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PATRICK AND JOAN LEIGH FERMOR CENTRE

“We saw a peninsula that ends in crescent moon-shaped beaches… We walked in a gently sloping world with magical beauty… thick with beautiful olive trees and many other trees… Back, the peninsula melted into a large gray niche and orange rock. I knew I would never leave.”

Patrick Leigh Fermor

There is a wonderful house in the Messinian Gulf in Greece. Its construction works were completed in the mid-1960s.

“The key person in the house building was the local builder Nikos Kolokotronis, the last of the seven generations of builders from Arcadia who all played violin. Nikos, a handsome, well organized, bulky man like a bear, who was looking like Zorbas had formed a team of local builders and stone hewers from the surrounding villages.”

Excerpt: page 487 – An advanture

“Panti” often worked side by side with the builders or just gadded about in the countryside, sometimes reaching as far as Kalamata to collect stones and marble as well as traditional slabs.

The house is located near Kardamyli, in the area of Kalamitsi in Mani. However, it consists of four stone buildings with a seaside courtyard, where in front of it an unspoiled landscape sprawls. Cypress and olive trees stand like proud sentinels in a garden of white oleanders and freesias, planted by Joan, and fenced by high walls. It was a matter of privacy, Patrick liked to spend time outdoors, without clothes. The main house is L-shaped with a traditional tiled roof and is built on two levels. The spaces are structured with a careful thought. Nothing in this house is randomly placed. After all, from the time my grandfather and Patrick started working, they sat day and night changing their designs and plans, sometimes colliding [pic. 07], that is why there are many important changes at home or in relation to its original licensed plan, or even changes during the work progress, as I remember my grandfather had told me about the way he used a construction technique by filling with a spatula, where between the stonewalls he pressed the cement with a trowel and torn a line just before it dries, he told me that this keep the humidity away from the house – and it ‘s true, Patrick didn’t like this, he wanted the cement to be protrusive and we’ll see the difference – the lower level is built in that way.

The living room, the kitchen, a shared bathroom and two bedrooms with private bathroom are on the upper level. Another bedroom with bathroom and storage areas are located on the lower level. Yards, terraces and gardens connect these two levels.

The office has a large area – living room, another bedroom with a bathroom and a flat roof with a pergola, which he never completed, it was not the ideal place and it was sunny all day, you had nowhere to hide. The house located outside the fenced area was for their beloved housekeeper. While the elongated in shape building, also close to the previous one, was intended for the pets that his wife Joan always wanted to take care of. It also remained in the middle – it was never completed and as far as I remember never animals were hosted there.

Just below the house, a narrow path with stone carved stairs leads to a narrow pebble beach. It is the beach of the semi-mountainous village of Proastio, where my grandfather also came from, from there he took the pebbles at 6:00 in the morning, maybe earlier, he collected them one by one, he used to make mosaics from pebbles, but never again with paintings by Gikas.
Patrick wrote in his book: “I asked the craftsman Nikos to build my whole house out of arches and Nikos told me: I don’t know if I can, I haven’t done it again”. [pic. 01] I know this, he had told me this story, he presented it as difficult in order to ask for good money. It can be seen from the photo that he was working on the arches, it was his own art, his own piece. Patrick knew better than anyone other that there wasn’t any other craftsman like my grandfather in the area [pic. 02] and he paid him well. And once in a while, when he was struck by an idea, he called my grandfather to come down and to fix it.

My grandfather’s father has built the famous single-arched bridge, which connects the two settlements. In a hike someone can admire the single-arched brick bridge, which connects the villages of Kastania, Saidona and Proastio.

Out of his enthusiasm and devotion, he once wrote a letter to my grandfather, not to the engineer who made the plans for him – a letter telling him how great house he had built and describing a story where a passerby stopped telling him how much beautiful it is. [pic. 05]

For many years, this architectural masterpiece was the home of the late Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915 – 2011) and his wife Joan (1912 – 2003).

Last time I remember Patrick, it was summer 2008 I was admitted to School of Architecture, I went to him with a bottle of wine, I knew he liked it, and then I asked Elpida who took care of Patrick and the house, she still takes care of it, to guide me, I remember Patrick who took the wine seriously, and devotedly said “I am busy now, please forgive me, I am writing my funeral eulogy”.

A few days later he wrote a letter to my grandfather, telling him: Did you see that you had a complaint that no one took from your art, your granddaughter took it. If I remember correctly he was impressed, but he was a very tough man to say a good word to my grandfather and he never admitted that he is an architect, he always considered himself engineer, he didn’t tell me anything. Only Panti called him an architect and he pretended not to hear. [pic. 06]

I remember that my grandfather enthusiastically was telling me about the history of the house were the arches, he was saying no one has the same number, they are all different so the landscape is joined with them. [pic. 03]

And the crumbling plasters had burned his hands, he rubbed them with linen clothes.
My father, when was very young, also participated, my grandfather used to take him with the horse and in order not to harass the child who was a kid as his grandmother used to say, he took an evaporated milk and opened it at night when they had finished work and were returning back with the donkeys, just before they got home, he gave it to the child. [pic. 04]

In 1996, the property was allotted to the Benaki Museum, one of the most remarkable museums in Athens. Following extensive renovations that began in 2017 with a generous grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Museum will open the property in 2020 as Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor Center.

It will host writers, researchers, scholars and intellectuals and will be open to the public at specified times. There will be residences, educational activities in collaboration with universities – partners and special organized events open to the public.
The building, in fact, is composed of many elements, which testify influences sometimes of oriental origin, such as the imposing fireplace of the guesthouse, sometimes from the Italian Renaissance, see the proportions of the arches, sometimes from the ancient Greece, such as the Doric columns that underpin the outdoors. And all this is composed as if it has always existed there. To achieve this, as Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote in his book “An Adventure”, p. 487, the key man, a local stonemason, had to be found. This man was my grandfather, Nikos Kolokotronis, a great builder, with his work still standing, to testify how well he knew how to sculpt stone. Their relationship strengthened during the years.

My grandfather built another one stone house for one of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s best friends, Alexander, a philhellene and grandson of Leo Tolstoy, whose house is a few meters away. The stones in this house are bigger and the technique of the craftsman – my grandfather less influenced. The floor here is made of onyx. He was a great craftsman.

The tradition was continued by my father as a contractor and now his children pick up the torch passed to them.