John Harris, ‘Designs for the Museum and Library of the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. XIX, 2011, pp. 39–49 TEXT © THE AUTHORS 2011 DESIGNS FOR THE MUSEUM AND LIBRARY OF THE SPALDING GENTLEMEN’S SOCIETY JOHN HARRIS In August , travelling for the Buildings of Books of the Society – ; again when I England: Lincolnshire , I joined the Spalding contributed to Dr Cinzia Sicca’s edited book on Gentlemen’s Society, fascinated that the Society had John Talman; and most recently when I read with emerged as long ago as as the singular creation of excitement the Honeybones’ exemplary editing of the Maurice Johnson ( – ), whose family had lived Society’s correspondence in . This was the spur at Ayscoughfee Hall since the later-seventeenth century. for me to write the present account of this group of The Hall, now the local museum, is still redolent of design s for what would have been the second custom- the Society’s founder, but I particularly recollect it built museum in England, albeit a small one. for the taxidermy in the Ashley Maples Collection of British Birds, alas now partly dispersed to the Leicester aurice Johnson ( – ), a young barrister Museum. I was introduced to Mr Woodward, Mtrained at the Inner Temple in London, was Headmaster of the Spalding Grammar School, and born in Spalding, where six generations of his family ex-officio Secretary of the Society, who had done much had flourished, in a town described in by to revive the Society’s fortunes during the s. I was William Bogdani, Clerk to the Ordnance at the amazed that this kind encourager left me with the key Tower of London, and a member of the SGS in , to the Museum, to spend three agreeable days without as ‘separated from the rest of Mankind’; and in the supervision. I believe in my fashion I turned everything same year by the antiquary Roger Gale, describing over, for books, manuscripts and drawings in this the Spalding Gentlemen as ‘a sett of Virtuosi almost fascinating repository were all mine to examine, and out of the world and who would never have been I must confess that more than fifty years on I cannot known but by the emanations of their own light’. recollect a comparable experience. I already knew of In London Johnson had enjoyed clubs and coffee John Talman, for since I had been cataloguing houses for social and cultural exchange, and it was the Talman drawings in the Royal Institute of British natural that when he returned to remote and fenny Architects where I was the Assistant Curator. So Spalding for marriage and the life of a country imagine my excitement at finding an albu m of lawyer, he should form a club where friends met drawings with one sheet inscribed ‘Mr Tallmans plan weekly to chat and read the Tatler and weekly papers for a Museum’, together with a group of others by newly arrived from London. A recent Public Library Maurice Johnson, William Stukeley, ‘Messrs Todd Act of was aimed at saving public libraries, and Sands’, Giuseppe Grisoni, and Captain Francis often established in parish churches, and so it was at Pilliod. Alas, although I penned a draft of an article Spalding, where a library in the church had been set in , it went into my ‘Pending’ file and remained up in the mid-seventeenth century, and where the there for fifty-one years, only briefly emerging in books were now in serious need of repair. when I acquired Dorothy Owen’s edition of the Minute This cultural socializing led to the founding of THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIX DESIGNS FOR THE MUSEUM AND LIBRARY OF THE SPALDING GENTLEMEN ’ S SOCIETY the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society, the first reference Maurice Johnson was the first to submit this idea to which are to be found in the Society’s Minute of a museum to paper on a single sheet (Fig. ) Books. At the weekly meeting held on Monday inscribed ‘Mr Johnson secretary of the Gent Soc November it is recorded that ‘the company his Plan for a museum for Soc. Gent. Spal. ’. had some Discourse about holding their Meeting in It proposed a museum and hall on two storeys, the the Record Room at the farther end of the Town length of the museum feet ½ inches, the Hall Hall, or in the Free School, if they could either of feet inches, the building feet wide. The them be fitted up’. The use of the Free School was drawing is also inscribed as having a ‘Courtyard’ encouraged by the Rev. Timothy Neve, the local Free measuring yards by , perhaps the first idea for the [Grammar] school Master who taught his pupils in a Society’s Physic Garden. He seems to have proposed two-storey school building created in the s out a ‘Winter’ and ‘Summer’ arrangement. No particular