A Modern Italian Loggia at Wimpole Hall’, the Georgian Group Journal, Vol
David Adshead, ‘A modern Italian loggia at Wimpole Hall’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. x, 2000, pp. 150–163
text © the authors 2000 A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL
DAVID ADSHEAD
t some point in the late s or early s a ...notwithstanding the injunction of my friend Jones small but elegant building appeared in the park who prescribes absolute Idleness to me, I have bestowed A some thoughts on your Lordship’s building, before I at Wimpole in Cambridgeshire. Described in some proceed I shall be glad to know the length & breadth documents as the ‘park’ or ‘palladian building’, its proposed for the Room above Stairs & the Porticos primary purpose is revealed by its alternative names: below, in length & in breadth will make a fine the ‘hill house’, the ‘belvedere’, and the ‘prospect Spassegio – for the Portico – a noble walk in all weathers, room’. The building’s site, on a rise between Wimpole & a noble object from all the country in view of it. Hall and ‘the old Great North Road which – as the A – still bounds the estate to the west, was carefully The commission for the Park Building must therefore chosen (Fig. ). This vantage point commands superb have come as early as and would have followed views across the gently undulating valley of the river on naturally from the other works that Stuart is known Rhee to the Royston Downs, hinting at the promise to have undertaken for the Yorkes at Wimpole. In of the Chilterns. A watercolour view made by Henry and Stuart had designed two elegant, neo- Reginald Yorke ( – ) in , from the shade of classical church monuments for the family, working the building’s projecting, columned loggia (Fig. ), in collaboration with the sculptor Peter Scheemakers gives us a walker’s perspective of this unexpected ( – ). landscape. The panorama from the upper floor of The Earl’s bank books, in account with Messrs. the building, whose south elevation was well Hoare & Sons, show that between May and May provided with one large Venetian, and four tall sash Stuart received payments totalling £ s, the windows, must have been even more expansive. All largest single sum, £ s, being paid on the th of that remains today to mark the site where the Park November . The purpose of the payments ‒ Building formerly stood is a rectangular depression whether for advice, the preparation of drawings, the in the ground some feet square, presumably made supervision of work, or perhaps decorative painting ‒ by the robbing of its foundation materials. remains obscure. This evidence seems to be at odds The Park Building was designed by the architect with the date of the building’s conception in and James ‘Athenian’ Stuart ( – ) for Philip Yorke, is of limited use in helping to determine when the the nd Earl of Hardwicke ( – ) at an as yet Park Building was either begun or finished. undetermined date. It has been suggested that Stuart’s If built shortly after , the Park Building can two surviving drawings for the Park Building date be associated, more confidently than before, with the from c. . A letter from Stuart ‒ then in Bath and landscaping works undertaken at Wimpole by recuperating from illness ‒ written in January Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown ( – ) between clearly shows that the building had had its genesis a and . Philip Yorke and his wife, Marchioness decade earlier: Grey (d. ), would have been familiar, through
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL
Park Building
Fig. . Robert Withers, estate survey plan, . The Bambridge Collection, Wimpole Hall (The National Trust).
Fig. . Henry Reginald Yorke, watercolour view from the Park Building, . Private Collection.
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL their regular visits, with the ornamental buildings, or sentiments, expressed in the rhyming verse which derived from Greek prototypes, which Stuart had accompanied his celebratory engraving of the folly. begun to erect in the park at Shugborough for This contrasts the ‘ancient’ rough and tumble of Thomas Anson ( – ), the elder brother of the life of the medieval baron with the ‘modern’ George, Admiral Anson ( – ), Philip’s amusements ‒ ‘In Book-room, Print-room, or in brother-in-law. But it may have been the visit which Ferme ornée’ ‒ available to the eighteenth-century the couple made to Hagley, Worcestershire in ‘courtier Lord’. He adds ‘They [the verses] are by a which encouraged them to commission a classical friend, I furnished the hint’. park building from the architect. In the park at It seems likely that the engraved view of the Hagley they would have seen both Sanderson Park Building by Daniel Lerpinière ( – ) of Miller’s ( – ) celebrated gothic folly of – (Fig. ) may be after a lost drawing by Stuart, ‒ which Philip’s father, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke although, if so, it is odd that he is only credited below ( – ) had so coveted ‒ and the contrasting the print as ‘Architect’. The same image, identical classical Temple designed by Stuart, and built under in composition at least, was included by Josiah Miller’s supervision. The contrast provided by the Wedgwood and Thomas Bentley in the -piece two buildings at Hagley probably served as the dinner and dessert service which they made for precedent for the similar arrangement at Wimpole, Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. The service where a few years later a gothic folly and classical was completed and delivered during the second part belvedere were built. of , suggesting that the Park Building had The gothic folly at Wimpole, although designed probably been built by that date. Marchioness by Sanderson Miller some twenty years previously, Grey and her amateur artist daughter, Lady Amabel was constructed, under Brown’s supervision, by Polwarth ( – ), make no mention of the James Essex ( – ) between and . In building in their deliberations, in June , about Philip Yorke sent to William Legge, nd Earl of which views of Wimpole they might send to Dartmouth ( – ) an engraving of his new folly, ‘Wedgwood’s People’ for inclusion in the service. ‘a print of a Gothic Chateau ‒ a ruin, which I have The painting of the building in the plate view is naïve erected at Wimpole’, explaining: ‘I am, as a companion in the extreme, with the entire upper floor and the to this antique, engraving a modern Italian loggia, elegant windows shown in Lerpinière’s engraving which I have set up at Wimpole, under the auspices seemingly compressed by the weight of the overly- of Mr. Stewart [ sic ]’. Hardwicke promised to send scaled pediment. Perhaps this simply reflects the Dartmouth a copy when the engraving of the Park limitations of the enamel painters, but it may be that Building was finished. Clearly Hardwicke enjoyed Amabel dashed off a copy of an original drawing by the play, or ‘piquant balance’ , between the antique Stuart which then remained at Wimpole, providing and the modern, and presumably intended that the Lerpinière with the same source. Certainly the difference ‒ materially and associationally ‒ between building in the engraving is rendered in too assured a the gothic and classical architecture of the two park way for the common original to have been from buildings should be read in the landscape. Hardwicke’s Amabel’s hand. rhetorical question, in the same letter ‒ ‘Perhaps the Accompanying the engraving is the following views may strike you as no bad contrast between Latin text: ‘At secura quies, et nescia fallere Vita ancient and modern times’- has, however, been Dives opum variarum, at latis otia fundis Mugitusq. misunderstood. By this he does not mean views of boum, mollesq. sub arbore somni Non absunt’. This the two buildings, but rather the literary views, is an edited version of a passage from Book II of
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL
Fig. . Daniel Lerpinière, engraved view of the Park Building, . David Adshead.
Virgil’s ( – B.C.) poem The Georgics , and article, or perhaps Addison’s ‘An Essay on translates thus: Virgil’s Georgics ’ which prompted Philip Yorke to Yet peace they have and a life of innocence make this association with the dream-landscapes of the Rich in variety; they have for leisure ancient poets. An accomplished classicist himself, Their ample acres, ... he was here advertising to his friends and peers the fact ... cattle low, and sleep is soft that, with the accompaniment of impeccably chosen Under a tree. literary allusions, he had created an Elysium of his In one of his pieces for The Spectator , Joseph Addison own at Wimpole. It is of course equally possible that ( – ), the influential promoter of the ‘natural Stuart proposed the lines, for he had learnt Latin and style’ of English landscape gardening, wrote: Greek in order to understand ‘what was written under ‘Virgil is never better pleas’d, than when he is in his prints published after pictures of the ancient masters’. Elysium ’, and later, ‘in his Georgics [he] has given us The landscape setting of the Park Building ‒ if a Collection of the most delightful Landskips that not plausibly like that of the Roman Campagna ‒ can be made out of Fields and Woods, Herds of would have been important to both client and Cattle, and Swarms of Bees’. It may have been this architect, imbued as their generation was with the
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL
Fig. . James Stuart, section of the proposed Park Building, after , but before . British Architectural Library, Royal Institute of British Architects.
Fig. . James Stuart, elevation of the proposed Park Building, after , but before . British Architectural Library, Royal Institute of British Architects.
