He is by all accounts a colourful figure who likes to travel by helicopter and filled Parnham with suits of armour.
Five days before the fire, Mr Treichl, a keen tennis player who is a member of the famous Queen’s Club in West Kensington, competed in the Senior English Indoor championships, held in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. He lost in round one in straight sets by 0-6, 0-6.
A friend who saw him there said: ‘ He is a competent tennis player and was in the same mood as he always is. He can seem distant, a bit eccentric maybe, and a pretty dour kind of chap. He is quiet and reserved, but at the same time loves his castle.’
Mr Treichl married his wife Emma, 54, the daughter of a company director, in 1999, and they have two children. It was his first marriage, and her second — she also has two children from her first marriage.
Mr Treichl bought Parnham House in 2001 because he wanted a place large enough to house part of a collection of armour, paintings and game trophies from his family’s houses in Austria and Italy, plus a collection of historic English portraits.
These impressive details were described in Country life magazine, which carried an eight-page spread on the property in 2005.
Reports have suggested the sale price was about £4 million — while some locals reckon the Treichls spent as much as £ 10 million doing up the house.
Emma Treichl worked with English Heritage and West Dorset district council planners to turn Parnham, which had formerly been partitioned for use as a nursing home, into a sumptuous family home.
Architects redesigned parts of the mansion to meet the family’s needs. This was just the latest remodelling in its history: most notably, leading Regency architect John Nash reshaped the place in the Gothic style in around 1810.
Mr Treichl is an enthusiastic shot, and game trophies were dotted around the house, with antlers on the walls.
Another magazine which visited to interview the owner reported that ‘in front of the fire place is a magnificent polar bear, only head and fur. In one of the guest rooms you stumble over the head of a lioness. All Treichl victims’.
The man himself told his interviewer: ‘We have been hunting for generations.’ Asked what he shot, he said: ‘In England, everything that flies, in Scotland, deer.’
Visitors were greeted by the sight of a statue of the Greek goddess of youth, Hebe, at the top of the drive.
Inside, they could wander through corridors decorated with tapestries and elegant rugs. The drawing room, meanwhile, was highceilinged and topped with a luxurious chandelier.
Most eye-catching, however, were the suits of armour, which stood high on plinths, some clutching swords, and gazed down on other military curios such as an aged cross-bow.
Those who stayed at Parnham say a butler tended to the family’s needs, and locals this week also recalled that when Mr and Mrs Treichl were there, they flew in and out of the property by helicopter.
Holding an MBA degree from Harvard Business School, Mr Treichl began his
career by spending almost 20 years in investment banking, focusing on mergers and acquisitions.
He held senior positions at SG Warburg in London and Merrill Lynch in New York.
He is a founding member of London-based fund management firm, Audley Capital Advisors LLP. Before that, he co- founded Bessemer Vogel & Treichl, the European arm of a £3.9 billion private equity fund.
Asked what money means to him, he once said: ‘Money is not an end goal, but you can make a beautiful life with it. As a professional investor, I only earn money when my investors make profits with me.’
His wife is a keen horsewoman. She follows the local hunt in winter and plays polo in summer. She was described in the Hurlingham Polo magazine as ‘a housewife and mother — her “finest achievement” — and in between is an organiser of art exhibitions and art courses, an occasional publisher, a food-fair co- ordinator and a charity fundraiser’. She is also a governor of independent Leweston School in Sherborne, Dorset.
WHEN the couple threw open the doors of their home to Dorset Life magazine, Mrs Treichl said of their renovation work on Parnham House: ‘It is a question of balancing the aesthetic with the practical. Four children and a historic treasure can go together, but both need to give a little.
‘The children enjoy the atmosphere of suits of armour and games of hide and seek, and a house needs to be lived in for it to feel like a home and not a museum. We smoothed out the corners, but didn’t dent Parnham’s history.’
Sadly, that history is now in ashes — and the question of what, or who, is to blame grows evermore pressing.
This week, the gates on footpaths closest to what is left of Parnham House were sealed off with police tape for safety reasons as detectives and fire investigators set about their work. The whereabouts of Mr and Mrs Treichl at the time of the fire are not known.
The house’s owner prior to Mr Treichl was the renowned British furniture designer John Makepeace, who bought it in 1976.
He set up a college for furniture designers and makers there, alongside his own studios. Pupils included David Linley, the son of the Queen’s late sister Princess Margaret.
Mr Makepeace, 77, who still lives in Beaminster, said of the fire: ‘I can only say it’s tragic. One’s passionate about it because it is an idyllic location.
‘It’s just so beautiful and for it to be destroyed is unbelievable. There’s an outpouring of loss over something that should be conserved. To me, the years we were there were golden years.
‘It’s just so sad; people are very fond of the house. It’s part of their life. It was heartbreaking.’
Parnham House has weathered more than one tragedy during its long and colourful history. An aristocrat named Lady Strode was murdered there in 1645 by a Roundhead soldier during the English Civil War. She was defend- ing the home from the commander of the Parliamentarians.
Also entwined with its history is another of its former residents, Lieutenant William RhodesMoorhouse, the first ever airman to be awarded the Victoria Cross.
He was shot as he stopped German reinforcements reaching the front with a low-level bombing raid during the Battle of Ypres in 1915, and died from his wounds a day later. His body was taken back to Dorset and buried on a hillside overlooking Parnham House.
Thankfully this fire did not cause the untimely death of another inhabitant of this great house. Even so, the latest twist in its history may yet turn out to be the most dramatic — and unexpected — of all.