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Thomas Anson and Shugborough Andrew Baker Thomas Anson and the Greek Revival 1 1 Thomas Anson and Shugborough Shugborough, the house and its estate, sits in the valley of the Trent in Staffordshire. The vale has the air of being a world of its own, somehow managing to be serene and beautiful in spite of the two main line railways which pass through it. In the 18th century the park became studded with monuments, partly fanciful and partly serious reproductions of Ancient Greek architecture, as its owner, Thomas Anson, transformed his patch of England into his own ideal Arcadia These “improved” landscapes often have an air of mystery about them, of some kind of hidden meaning, or simply a haunting air of unreality. Shugborough, more than most, has a mystery at its heart. Most famously it has its Shepherds Monument, an enigmatic structure with a unique cryptic inscription. This presents an answered question to the visitor, made more curious by the lack of information about its creators, Thomas Anson himself and his architects. Thomas is virtually an invisible man, as if he has deliberately covered his traces. As the fragmentary clues are assembled both the meaning of Shugborough and its puzzling monument and the story of Thomas Anson, a man with secrets, begin to emerge. There is no better description of the place as it was in the 18th century than Thomas Pennant’s in his “Journey to Chester,” published in 1811. Pennant was a close friend of Thomas Anson in his later years and, as he says himself, used Shugborough as a base from which to explore the wide variety of natural and historic features in the area. Pennant puts Shugborough, Thomas Anson’s house and its park, in its setting: “From the middle is a view, of very uncommon beauty, of a small vale, varied with almost every thing that nature or art could give to render it delicious; rich meadows, watered by the Trent and Sow. The first, animated with milk-white cattle, emulating those of Tinian; the last with numerous swans. The boundary on one side, is a cultivated slope; on the other, the lofty front of Cannock Wood, clothed with heath, or shaded with old oaks, scattered over its glowing bloom by the free hand of nature. “It is more difficult to enumerate the works of art dispersed over this Elysium ; they epitomize those of so many places. The old church of Colwich ; the mansion of the antient English baron, at Wolsely Hall; the great-windowed mode of building in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in the house of Ingestre; the modern seat in Oak-edge; and the lively improved front of Shugborough; are embellishments proper to our own country. “Amidst these arise the genuine architecture of China, in all its extravagance; the dawning of the Grecian, in the mixed gothic gateway at Tixall; and the chaste buildings of Athens, exemplified by Mr. Stuart, in the counterparts of the Choragic monument of Lysicrates', and the octagon tower of Andronicus Cyrrhestes. From the same hand arose, by command of a grateful brother, the arch of Adrian of Athens, embellished with naval trophies, in honor of Lord Anson, a glory to the British fleet; and who still survives in the gallant train of officers who remember and emulate his actions.”(1) 2 Shugborough and its buildings are set in this Elysium, this sweet vale, in which also lie, beyond the confines of the estate itself, a range of historic houses which add richness to the landscape. Thomas Pennant obviously loves the place and sees it as it was surely mean to be – a world in miniature, a microcosm of culture. There are not only buildings that represent faraway places but also exotic animals. The white cows emulate those of Tinian, an uninhabited paradise visited by its owner’s younger brother, George Anson, in his circumnavigation. The house and its gardens are a quintessence of the places explored by the Admiral and by Thomas Anson, but such a place is not simply a fanciful showplace. The twin hearts of the house in Thomas Anson’s day would have been its drawing room, a place for conversation, and its library for study and contemplation. Later in the 18th century the place was extended into a moderate sized stately home, but the core of the house is still the villa of a studious patron of the arts and sciences. Thomas Anson, seems to have been a man of extreme modesty. No-one could be more self-effacing. Very few documents in his writing are known to exist, though, somewhere, surely, there must be archives of letters to friends lying in wait for rediscovery. There are enormous gaps in the family archives, now in Staffordshire Record Office. Letters to him exist from a few correspondents –but not many. It may be that Thomas asked for his personal documents to be destroyed at his death, leaving only relics of certain