NEW OWNERS PERPETUATE LEGACY

NEW OWNERS PEPRETUATE LEGACY

by Norman Warwick

Sir Ernest Hall (left) didn´t simply buy a property here on Lanzarote and retire quietly. He bought a somewhat neglected and ramshackle old-fashioned Camel House and turned it into a beautiful home surrounded by newly landscaped land. He converted a room into a magnificent sunset-trap and musical auditorium, with a 180 degree vista of the sea.

The story of Sir Ernest Hall is of a boy who overcame the unpromising circumstances he was born into, and who in adult life became a successful and wealthy businessman, subsequently received a knighthood and in his later years was able to fulfil some of his childhood dreams.

His parents felt secure with what some would have thought of as the constraints of a northern working class background, and perhaps feared that any ambitions Ernest may have had as a child to better himself might have led to pain and self-recrimination.

However, the boy would proceed as a man to make his first fortune from the Yorkshire textile industry, and to enhance his wealth then from property development. On selling his businesses, twenty five years ago, he founded Dean Clough, now a highly regarded arts and businesses complex. This model of a regeneration project grew from the derelict former Crossley Carpets Mill in Halifax in Northern England.

I know many friends who have benefitted from its affordable space and meeting place for like-minded creative artists, and all would have proudly themselves presented him with the knighthood those achievements earned him. That same year of 1993 saw The Sunday Times Rich List estimate his family wealth at fifty million pounds.

Whilst he acknowledges that he eventually became a success, it was, he says because he was so driven by his self-perceived failure to chase his life-long dream of becoming a full time professional concert pianist.

There are life-shaping moments in all our childhoods, though, and it was no different in the nineteen thirties Bolton area in the North West of England where Ernest was born. His parents worked in local mills before subsequently running a pie shop but Hall´s memories of his childhood years are that he was ´a child full of fear.´ He recalls that he was afraid of other children, of school and all forms of authority, ´but most of all, of death.´

He occasionally found moments of refuge and respite however, and has an abiding picture in his memory of walking out towards the moors around the town and stopping at an old stone house, open to the public. He was enchanted by its white walls, tall pillars and timber roof supports that criss-crossed the ceiling high above. To this day he can remember thinking of the house as ´Paradise. A house for the angels.´

He replicated that image, perhaps, when purchasing and renovating his holiday home on Lanzarote, which is spacious enough to feature the music room I referred to earlier, and to which he invited brilliant musicians from around the world. In what is effectively an artist´s retreat they deliver a concert which Sir Ernest advertised around the island, attracting indigenous islanders, new residents from other countries and even holiday visitors who have been lucky enough to stumble on such an advert during their stay.

He presented several concerts including piano recitals by respected players like Arsha Kaviana and Lilian Akapova at what was once was a seventeenth century vineyard.

He called it The Camel House (right) ) and people loved its eponymous occasional concerts that became firmly established on the Lanzarote arts scene.

Although Sir Ernest moved back to the UK, partly because of ill health, and partly to be close to his extended family unfortunately he died on 12th August this year.  His love of Lanzarote was mentioned in several of the excellent tributes paid in obituaries.

Nevertheless, he seemed to hand the property over to people who might nurture it as much as he did.  

Since 2022 the new hosts welcoming you to The Camel House have been Danielle Baumgartner and Roland Urech, and it is fantastic that others have been prepared to perpetuate Sir Ernest´s Lanzarote legacy.

The Camel House still offers expansive and colourful grounds for the audience to explore when at a concert with all sorts of courtyards and hidey holes in which to enjoy a quiet glass of wine and watch the sun set over the sea a mile or so down the hill. The back drop is of grand mountains and (mostly dormant) volcanoes and blue skies and black lava fields. It is, indeed, paradise. We might all find our own words to express the thought, but when we see this wonderful property, we all think, as Sir Ernest did of the country hall near Bolton he loved as a child, that ´this is a house for the angels.´

For example, we had tickets for a concert on Friday 18th October to see and hear a string quartet called The Ikarro Quartet who promised us not only a classical concert but also a tribute to Coldplay.