THE LEIGH FERMOR HOUSE

CHAPTER 1
THE LEIGH FERMORS
Paddy, Joan, and Greece
CHAPTER 2
THE HOUSE
The house and the writer
CHAPTER 3
THE DONATION
To the Benaki museum & SNF’s support

THIS LONG AND

FASCINATING JOURNEY

SCROLL

“This long and fascinating journey, like those which preceded and followed it, was a matter of countless bus-rides and long stretches on horseback and by mule and on foot and on inter-island streamers and caiques and very rarely, for a sybaritic couple of weeks or so, on a yacht [...]

All of Greece is absorbing and rewarding. There is hardly a rock or a stream without a battle or a myth, a miracle or a peasant anecdote or a superstition; and talk and incident, nearly all of it odd or memorable, thicken round the traveller’s path at every step.1”

THE HOUSE IN KARDAMYLI, IN THE GREEK REGION OF PELOPONNESE, WHERE WRITER PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR AND HIS WIFE, PHOTOGRAPHER JOAN EYRES MONSELL, LIVED FOR FORTY YEARS.

DURING THEIR LONG HIKES TOGETHER IN THE 1950s AND 1960s, LEIGH FERMOR WITH HIS PEN AND JOAN WITH HER CAMERA, RECORDED LIFE IN THE GREEK COUNTRYSIDE.

Today, following the Leigh Fermors donation, the house belongs to the Benaki Museum and operates as a center to host scholars and researchers, as well as a venue of educational and cultural activities.

CHAPTER 1

PATRICK & JOAN LEIGH FERMOR

PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR

(1915 - 2011)

Patrick Leigh Fermor (“Paddy” to his friends and “Michalis” for the Greeks) was born in London to parents of Irish and English descent.

He spent the first four years of his life away from his family in a village in England’s East Midlands, “in the care of an extremely kind and humble family”.2

Despite being a rather undisciplined student, he demonstrated a keen interest in languages, classical literature, history, geography, and painting from his early school years.

In December 1933, the eighteen-year-old Paddy, abandoning the prospect of an army career, set out without a travel plan on a long journey on foot across Europe, with the “Oxford Book of English Verse” and the “Odes” of Horace as his sole companions.

“A plan unfolded with the speed and the completeness of a Japanese paper flower in a tumbler. To change scenery; abandon London and England and set out across Europe like a tramp – or, as I characteristically phrased it to myself, like a pilgrim or a palmer, an errant scholar, a broken knight or the hero of The Cloister and the Hearth! All of a sudden, this was not merely the obvious, but the only thing to do. I would travel on foot, sleep in hayricks in summer, shelter in barns when it was raining or snowing and only consort with peasants and tramps. If I lived on bread and cheese and apples, jogging along on fifty pounds a year like Lord Durham with a few noughts knocked off, there would be even some cash left over for paper and pencils and an occasional mug of beer. A new life! Freedom! Something to write about! […]

"I wondered during the first few days whether to enlist a companion; but I knew that the enterprise had to be solitary and the break complete. I wanted to think, write, stay or move on at my own speed and unencumbered, to gaze at things with a changed eye and listen to new tongues that were untainted by a single familiar word. With any luck the humble circumstances of the journey would offer no scope for English or French. Flights of unknown syllables would soon be rushing into purged and attentive ears.”3

Starting from Holland, he walked through Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and European Turkey, finally arriving on New Year’s Day 1935 in Constantinople, which was his original destination.

He continues his journey in the monasteries of Mount Athos and ends up in may 1935 in Athens, where he meets the romanian princess & artist Balasha Cantacuzène. For four years, they live together in Lemonodasos, opposite the island of Poros, and in Baleni, Romania.

During World War II, Leigh Fermor joined the British Special Operations Executive. Dressed as a shepherd, he hid in caves on the mountains of Crete, where he actively contributed to the Greek Resistance against the Axis occupation.4

The highlight of his Resistance days was the abduction of the German military commander of Crete, General Heinrich Kreipe, in April 1944.5

Patrick Leigh Fermor and Billy Stanley Moss (bottom) with their Cretan brothers-in-arms. Standing (from left): Stratis Saviolakis, Manolis Paterakis, Antonis Papaleonidas, Giorgos Tyrakis, Nikos Komis; and seated (left): Grigoris Chnarakis. Photo: © The Estate of William Stanley Moss.

CHRISTMAS 1944

Portrait of Joan by Paddy, 1946.

HE MEETS JOAN, IN CAIRO.