of one of the chapels in the Parish Church, where the site was indicated, and as it is not referred to in the Vicar was the Rev. Stephen Lyon, president of the Minutes, it might well have been a hypothetical Society. Alas, of the Free School project at this time, project on Johnson’s land at Ascoughfee Hall. despite high hopes, nothing came of this, and during On July occurs the first reference in the the period – the Society met on every Minute Books to the Free Grammar School proposal: Thursday afternoon and evening, in a variety of ‘Proposed by the President [Captain Francis Pilliod] places: the White Hart inn, Mr Younger’s Coffee that some part of the Building used for the Free House in the Abbey Yard, the Assembly Rooms, the Grammar School of Spalding be fitted up for a Town Hall, in the homes of member or in a room Museum for the Soc. Ordered that the same be hired by the Timothy Neve in the parsonage house. proposed to ye Governors of the said Schole by the Secretary … Accordingly upon the th of July … the There are clear parallels between this new Society same was proposed by me to the Governors & They and Johnson’s London experiences, particularly the with the President & Treasurer Viewed and Measured meeting and drinking club revived in as the the school & they declared Their Approbation of ye Society of Antiquaries, with Peter le Neve as its first Proposal provided the Same was executed so as not to President, Talman as its Director, and Maurice be any prejudice to the Use of ye said Building for the Master & Scholars’. Johnson and William Stukeley as Officers. Not surprisingly, as the years progressed, the rapidly This minute is followed by dimensions of the school increasing collections of books, curiosities, room . On the August it was ‘Agreed & Ordered archaeological finds and scientific instruments that the Free Grammer [ sic ] School be fitted up & encouraged the Officers of the Society to consider used for the Society to meet in’. However, as reported some permanent accommodation with a museum, a in the Minutes, ‘The President declared That he had library and a meeting room. By Johnson already heard Some People object to the Free Schole’s being had what he called his ‘museum’ in Ascoughfee Hall. used for the Soc. to meet in … [and as a result] The The idea of a specially-built dedicated museum was Treasurer [Neve] offered to spare the Soc. as much novel, even if the Society’s plans were modest for of his garden fronting the North Porch of the Church their parochial situation, for the only precedent was as is necessary to build a Museum on …’ So on the Ashmolean in Oxford, opened in , although September it was ‘Resolved upon Ballot that a there were many private collections of curiosities that Museum be built on part of Mr Neves Garden as could be described as museums, as well as the Royal proposed by him & that the prompt paymt of Monthly Armouries set up in in accommodation in the subscription be made as proposed’. To this period Tower of London. must belong the three designs (Figs. –) inscribed THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIX DESIGNS FOR THE MUSEUM AND LIBRARY OF THE SPALDING GENTLEMEN ’ S SOCIETY Fig. (above) . Maurice Johnson’s plan for a museum, . Fig. (right) . Messrs Todd & [William] Sands designs for a museum attached to the Free Grammer School, July to August . Fig. (left) . Design from Messrs Todd & Sands for fitting up the Free School & Museum. Fig. (above) . Another design by Todd & Sands. THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIX DESIGNS FOR THE MUSEUM AND LIBRARY OF THE SPALDING GENTLEMEN ’ S SOCIETY Fig. John Talman’s design for a museum and for altering the Moulton Chapel, . ‘for fitting up the Free Schole & Museum’, the building Here then is documentation for three of the surviving measuring feet high, feet long, and feet wide. designs. Talman’s sheet (Fig. ) is fascinating, for the It would seem from the elevational sketches that left half is devoted to the museum, whereas the right the local mason-architect William Sands and Todd, half is his record of the Moulton Chapel of St James his associate , were proposing a Gothic exterior, near Spalding, designed by Sands in , to which maybe in stylistic accord with the church building. Talman proposed to add an Italianate campanile. On December there was further progress: One plan on this left half of the sheet is inscribed ‘The Members who accordingly met to measure the ‘Mr Tallman’s plan for a Museum’, indeed internally ground proposed & agreed to build the museum, in the shape of a double cube, but with external return that they find there are Thirty four feet in Front attachments to the angles.