Ben Lennon, ‘Rusticated Piers’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xIX, 2011, pp. 66–74
text © the authors 2011 RUSTICATED PIERS
BEN LENNON
Gate piers are an underrated element in historic undetected, may exist elsewhere. Each pair architectural design. Often overlooked in the rush to see represents a subtle variation on Flitcroft’s drawings. the principal building, many a gateway to a historic Those at Coleshill form one of a number of sets of house is given no more than a passing glance, perhaps piers around the estate and lie yards to the south of recognising a few architectural motifs that indicate the the principal gate lodge. These differ from Flitcroft’s splendours beyond. In the past, however, gate piers drawing in having niches on one side only, along signified power, presence, wealth and allegiance. This with larger orbs. The single small keystone is also article examines a group of piers at five architecturally rusticated (Fig. ), whereas Flitcroft’s drawing shows important country houses in Gloucestershire, Wiltshire it to be plain, and the vermiculated bands that run and Berkshire, all of them related to a pair illustrated through the shell niches are aligned with those of the in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones ( ), and blocks on either side of the main piers. A second set discusses their wider significance . of piers incorporated into the lodges on the Faringdon road have the same proportions and design but lack n Volume I of William Kent’s The Designs of Inigo the rustication, probably because of later alterations IJones … with some additional designs, (Fig. ) (Fig. ). The Sherborne piers (Fig. ) are identical to there is an engraving of a pair of ashlar piers, each with shell-topped niches and six bands of rustication. Fig. . Gate piers from The Designs of Inigo Jones . Location The niches occur on both sides of each pillar, and not described but likely to be Sherborne, Gloucestershire. are supported by symmetrical side blocks, each with Ben Lennon. five rusticated bands, and each topped by a cornice, above which are S-shaped volutes. Each pillar also has a cornice at the top, above which a gadrooned base supports a rusticated orb over a rusticated square plinth. The overall height is indicated as being around eighteen feet. The design was drawn by Henry Flitcroft on the order of Lord Burlington, and was engraved by Henry Hulsbergh. The design was attributed to Inigo Jones, but the location of the piers are not given. The five sets of piers related to this design are at Coleshill (Berkshire), Sherborne House and Lodge Park in Gloucestershire, and Tottenham Park and Amesbury Abbey (Wiltshire); others, as yet
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Fig. (right). Gate pier with shell-headed niche at Coleshill. Ben Lennon. Fig. (far right). Gate piers at Coleshill with rustication removed. Ben Lennon. Fig. (below). Gate piers with shell-headed niches at Cheltenham Lodge, Sherborne. Ben Lennon.
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Fig. . Gate piers at Lodge Park. Ben Lennon.
those drawn by Flitcroft, apart from the orbs being the volutes are treated slightly differently, in a whiter larger. They now form part of the principal entrance material of unknown origin. The Amesbury piers to the estate on the A road , having been moved stand next to Kent Lodge on Countess Road (Fig. ). from a position closer to the house when the lodges They differ subtly from the Lodge Park pair in were built by Charles Bailey of Cheltenham in . having slightly smaller rusticated balls more akin to Ramped walls curve away on either side, terminating those found on Flitcroft’s drawing. There is also in similar piers but on a smaller scale and without slightly less rustication on the plinth, which here shell niches, gadrooning or rusticated plinths. They forms a band around rather than being fully rusticated. were added later as part of the lodge buildings. Not Overall the rustication is much coarser than the pairs far away, at Lodge Park, a seventeenth-century house previously described, which are generally finely on the Sherborne estate, there is another almost vermiculated. Nor is the quality of the gadrooning as identical pair, though lacking the shell-headed niches fine. The quality of the execution also differs from (Fig. ). The Coleshill and Sherborne sets are all other pairs. The design of the volutes has been built of oolitic limestone common on the Cotswolds, refined so as to form a symmetrical double baluster and have fine vermiculated rustication. when viewed from the side elevation, details that The rustication on the Amesbury and Savernake have not been observed on any of the pairs so far piers is coarser than at Coleshill and Sherborne, and discussed. The final pair, at the northern entrance
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Fig. . Gate piers at Kent Lodge, Amesbury. Ben Lennon.