“A good thing turned up in the shape of Joan Rainer […] she’s got a good brain and talks about bull-fights and Spanish poets. I think you would like her”.

His friend (and comrade in the abduction of Kreipe), Billy Stanley Moss, had already written to him about Joan, whom he hadn’t yet met.6

JOAN LEIGH FERMOR

(1912 - 2003)

JOAN EYRES MONSELL WAS BORN IN DUMBLETON, ENGLAND, TO A NOBLE AND WEALTHY FAMILY.

In her school years Joan fell in love with the art of photography, which she would pursue throughout her life.7

In 1939 she married John Rayner, features editor of the “Daily Express”, whom she would divorce a few years later.

During World War II she worked as a photographer recording the London Blitz. Due to her knowledge in cryptography, she worked for the British Embassies in Madrid, Algiers, and Cairo where, in Christmas 1944, she met her future husband, Paddy—by then a war hero—with whom she would spend the rest of her life.

PADDY AND JOAN’S SHARED LIFE

IN GREECE

AFTER THE WAR

1945 – 1946

Following a brief tenure as Deputy Director of Advanced English Studies at the British Council in Athens, Leigh Fermor travels, mostly with Joan, across the Caribbean,8 Normandy,9 and Greece.

George Katsimbalis, George Seferis and Paddy in Athens, 1951

Paddy with George Katsimbalis (left) and George Seferis (centre) in Athens, 1951. Collection of George G. Katsimbalis (G. Katsimbalis Photographic Archive).

In Greece Paddy and Joan meet distinguished figures from the world of art and culture, with whom they will form lifelong bonds. The couple’s circle of new friends includes among others, the museum's founder Antonis Benakis, the intellectual George Katsimbalis, painters Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika and John Craxton,10 poet George Seferis,11 and politician Tzannis Tzannetakis.12

1950

He explores every inch of Greece, from Thrace to cape Tainaro.

1951

Until the end of his life, he never stopped travelling and recording his experiences, which he would publish in his books. Today, Patrick Leigh Fermor is considered one of the most important and influential figures in travel literature.

1954 – 1955

PADDY AND JOAN STAY AT THE HOUSE OF NIKOS HADJIKYRIAKOS-GHIKA ON THE ISLAND HYDRA, WHERE PADDY WRITES THE LARGEST PART OF HIS BOOK ON THE MANI

Niko Ghika and Paddy in Ghika’s studio, Hydra, 1955.
Photographer: Joan Leigh Fermor
Benaki Museum / Ghika Gallery, Photographic Archive

Niko Ghika with Joan, Hydra, 1955.
Benaki Museum / Ghika Gallery, Photographic Archive

Paddy wrote about the ancestral home of his friend, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika on Hydra:

“The house seems to hang in there. Air and light and reflected radiance and whatever cool breezes visit the island stream through the rooms unhindered. The whole house casts a singular and benevolent spell.”13

Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, "Wild Garden", 1959. Oil on canvas, 113 x 144 cm.
Benaki Museum / Ghika Gallery, inv. no. ΠΧΓ57.

His book “Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese” is published in London by John Murray Publishing House.14

1958

The cover of the first edition of the book, painted by John Craxton.

Dedication by Paddy to Joan in his book Mani

Dedication by Paddy to Joan in a copy of “Mani”, Kardamyli 1958.
Benaki Museum / Donated by Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor.

John Craxton, “Gorge”, 1960. Oil on canvas, 104.5 x 83.7 cm, Rome Private collection.

In 1966, Lee Fermor’s book “Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece”15 was published in London, again by the publishing house John Murray. In this second book of his on Greece, he includes impressions from his journey through the Greek mainland.

CHAPTER 2

THE HOUSE IN KARDAMYLI

1962 - 1967

Paddy and Joan buy a piece of land by the sea in the Kalamitsi area, just outside Kardamyli in the Mani, to build the house that will serve as their future home, Paddy’s writing studio, and a welcoming space for their friends.

For the plans of the house, they turn to their friend, architect Nikos Hadjimichalis.16

“We found a piece of land by the sea, became koumbaroi of a master-mason called Niko Kolokotronis, the last of a long line of master-masons originally from Arcadia, who had all played the violin; and we gathered a small team of stone-cutters and builders and settled in tents: reading Vitruvius and Palladio, learning what we could from the Mani buildings, and planning the house as it went up with our architect friend Niko Hadjimichali whenever he could get away from Athens. We were given the raw material free – all of it peach or russet-coloured limestone which we hacked and blasted out of the side of the Taygetus.”17

Blessing ceremony in Kardamyli during the construction of their house, 1964.
Benaki Museum / Donated by Olivia Stewart

In order to keep an eye on the construction work, which lasted till 1967, Paddy and Joan were staying in a tent next to the site for short periods.

