How a Cairo craftswoman was inspired by the patterns of an English mansion

The National

07-02-2025

The 17th-century, red-brick English stately home of Blickling Hall, built to withstand months of rain and cold, is isolated by a surrounding moat and acres of pristine gardens and woodland. Over the years, a complex piping system has been developed to protect the house from flooding from the nearby Bure river. Meanwhile, Bayt Al Razzaz in Cairo, a 15th-century Mameluke-era stone townhouse in the heart of the densely populated Egyptian, with arched wooden-framed oriel windows, and an inner courtyard that keeps the house cool. On the surface, the two homes would seem to have little in common, and little to teach each other. But when Egyptian designer Nesreen Sharara arrived at Blickling in south-east England, she knew to seek out features that reminded her of heritage homes in Cairo. She had been invited to spend a week on the estate as part of a heritage conservation project in which Blickling was twinned with Bayt Al Razzaz, where she was a specialist woodworker and ran youth projects. Despite their stark contrast, some similarities quickly became apparent – largely because of what European designers borrowed from the Islamic arts for their interiors and the Italianate influence on Ottoman homes. The shelves of Blickling's vast library were topped with a Victorian-era frieze featuring arabesque features and geometrical patterns. A stone facade of the building had latticework, which Ms Sharara found similar to the patterns at Bayt Al Razzaz. Both homes have ornately decorated ceilings. Ms Sharara has an eye for the patterns of the Islamic arts, but knew very little about the Jacobean and Victorian designs that adorn Blickling Hall. Jacobean refers to the era of King James I of England, which lasted from 1603 to 1625, while Victorian covers the reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837 to 1901. 'At first I thought it was a challenge. Then I started to analyse the patterns they have on the ceilings there, I figured they're mostly based on a square geometrical pattern,' Ms Sharara recalled of her first visit to Blickling Hall. The frieze illustrations of toga-clad women, herons and crocodiles – while not a feature of Mameluke architecture – are likely to have been inspired by 'Egyptomania", an enthusiasm for ancient Egypt during England's Victorian period. During her stay, Ms Sharara chose a marquetry pattern for two boxes, in the style of the ceilings of Bayt Al Razzaz and Blickling Hall but swapping over the colour schemes. Visitors to the estate could see her working the veneer for the boxes. 'We keep talking about diversity but we forget that we have so many things in common that we should celebrate,' she said. She also designed, as a souvenir for her Blickling Hall colleagues, a bookmark in a latticework design she spotted on the estate. They are a reminder of the musharabiya panels that adorn Bayt Al Razzaz, and a nod to Blickling's library and second-hand bookshop, which had enthralled Ms Sharara during her stay. Unprecedented flooding from a cyclone in Cairo in 2020 is what first brought the conservation experts at Blicking Hall and Beit Al Razzaz together. Both heritage homes faced unprecedented challenges due to changing climate. Centuries-old techniques to keep Cairo's homes cool in the hot, dry summers were not adapted to cope with the increase in flash flooding and heavy rain. A corner house in Bayt Al Razzaz suffered structural damage from the storm five years ago, after a neighbouring house had collapsed in the flooding. Rising temperatures in the UK, meanwhile, had caused some of the leadwork holding windows at Blickling to soften and glass panes to fall out. So, conservationists at Blickling Hall were also seeking new solutions. Blicking was among five National Trust sites in the UK to be paired with a heritage home in the Middle East and East Africa, as part of the British Council's Withstanding Change project. Other venues include Bayt Al Jaghbeer in As-Salt, Jordan, which was paired with the Buscot and Coleshill Estate in southern England, and the Tseregeda Gardens in Ethiopia's Addis Ababa, twinned with Mostifont house and gardens in Hampshire. Blickling's general manager and heritage expert Heather Jarmy, accustomed to protecting the estate from the wet English weather, travelled to Cairo to meet the conservationists at Bayt Al Razzaz, as part of the three-year project which ends next month. 'We're all grappling with how best to adapt the historic places in our care to a changing climate while opening them to the public and helping them benefit their local communities,' Ms Jarmy told the National Trust Magazine. But she also came to learn about building for hot weather. At Bayt Al Razzaz, she learnt how Egyptian architects of the past used gypsum instead of lead to hold the windowpanes. While this technique might not be suitable for Blickling, it highlighted the need for conservators in the UK to 'start thinking differently'. In turn, her counterpart Omniya Abdel Barr, who is part of the Egyptian Heritage Foundation that is restoring Bayt Al Razzaz, came to Blickling Hall, where she examined the Victorian pipe system installed in the 19th century to manage the risk of flooding. The project revealed the dilemma at the heart of protecting buildings from new climate-related risks: how to maintain a site's authenticity, by using techniques and materials as close as possible to the original, while adapting them to modern conditions. "There's always going to be a bit of tension around what level of change is actually acceptable, you know, what we can accommodate and what presents more of a challenge to notions of authenticity," said Katherine Shingler, who led the Withstanding Change project. At Blickling Hall, restorers had been looking for ways to manage water flow through the surrounding landscape to help shield the building. This included slowing down the flow of the stream leading down to the mansion, to alleviate flooding. They also restored some of the Victorian-era drainage system. 'Since doing that work, they haven't flooded,' said Ms Shingler. She said thinking about 'landscape level changes' was a way to establish some control over the effects of natural conditions, and to understand how a building should be adapted. Such techniques are more difficult to adopt in urban settings such as Cairo. 'You can't really do that because you don't control the surrounding landscape. It's just the building itself. You are a bit more limited,' she said. Nonetheless, Ms Abdel Barr visited Blickling to better understand its Victorian drainage system, in the hope this could help adapt the system to Bayt Al Razzaz. Though the twinning project is coming to an end, the relationship between the two sites will continue, Ms Shingler said. Among their prospective collaborations will be to invite an Egyptian comic artist to produce a graphic novel about Blickling Hall, as part of the estate's programme for Year of the Book 2026. It is based on a recently produced graphic novel about Bayt Al Razzaz, where two women from the past and present discuss the home's history. 'There's a really interesting interplay between the stories of these two women past and present in the graphic novel. We've been exploring with the Blickling team whether we could get the graphic novelist who produced this to do something similar for Blickling,' she said. Ms Sharara hopes the modern objects that she makes will help foster an appreciation of cultural heritage in danger, and an awareness of the need to save it. Her own grandfather was a bookbinder, but though none of his children continued the trade, she has always felt that crafts were key to her family's identity. 'I want to connect with my lineage. Working with my hands puts me in a meditative position. I like to create from something that has a story,' she said. 'Heritage always has a story. Whether it's a historical fact, or a story that the site or motif can tell you without even talking, I want to transfer this into an object that people could have and feel happy to connect with." This is particularly important in her home city of Cairo, where heritage homes are often neglected and torn down to make way for new urban developments. 'I'm worried about losing our own history and culture, and just trying to adopt what is western all the time, which is not ours and it's very hard to connect to.' Finding the connections is the success of the Blickling Hall/Bayt Al Razzaz twin project.