adisem bungalow haputhale
Sri Lanka
About
Adisham is the kind of place seekers of peace dream about. Now a religious house where tranquility lies like a blessing and the grandeur of sweeping mountain vistas takes your breath away, Adisham was originally the country seat of Sir Thomas Villiers. The spirit of Thomas Lister Villiers strongly pervades this stately house. Villiers came to Ceylon in 1887 with 10 sterling pounds in his pocket. He was born in 1869 in Adisham Rectory in Kent, the son of Rev Henry Montague Villiers. He was a grandson of Lord John Russell, twice prime minister of Britain. Villiers received a public school education but instead of settling down to a business or political career in England chose adventure in the colony of Ceylon. Soon after his arrival, he began life as a trainee planter (a creeper) on Elbedde Estate, Bogawantalawa. In 1896 he married the daughter of a tea planter and went to Brazil. He returned to Ceylon four years later and soon began his own tea estate, Dikoya Group. n 1905 Villiers joined the firm of George Steuarts, a trading and estate agency house in Colombo, and rose to be its chairman in 1928, a position he held till retirement in 1948. He also played a role in Ceylon politics. t was while he was chairman of George Steuarts that Sir Thomas commenced building a dream home in the country. He selected an idyllic site at Haputale, surrounded by virgin forest and commanding views across hills and valleys and the highest mountain ranges of Ceylon. The house was designed in the Tudor style, on the lines of Leeds Castle in Kent, with stout granite walls of locally quarried stone, long, narrow turret windows and chimneys. It looked in every detail an Elizabethan country mansion, the retreat in the tropics of a homesick Englishman, nostalgic for the scenes of his boyhood. Villiers spared no expense to ensure that his country home was luxurious in its appointments. The roof was covered with flat Burma teak shingles. The doors, windows, paneling, staircase and floors were all of Burma teak. The elaborate pillared landing on the main staircase adorned by portraits of his relatives, the Clarendons and the Dukes of Bedford, consists of four stout English oaks, polished, but otherwise natural. The garden lay-out was also British and, as in the house, the incomparable scenery is used to best effect. The terraced lawns, flowerbeds and orchard, like the drawing room, study, library, dining room and bedrooms, look out on lofty mountain ranges, all between 1,800 and 2,100