Paddy in front of the tent, 1964.
Photograph: Joan Leigh Fermor Benaki Museum / Donated by Olivia Stewart

“Our headland jutted between a bay and a small cove and there was nothing on it but olive terraces, thistles, asphodels and an occasional tortoise, and here we pitched our tents exactly where the chief room was to be. There was rock for building everywhere; the friendly and excellent workmen were stonecutters to a man”.18

Paddy on the roof of the house during construction

Photograph: Joan Leigh Fermor
From the Olivia Stewart archive
© Joan Leigh Fermor Estate

The house during construction

Photograph: Joan Leigh Fermor
From the Olivia Stewart archive
© Joan Leigh Fermor Estate

Paddy with the workmen during the construction of the House

Photograph: Joan Leigh Fermor
From the Olivia Stewart archive
© Joan Leigh Fermor Estate

The house’s final form is influenced by Paddy’s journeys. A characteristic example is the prominent arcade where all the rooms of the ground floor connect —a reference to Leigh Fermor’s stays at monasteries in France and Μount Athos.

Leigh Fermor works with local craftsmen while gathering materials and fragments from the surrounding area to embed in the structure.

Regarding the craftsmen who worked in the construction, Paddy has nothing but praise for them:

“The masons and workmen are marvellous chaps, terribly excited about what they are up to, and enormous fun; all from the nearby hill villages”.19

“The stone, chopped out of the mountainside a quarter a mile away, and brought here by mule, as there’s only a goat path, is such a lovely colour, that it can’t be ugly. We’ve managed to find a lot of old and faded tiles, discoloured russet; so with luck, the whole thing will melt into the surroundings and almost disappear”.20

The pebbles used for the mosaics around the house were collected from three beaches around the area, according to their color, and the tiles in the courtyard were made at the Anagnostaras tile factory in Kalamata.

Nikos Hadjikyriakos Ghika, a close friend of the couple, made a significant contribution to the decoration of the house. He helped design the pebble mosaics and also painted a niche and a lion-shaped relief in the arcade.

Niko Ghika drawing in the niche, 1970.
Benaki Museum / Ghika Gallery, Photographic Archive

In Kardamyli, Ghika paints a table and writes the names around its center: MICHALIS, VARVARA, IOANNA, GHIKA. (Michalis: Paddy’s Greek name. Varvara: Barbara Ghika, and Ioanna: Joan.)21

In this house that Leigh Fermor acquires at the age of fifty, he and Joan will spend the rest of their lives.

“Where a man’s Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is, there shall his heart be also; and, of course, Lemprière, Fowler, Brewer, Liddell and Scott, Dr Smith, Harrap and Larousse and a battery of atlases, bibles, concordances, Loeb classics, Pléiade editions, Oxford Companions and Cambridge histories; anthologies and books on painting, sculpture, architecture, birds, beasts, reptiles, fishes and trees; for if one is settling in the wilds, a dozen reference shelves is the minimum, and they must be near the dinner table where arguments spring up which have to be settled then or never.

This being so, two roles for the chief room in a still unbuilt house were clear from the start.”

“ […] and every seventh of November, which is the Feast of SS. Michael and Gabriel – and also my name-day (Miháli, in Greek) – the room fills a special role. These Archangels have a minute chapel three fields away, and after the yearly Mass, a swarm of village friends, sometimes fifty or sixty, led by the bearded vicar with his bun and stove-pipe hat, come in for a long chat and drinks and mézé. Thanks to the divans – suddenly lined with venerable figures in black coifs – the room can hold them all without too much of a squash, and in spite of the immovable table there is plenty of space left in the middle for dancing; and when, later on, the complicated steps of the syrtos and the kalamatiano, accompanied by clapping and singing, begin to weave their nimble circles round the central star, the room seems to have come into its own at last”.22

The house and the writer

When Paddy moves to Kardamyli, he has already published “The Traveller’s Tree: A Journey through the Caribbean Islands” (1950), “The Violins of Saint-Jacques” (1953), “A Time to Keep Silence” (1953), as well as his two Greek books, “Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese” (1958) and “Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece” (1966).