special friends and relations. For example, any letter from Elizabeth Anson, wife of his brother the famous Admiral, was preserved. There is a batch of letters about the purchase of his sculpture collection and letters from James “Athenian” Stuart, the architect who was his most important creative friend. Apart from that there is almost nothing. Or so it seemed when I began to research this book. Important clues had a habit of appearing unexpectedly. Two letters in Thomas’s own writing turn out to have survived by accident, lost among Lady Anson’s letters, and one fascinating letter to Thomas from Lady Anson was enclosed, unnoticed, in her letters to her husband. These chance survivals contain fascinating clues to Thomas’s interest in landscape gardening and to a bizarre scandal. Far more exciting were two dramatic anecdotes, stories told by Thomas Anson and published by friends after his death. Both of these have lead to major revelations. Who were his friends? Some are known from a few valuable records – his will, an unusually brief document, includes six names of friends were legatees, and the list of people who received mourning rings is a snapshot of his friends and family at the time of his death. But of these names, known from this and other evidence to be close friends, why is there no trace of correspondence from Richard Owen Cambridge, the satirist, from Lord Lyttelton, whose landscape at Hagley was a rival to Shugborough, from Anton Kammel, a composer who called Anson his “dear old friend”, or from Benjamin Stillingfleet, botanist and original “bluestocking”? Of course it is probably too much to expect much in the way of letters to survive from two hundred and fifty years ago, but in the case of Thomas Anson the extreme modesty, (or is it deliberate secrecy and self-censorship?), extends to other people’s historical record. Why is it that the period when the garden was first landscaped and the first follies were built is the only completely blank period in the life of architect 3 and astronomer Thomas Wright? And why is it that of all his patrons and projects it is only Anson and Shugborough that are mentioned nowhere in Wright’s journals? Thomas Anson is, to us, more invisible than many landowners and society figures of the time. There is no portrait which is certainly of him. A picture exists which might be his portrait, but it was bought by the family in the 19th century and no-one knows its provenance. The absence of a portrait of the house’s owner is particularly noticeable when there are portraits of his brother, and parts of the house seem to be a shrine to the Admiral, and of Elizabeth, the Admiral’s very much younger, witty and highly political wife. Typically frustratingly for the researcher there is evidence that there was a portrait. Robert Orme, historian of the East India Company, was so moved by a legacy in his old friend’s will that he commissioned a bust of Thomas from the leading artist Nollekens – and one of himself. “To perpetuate the memory of his friend, Mr. Orme had a handsome white marble bust of Mr. A. executed by their mutual friend Nollekens in his best manner, which was conspicuously placed in his library. It was a most admirable likeness; and after Mr. Orme's death was, by his executor, sent to the representative of Mr. Anson, as the most proper person to preserve such a memento of his ancestor.”(2) Orme’s bust of himself illustrates his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, but there is no trace of Anson’s bust today, either the original or a copy. Copies were listed as being still on sale after Nollekens’ death. Who, then, was Thomas Anson, and what is the attraction of this invisible man? He is generally known only as the elder brother of Admiral George Anson, who famously sailed round the world in the early 1740s, captured a Spanish treasure ship, became immensely rich on the proceeds, rose to the highest position in the Admiralty and helped reform the navy – even introducing the familiar blue uniforms of 18th century officers. But what of Thomas? Thomas Anson was the son of a wealthy lawyer and, after 1720, the master of Shugborough Hall, originally a quite modest William and Mary house in a beautiful valley of the River Trent five miles from Stafford but, after his reconstruction, a delightful gentleman’s villa set in exotic gardens. His friend, the botanist and travel writer Thomas Pennant was one of several people who left obituaries or eulogies, all of which agree about Thomas’s character: “My much-respected friend the late Thomas Anson, Esquire, preferred the still paths of private life, and was the best qualified for its enjoyment of any man I ever knew; for with the most humane and the most sedate disposition, he possessed a mind most uncommonly cultivated.
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