to the Grand Avenue of Savernake Forest, near the owner, Sir George Pratt. Several sets of piers of Marlborough , lost their plinths and orbs in the varying designs can be found around the periphery twentieth century but were originally all but identical of the estate, including, along with those already to those found at Amesbury, differing only in the discussed, a highly elaborate pair on the Faringdon degree of rustication on the plinth supporting the orb. Road. The latter were closely modelled on the They formed the gateway to the front entrance to chimneystacks of the house, with rusticated panels all Tottenham House in the early s, but were moved around, bracketed cornices and carved stone vases. to their current location by Capability Brown in . The south sides have framed and recessed roundels The relationship between these sets of piers is both holding classical busts, and beneath them shell-headed curious and complex. It has never been established niches arranged as seats with moulded architraves which pair represents the original design, but a closer and small key blocks. They are probably roughly examination of the history of the related houses, their contemporary with the house, as are the other piers, architects and their builders, offers some clues. though the other few known examples of Pratt’s work Coleshill House was built from around – and yield no similar designs, and the stonemason in charge remained largely unaltered until its destruction by fire of the execution is not recorded. in . Heavily influenced by Inigo Jones, the design Sherborne House was purchased by Thomas is now generally attributed to Roger Pratt, a cousin of Dutton in , and his house was substantially
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Fig. . Tottenham House, painting by Pieter Andreas Rysbrack c. . Private Collection.
enlarged for John Dutton by the local master-mason The Lodge Park piers are not shown in a Valentine Strong in –. Lodge Park meanwhile painting of the east front of the house by George had already been laid for deer coursing and the lodge Lambert of . Nor indeed was there an entrance built by , probably by members of the Strong from the east: merely a solid wall around the park. family, as a kind of grandstand. For many years The east entrance, lodges and piers were in fact not attributed to Inigo Jones, it now seems likely that it built until c. by M. King of London. King was the work of Jones’ contemporary Balthazar replicated the design from the existing piers at Gerbier, with the execution again being carried out Sherborne, but he omitted the niches and by Strong. Flitcroft drew the lodge at the request of incorporated vermiculated rustication into the Lord Burlington after , and his drawing was design of the adjacent lodges, in keeping with that subsequently engraved by Hulsbergh and included found at Cheltenham Lodge on the A . in Volume I of Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones in . Amesbury Abbey was granted by Henry VIII to Interestingly, Flitcroft did not accurately represent Edward Seymour (then Earl of Hertford, later Duke of the building as it stood, but made modifications Somerset) in . In the subsequent Earl of where he thought the existing design detracted from Hertford had two lodges built on the eastern edge of the classical aesthetic, as in the omission of a pair of the park: Diana’s House and Kent House. The shell-headed niches on each side of the first-floor main house was completely rebuilt by John Webb doorway. Flitcroft presumably drew the piers at the c. for the then Marquess of Hertford. For approach at about the same time, assuming them many years it was attributed to Jones, and Flitcroft also to be the work of Jones. Those at Sherborne drew it for inclusion in The Designs of Inigo Jones ; bear the closest resemblance to his drawings, and in , the year in which the estate passed to the are the only pair displaying the exact alignment of Duke of Queensberry, it appeared in the second rustication as well as the double niches, though volume of Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus . Flitcroft probably adjusted the scale of the orbs in Webb designed a pair of ashlar piers as part of the his drawing to fit with his own neo-Palladian, or approach to the house, very much in the architectural Jonesian, aesthetic. style of the house, with Tuscan pilasters, arched