In Kardamyli Paddy revisits his journey in Europe, which he embarked upon when he was eighteen. With his exceptional experiential memory to refer to, as his diaries & notebooks had been lost, he writes “A Time of Gifts” (1977) and “Between the Woods and the Water” (1986).23 In the first book, he describes his journey from Holland to Czechoslovakia, while in the second, he writes about his journey to Romania and Bulgaria.

“While piecing together fragments which have lain undisturbed for two decades and more, all at once a detail will surface which acts as potently as the taste of madeleine which made the whole of Proust’s childhood unfurl. The haul of irrelevant detail, interlocking trains of thought and associations, and the echoes of echoes re-echoed and ricocheted is overwhelming, and in the hopes of attaining some redeeming shadow of symmetry ad balance, a lot of this irrelevant catch must be thrown away again to swim back to the dark pools where it has been lurking all this time. This, for a writer who is his own worst subeditor, is a harrowing task.”24

Patrick Leigh Fermor continues to travel: In the late 1960s and 1970s, he explores the Far East, Peru, the Andes, 25 and the Himalayas.

In October 1984, Paddy aged sixtynine, swims across the Dardanelles (from Asian Abydos to European Sestos). His inspiration for this daring feat was Lord Byron, who had swum the same route in reverse in 1810.

Paddy at the village of Petrovouni, above Kardamyli

Photograph: Olivia Stewart

Joan passes away in Kardamyli on 4 June, 2003.

Joan’s tombstone in Dumbleton cemetery was engraved with an olive branch and the Greek phrase “May the earth rest lightly on her,” combining the two features that accompanied her throughout her life: the Greek language and the nature of Mani.

“Νο Μill House26 over Christmas time, alas, where I would be gallivanting in the North, because no Joan! It seems incredible, and hard to get used to. Oddly enough, it’s over jokes that the absence is brought home most: during the … slogging away in the morning, something crops up and I say to myself ‘I must remember to tell Joan that at lunch. It will make her laugh’. All sorts of things like that. All the freesias she planted last year are shooting up through the grass, a marvellous display. She would have been pleased… I’ve a tumblerful on my desk. They smell lovely… The cats miss her terribly, so do I…”27

2004

Patrick Leigh Fermor is knighted by H.M. Queen Elizabeth II.

The last part of his journey to Constantinople and his wandering through Mount Athos were recorded in a forgotten manuscript, which Patrick Leigh Fermor had started writing in 1963-64. After 2008, this manuscript was typed—in large fonts to make it easier for the elderly writer to read—by his devoted friend Olivia Stewart, and Patrick Leigh Fermor, now over ninety, reworks it with the help of a magnifying glass. Finally, the book is published in 2013, after his death, under the title “The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos”, edited by Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper.28

On 11 June, 2011, at the age of ninety-six, Paddy passes away at Joan’s ancestral home in Dumbleton.

In a short biography of Proust found in Paddy's room in Kardamyli, he had written a message in the middle of the night, at a moment when he felt the end was close...

“Love to all and kindness to all friends, and thank you all for a life of great happiness.”29

Visitors' Book

At the House in Kardamyli, Paddy and Joan kept a Visitors’ Book, where all guests would write their impressions or make a sketch or simply sign.25

The first guest to sign the book was the architect, Nikos Hadjimichalis (1967) and among the last names is that of the former director of the Benaki Museum, Angelos Delivorrias, marking, in 2011, the start of the new era of the house.

All these years, reknowed artists, scholars and writers as well as friends and relatives of the Leigh Fermors stayed at the house. Nikos Hadjikyriakos Ghika and his wife Barbara, George Seferis, John Craxton, Tzannis Tzannetakis, Freya Stark, Steven Runciman, Lord Jellicoe, John Betjeman, Bruce Chatwin, and many others.

Apart from the many bookcases, books from different periods and places were scattered everywhere in the house30. Among them, the publications dedicated to Paddy and Joan by their author friends hold a special place.

John Betjeman, “A Few Late Chrysanthemums” (London: John Murray 1954). Copy from the library of the house with a handwritten inscription by the writer.

George Seferis, “Poems” (Athens: Ikaros 1964). Copy from the library of the house with a handwritten inscription by the poet.

Freya Stark, “Beyond Euphrates. Autobiography 1928-1933” (London: John Murray 1951). Copy from the library of the house with a handwritten inscription by the writer.

CHAPTER 3

THE LEIGH FERMORS’ DONATION TO THE BENAKI MUSEUM

The relationship between Paddy and the Benaki Museum’s founder, Antonis Benakis, goes back to the mid-forties.

Antonis Benakis, at the entrance of the Museum.

