WAKEFIELD, David Francis (1942 - 2025)
RichardMH
Richard R
RichardMH
Richard R
colinp
David Wakefield, authority on Stendhal and Fragonard and custodian of an eccentric Derbyshire house
He took a deliberate stand against modern life, conjuring within Ogston Hall an idealised reprise of the England of his 1950s childhood
David Wakefield, who has died aged 83, was a noted character in the county of Derbyshire, author of elegant books on Stendhal, Fragonard and 18th-century French painting, and custodian of the eccentric Ogston Hall, in which he and his wife perpetuated the England of the 1950s into the 21st century.
Few men of his generation could claim to be more civilised, or better educated: to a first-class degree in modern languages from Cambridge, he added another first in art history from the Courtauld Institute and a doctorate in French literature from Oxford. He could have had a glittering career as a tenured academic. Instead, he withdrew, both to write and to take a deliberate cultural stand against the gross consumerism of the American commercial tidal wave, and the failed bureaucratic mediocrity he saw in the outer distance.
Ogston Hall was the sort of house that appealed to people bored by “Georgian boxes”. Of 16th- and 17th-century origins, the main part had been rebuilt in the 1770s, and most rooms retained their comfortable Georgian proportions. But the whole had been given a spectacular, skin-deep Tudorbethan makeover in the mid-19th century by Thomas Chambers Hine of Nottingham, who gothicked the staircase, created a two-storey-high baronial dining room and added a clock tower, gables, bay and oriel windows, and mullions galore. The result was a Disraelian vision of The Picturesque, straight from the pages of Coningsby or Lothair.
Wakefield added another layer of picturesque by conjuring within it an idealised reprise of the England of his childhood. Using old textiles and furnishings from country-house sales, the interiors were created as if they were undisturbed mid-century photographs, a charming and successful illusion that Wakefield maintained in his own life, with old-fashioned suits, vintage Jaguar cars and carefully poured claret. It was a world viewed through the eyes of Osbert Lancaster, or Peter Simple in The Daily Telegraph.
David Francis Wakefield was born on July 5 1942 into a Midlands business family of long standing that had made a fortune in the 20th century – thanks to David’s grandmother, an astute entrepreneur – by selling army surplus, popular with hikers and campers, and as a type of pre-American leisure wear. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Wakefield’s Army Stores could be found throughout the Midlands and the North of England. With the profits David’s father was able to buy property in Derbyshire, including in 1973 the Ogston estate [….]
In 1986, he married Caroline, daughter of Sir Joslan Ingilby, 5th Bt, of Ripley Castle. She was the perfect wife for him, sharing his interests in France, Germany and Italy, and their literatures, embarking on tours of the Continent, and walking through the Umbrian hills [….]
Wakefield’s intellectual brilliance and quiet but effective commercial acumen were belied by a gentleness of person, a self-deprecating modesty and his distinctive laughter.
His wife survives him.
David Wakefield, born July 5 1942, died September 28 2025
Thanks for confirming the source.