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIX RUSTICATED PIERS niches and a raised triangular pediment over a plain Ostensibly the names that provide the link entablature; they can still be seen on the approach between all of these sites are those of Inigo Jones and from the south next to the parish church. The Henry Flitcroft. Lodge Park, Amesbury Abbey and rusticated piers next to Kent House cannot be so Coleshill were for many years attributed to Jones, precisely dated. Though usually thought to have bee n which explains why the first two were included in erected c. – , they may be the only memento of the first volume of The Designs of Inigo Jones . the occupancy of William Benson, builder of the The earliest seem to be those at Sherborne and precociously Palladian Wilbury House close by , Coleshill, with the former slightly preceding the and briefly – and disastrously – Surveyor of the King’s latter. Both houses were either rebuilt or significantly Works under George I. Benson leased the estate remodelled in the s, and the sets of piers are between and , but Lord Charles Bruce then almost identical in design, with the single exception of sold the property to the Duke of Queensberry to the double niches which only appear at Sherborne. finance the building of Tottenham House. Flitcroft It seems likely that the piers were constructed within produced a plan of the estate for the Duke in , a few years of each other, and that they are probably and added wings to the house c. . contemporaneous with the houses. While the quality When Charles Bruce, then Baron Whorlton, sold of the stonework is high in both cases there are Amesbury he approached Lord Burlington to supply significant differences in the rendering of the designs for a new house, Tottenham House, on his rustication which suggests different craftsmen may Savernake estate. He had married Burlington’s sister, have been employed (Fig. ). Juliana Boyle, in . His neo-Palladian designs Valentine Strong and his father worked widely were executed by Flitcroft and much of the work was around Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire and would also supervised by him. The gate-piers were placed almost certainly have been aware of the proposed in a prominent position at the entrance to the main construction of Coleshill House when he was courtyard, their ashlar construction contrasting with working on the refurbishment of Sherborne. He may the brick house; they are shown in a painting by even have been involved in both projects. Much of Pieter Andreas Rysbrack dating from around the early history of Coleshill has been reconstructed after the first phase of house building had been from notes made by Sir Mark Pleydell in the second completed (Fig. ). quarter of the eighteenth century, including
Fig. . Rustication styles at Coleshill (left) and Sherborne (right). Ben Lennon.
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Fig. Valentine Strong’s tomb in Fairford cemetery. Ben Lennon. reminiscences from a elderly cousin, who remembered elements and motifs of the Strongs’ known work. that ‘The freestone of wch ye house was built came An examination of other building projects up Wick Green from Barrington. Surveyors Pratt associated with the Strongs reveals traces of other and Steward’. The Strongs owned quarries stylistic influences. In – Valentine and his around Little Barrington and Taynton which father Timothy Strong rebuilt Cornbury House, supplied high quality stone to a number of local and Oxfordshire, for Henry Danvers, Earl of Danby, to a regional building projects. Coupled with the design produced by Nicholas Stone. At the same similarity of the piers to those at Sherborne, this time Stone was working at Oxford on the Physic suggests that the Strongs were involved to some Garden (now the Oxford Botanic Garden), also at the degree with the construction of Coleshill and some expense of Lord Danby. It has three gateways, each of its landscape features. containing stylistic elements similar to those of the Valentine Strong’s monument in Fairford pier design, especially in the main or Danby gateway churchyard contains a number of architectural (Fig. ). For Pevsner: elements found in the piers under discussion (Fig. ), ‘With Inigo Jones this has nothing to do, with Italy, notably the spiral bale top with a shell at the western everything, but not with Palladio, rather Serlio’s end and heavy gadrooning below. On the side are Extraordinary Book of archways which show that embossed scrolls and the ends contain moulded delight in the alternation of smooth and heavily cartouches bearing inscriptions. The quality of the rusticated parts characteristic of Stone’s gateway. Stone’s rustication is not rock-faced but vermiculated. stonework is not as fine as that of the Strongs, and it The gateway is in three parts, the middle being the has weathered since his death in , suggesting arched passage … The four columns have bands of that it is not from the highly durable freestone of the rusticated vermiculation, the archway has alternation Barrington quarries. It is likely therefore that this is too. In the lateral bays are niches with the (later) the work of a local monumental mason, incorporating statutes of Charles I and Charles II.’
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Fig. . The main gateway to the Botanic Garden in Oxford. Ben Lennon.