“When I was back in Athens, Mr Anthony Benakis most kindly allowed me to write in a quiet room of his marvellous museum after closing time.”31

The Benaki Museum in the thirties
Benaki Museum / Photographic Archive

In 1996 Paddy and Joan take the decision to donate their home to the Benaki Museum and sign the donation contract with the President of the Museum and friend Irini Kalliga. According to the terms of the donation contract, the Museum will acquire the ownership of the house after the donor's death.

“Joan and I have decided to give this place to a wonderful institution called the Benaki Museum, who long for it, one lives in it for as long as one of us, still surviving, is still on the scene, then they take it over and look after it forever. They are terribly nice—well they must be, to hanker for such an odd place”.32

Their close friends Tzannis Tzannetakis and Nikos Hadjikyriakos Ghika contributed to the Leigh Fermors’ decision to donate their home to the Benaki Museum. Ghika had already entrusted the museum with his residence and workshop on Kriezotou Street in 1991.

In accordance with the expressed desire of the Leigh Fermors that their home will be used to fullfill the Museum's mission statement, the Benaki Museum began drafting plans for the necessary repairs in 2011, following the death of Patrick Leigh Fermor. At the same time, the museum proceeded with the planning of the future operation of the House, having already secured the cooperation of major international academic institutions.

The studies were designed so as to preserve the architectural aesthetics of the property, as well as refurbishing it so that it could function both as a centre for scholars & intellectuals and, as a venue for cultural and educational activities, open to the general public.

As the Lead Donor, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) played a significant role in the preservation of the Patrick Leigh Fermor House. In 2016, based on the Benaki Museum’s detailed study of the necessary repairs to the buildings and the plan for the future use of the House, the Foundation financed an in-depth feasibility study on the House’s operation and sustainability. Following this, the SNF covered in full the cost of the extensive repair works.

A NEW CHAPTER BEGINS FOR THE HOUSE IN KARDAMYLI WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE STAVROS NIARCHOS FOUNDATION (SNF)

The Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor House always stood as a beacon of cultural and intellectual interaction. Thanks to the collaboration of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) with the Benaki Museum, this historic estate has been restored to its former glory, ensuring its role as a center for learning, creativity, and collective work.

George Agouridis, member of the SNF Board of Directors and its Senior Legal Advisor; Irini Geroulanou, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Benaki Museum; and Dimitris Giannimaras, former Mayor of West Mani, 2019.
Photograph: aRchive

By early 2019, restoration was complete, and the house reopened to the public for guided tours and visits.

Τhe Leigh Fermor House today
Photographs: Leonidas Kourgiantakis, Vassilis Paschalis, Benaki Museum

A venue for Creativity

As in the past, the House continues to host scholars and intellectuals, and at the same time welcomes those who wish to visit the home of an internationally renowned author. In collaboration with three universities, Freie Universität Berlin (Centrum Modernes Griechenland), Princeton University (Stanley J. Seeger ’52 Center for Hellenic Studies) and the University of California Los Angeles (Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture), as well as other educational institutions, the House hosts cultural and educational activities, including a fellowships programme, seminars and meetings, and honorary residencies for prominent figures and major donors to the Benaki Museum.

The first issue of the @Leigh Fermor House series, focuses on the theme of “Walking,” which was the subject of a workshop organized by Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination and its Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative, as well as the Benaki Museum.

A discussion between writer and Leigh Fermor’s biographer, author Artemis Cooper, and of the SNF Director of the Institute for Ideas & Imagination Mark Mazower, entitled “The Man and the House.”

Sir Roderick Beaton as an honorary fellow at the Leigh Fermor House.

An educational program for visually impaired people by the Benaki Museum’s Educational Department.

Sustaining the Legacy

In the donation contract, the Leigh Fermors proposed that, in order for the House’s plan of operation to be sustainable, the Museum has the right to rent the property for certain periods throughout the year, a practice that has been in place since 2020.

Today, thanks to the generosity of SNF and to the initiative and methodical approach of the Benaki Museum, the Patrick & Joan Leigh Fermor House continues to flourish as a space where culture, history, and creativity interact. This new museum venue, [unique in Greece], revives the residence of two great personalities of the 20th century while at the same time embraces the future by the promotion of research & the cultivation of new ideas.

For more information on the upcoming fellowships programmes and events, visit the Benaki Museum’s official page.

THIS LONG AND FASCINATING JOURNEY

CHAPTER 1

CHRISTMAS 1944

CHAPTER 2

Visitors' Book

CHAPTER 3

THIS LONG AND

FASCINATING JOURNEY