In later expeditions we sallied forth from Ashcroft, the Harris’s beloved cottage near Stroud, and then from the Old Laundry at Badminton, whence they moved about twenty-five years ago. Here, or at their house in Chelsea, John and Eileen entertained a bewildering array of historians, architects, collectors, art dealers, eccentrics and other protégés. The setting was inspiring; you were surrounded by the distinguished collection of oil sketches, architectural drawings, books and engravings, bronzes, terracottas, World War I relics, prehistoric flints and curiosities that John, in particular, had amassed over the years – many of them snapped up in obscure country house sales. John, invariably clad in some sort of exotic ‘banyan’, loved recounting the stories connected with his treasures while presiding over the facture of some incredibly rich dinner, invoking a cast of scholars and collectors, such as Howard Colvin, Geoffrey Houghton-Brown, Christopher Gibbs, the Knight of Glin, Rupert Gunnis, Gervase Jackson-Stops, Francis Watson and Ben Weinreb. Essential to John’s success was, of course, Eileen, a formidable authority in her own right on architectural books, Thomas Wright and Robert Adam, who was inseparable from John, ever since the handsome young architectural historian (in the Duke of Kent’s cast-off astrakhan greatcoat) swept her off her feet all those years ago when they ordered the same book in the V&A library!

It's amazing to think that, amidst all his adventures, John found time to write a prodigious number of learned articles and books, from Sir William Chambers (1970) to Moving Rooms: The Trade in Architectural Salvages (2007), not to mention the setting up of the RIBA Drawings Collection in Portman Square, the amazing rollcall of stylish architectural exhibitions in the Heinz Gallery, and the innumerable additions that he made to that collection. He also advised on Paul Mellon’s Centre for British Art in New Haven, Phyllis Lambert’s Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and Drue Heinz’s architecture centre in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. Then there was his starring role in the great Destruction of the Country House (1974) exhibition at the V&A, with John solemnly intoning the list of destroyed houses. But to me the books that sum him up best are the two volumes of memoirs, No Voice from the Hall (1998), and Echoing Voices: More memories of a Country House Snooper (2002). Alternately outrageous and elegiac, they are vintage Harris, and have a cult following to this day.

Indeed, John’s style of life was rather like one of those eighteenth-century rakes whose ruined houses he liked to clamber into - ‘up over and in’ as he would say! He was an extraordinary phenomenon, largely self-taught (John left school at fourteen, and was supposed to become an upholsterer), his remarkable eye, memory, and descriptive powers leading to a fascinating and varied career as an architectural historian, curator, champion and chronicler of the country house. The old Country House Snooper is greatly missed, but here is an opportunity to enjoy some of his treasures.

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Ending Tuesday 26 November, from 12 noon GMT.
Forum Auctions, 4 Ingate Place, Battersea, London SW8 3NS

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