The Danby Gateway provides a more credible Stone was the Master Mason at the Office of Works influence for the design of the Sherborne and during Jones’s tenure as Surveyor, and the two must Coleshill piers than most of Inigo Jones’ authenticated surely have shared architectural influences, notably works. The piers have a greater aesthetic affinity with that of Serlio, which was then transmitted to the ‘artisan mannerist’ style of Stone than with the Valentine Strong at Sherborne. By the s both classical purism of Jones. In the Strongs were Coleshill House and Lodge Park had mistakenly been working on the Canterbury Quadrangle at St John’s attributed to Inigo Jones by Lord Burlington and College, Oxford and it was recorded that they had most others, hence the inclusion of Lodge Park and been lured away from one of Lord Danvers’s projects the Sherborne piers in the The Designs of Inigo Jones, – probably either Cornbury or the Botanic Garden – and Vardy’s later inclusion of Coleshill . And while by the enticement of extraordinarily high rates of Flitcroft was drawing at Sherborne he was engaged in pay. But whether or not Valentine Strong actually the design of Tottenham House working for Lord worked on the Danby Gateway he almost certainly Burlington. It seems likely then that the pier design took elements from it to incorporate into his piers at from Sherborne was adapted to give a Jonesian Sherborne, taking the vertical elements, creating a authority to the front of Tottenham House. Within central pier as a housing for the niche and demoting the next decade it is likely that Flitcroft used the the pilasters to a supporting position on each side. Tottenham adaptation at Amesbury. The important The whole was transposed to a square structure, a role of John Webb in the building of this house had motif that had appeared in one of the other gates at been completely forgotten by the s, when it was the Physic Garden. attributed to Jones, and the use of the pier design was While the generic influence of Jones on the pier no doubt used to reinforce the Jonesian canon. design is evident, there is no reason to suspect that The use and re-use of the pier design, both by the structures themselves were attributable to him. Flitcroft at Tottenham and Amesbury, and by King at
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Lodge Park over years later, demonstrates the C. Hobson, Valentine Strong: Cotswold Stonemason way in which architectural motifs can be absorbed (Fairford History Society, Occasional Paper , into a collective style to become established idioms. ). K. Fretwell, ‘Lodge Park, Gloucestershire: A Rare In the case of these piers this has led to confusion Surviving Deer Course and Bridgeman Layout’ over what constitutes a truly Jonesian style. It may Garden History , , No. (Winter, ), p. . bear little relationship to its true origins, but over English Heritage. Listed Building entry. IOE time it can become a pseudo-style in its own right. Number . Wiltshire and Swindon Archive // . D. Crowley. Victoria County History of Wiltshire , XV ( ), p. . H. M. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Architects – (New Haven & London, I should like to acknowledge the help, enthusiasm ), p. and encouragement of John Harris in the preparation Volume , Plate . of this paper. N.Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Wiltshire (nd ed., Harmondsworth, ), p. . Victoria County History of Wiltshire XV, p. . T. Mowl, The Historic Gardens of Wiltshire (Stroud, ). p. . NOTES Wiltshire and Swindon Archive. Antrobus Deeds Volume , Plate No. . / . National grid reference (NGR): SU . J. Harris, ‘The building projects of Viscount Bruce’ NGR: SP . in R.White (ed.) Lord Burlington and his circle English Heritage ( ) Register of Historic Parks (Georgian Group / Victoria and Albert Museum, and Gardens: Sherborne House. ;) Colvin, op. cit ., p. ; Wiltshire and Swindon NGR: SP . Archive /. NGR: SU . J. Harris, loc. cit . ( ), pp. – . NGR: SU . Coleshill House was later engraved by John Vardy Wiltshire and Swindon Archive, Chippenham, and attributed to Jones in Some Designs of Mr Inigo / . Jones and Mr William Kent ( ), Pl. . J. Harris, ‘Extracting sunbeams from cucumbers’, in Commonplace book of Sir Mark Pleydell, cited in The National Trust: Historic houses and Collections T. Mowl and B. Earnshaw, Architecture without Annual (Apollo , ) p. . See also G. Tyack, S. Kings (Manchester, ). pp. – . Bradley and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Hobson, op. cit . Berkshire (New Haven & London, ), pp. –. For a fuller account of the distribution of this type of J. Summerson, Architecture in Britain, monumental masonry in the Cotswolds see W.R. – (th ed., New Haven & London Elliot, ‘Chest-tombs and “Tea-caddies”’, ), pp. –. Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire English Heritage. Listed Building entry. IoE Archaeological Society , ( ), pp. – . Number: . Colvin, Dictionary , pp. . D. Verey and A. Brooks The Buildings of England: J. Sherwood, and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of Gloucestershire; the Cotswolds (New Haven & England: Oxfordshire (Harmondsworth, ), p. . London ), p. . Colvin, Dictionary , p. .
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