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL
Picturesque aesthetic. Certainly views of the Stuart’s design shows that behind the entrance building, as a Claudean or Poussinesque incident in portico lay a narrow stone hall aligned east-west, its the landscape, would have been as prized as views front edge defined by a pair of columns in antis . At from it. The Park Building was placed to the south of either end, opposed doorcases served symmetrically a stand of trees of late-seventeenth-century origin planned and modestly sized spaces (each some which appear to have been preserved specifically to feet by feet). The room to the east contained a embower the new building. The trees, a mixture of fireplace and may have been the original kitchen. lime, elm and oaks, belonged to two landscape The double-height space to the west housed a dog- features which were otherwise swept away in the leg stair which led to the upper floor. The back wall s: the lime trees formed the western end of a to the narrow, ground floor hall ‒ effectively the spine double avenue running east-west; and the elms and wall of the building ‒ appears to have been pierced oaks were remnants from of a planting which nestled by two small windows, perhaps oculi. To the north of in the angle between the lime avenue and a fir Avenue this, at the rear of the building, was an open loggia which struck off to the north-east (Fig. ). A with statuary niches at either end. The upper floor mixture of what he deemed to be ancient planting oversailed this open, ground floor space. Once around the Park Building led the Rev. A. C. Yorke in upstairs, visitors would have stepped into a square, to suggest, improbably, that this had once been central chamber, apparently a ‘Tea Room’, which the site of one of Wimpole’s medieval manors. occupied the deepest part of the building ‒ its Of Stuart’s two known design drawings (Fig. southernmost third supported by the four ionic and ) for the Park Building, it is perhaps the section columns of the portico. Stuart’s section shows that through the building which is most interesting, for it the wall in the rear part of the room was modelled suggests how the interior spaces might have worked. with blind panels in order to balance the side It also tells us that the interiors were to have been windows of the projecting southern bay. At the north embellished with sculpture. Above the central door end of the room a fireplace is shown suspended over which led to the stair at the west end Stuart shows a the ground floor void, with its chimney stack rising bust flanked by urns, while within an apsidal niche in behind the parapet wall. Presumably at the eastern the rear third of the building is drawn a statuary end of this floor there was a small, private chamber plinth supporting a figure in classical drapery. On which corresponded to the dimensions of the one the first floor a framed tondo above the doorcase below, and balanced the double-height staircase suggests that a carved relief ‒ perhaps an allegorical space to the west. This may have been the little room figure or portrait medallion ‒ was also intended. painted with ‘Etruscan figures’ which was described That some of this statuary was included in the by a visitor in (see below). Sadly, unless other finished building we can be certain of, for in drawings surface, we cannot know what decorative Lord Hardwicke’s steward, Daintry, wrote to explain elements Stuart employed in this space. It is possible to his master: ‘that the two statues set up opposite that Stuart also designed furniture for the building ‒ each other within the Piazza, of the Hill Building at seat and table furniture, and perhaps a Greek tripod, Wimple... [had been]...thrown down...& or athénienne , topped by a tea urn? A giltwood side demolished’, and that ‘Richard Newell a Labourer of table (Fig. ), possibly designed by the architect Sir Wimple (a person dis-ordered in his mind)’ was William Chambers but ‘remarkably close to thought to be responsible for the ‘rash act’. It is documented pieces by James Stuart’ is currently on possible that this sculpture had been supplied either loan from Wimpole to Spencer House, St. James’s, by Peter Scheemakers or his son, Thomas. London where it can be seen in the Ante Room.
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL
The provenance of the table is unknown, and while it and detractor during the s, would have delighted is perhaps most likely to have been acquired by in the damning brevity of this censure. Wimpole’s previous owner, Mrs. Elsie Bambridge An account of the building, made in July by ( – ), there is a remote possibility that it is a the Rev. James Plumptre ( – ), shows how survivor from the furnishing of Stuart’s Park Building. rapidly it had fallen into decay: A letter from Mrs. Eliot, then at Wimpole, to her the Pavilion itself was a scene of desolation and ruin. It aunt Lady Beauchamp, in , gives us a first, sketchy has been built about years and cost about £ impression of the completed building: ‘Her Ladyship building. When finished it was one of the most elegant was so kind as to take us yesterday morning to see the buildings I ever remember. The Tea room was simple new park building, which is very pretty. It commands and elegant; the little room on the side was a rare specimen of painting, of Etruscan figures in colours. a very fine and extensive prospect and is seen at a It was done by Stewart and cost £ . What the inside great distance’. The building’s elevated position is now, we did not see, but we could discern from the brought its troubles, and a hint at the dilapidation outside, that the blinds were falling to pieces. The pillars that was to come all too soon is given in a letter from which supported the Center [sic.], were rotting away, Hardwicke’s agent, Richard Barton, in January : and the building supported by rough props. A railing ‘A violent wind we had here on Sunday last has torn of posts & wire, which formerly extended all round it, and kept off the cattle, was removed and the pavement some of the lead in an uncommon Mannor from the and steps torn up, and the place made a shelter for deer Top of the Park-Building. It is replace [ sic ] for the & sheep, whose dung sadly soiled the place. The stucco present, and the plumber will secure it effectively as which covered the outside, and gave it the appearance possible’. In December Barton, who had been of stone, was every where falling off. I brought away a keeping a watchful eye on the state of the ‘Stucco of piece of it. It is almost as hard as stone, and seems to have been made in pieces about inches by and / of an the Tower and Park Building’, recommended: ‘The inch thick, and stuck on with some kind of cement. painting of the Park Building wants renewing very much, the knots appearing thro’, and the Wood The building was further castigated by Brayley becomes liable to Damage. Nothing can be done in and Britton in The Beauties of England and Wales as: these things till Spring gives us Hopes of a ‘a heavy and ungraceful building...whose weight has Succession of fine Days’. caused the foundation to give way’. Although Brayley While it clearly delighted family and friends, the made an initial visit to Wimpole in , the above Park Building was not universally admired. Although description was not published until . the idea for it may have been inspired by Stuart’s Humphry Repton ( – ), invited to make Temple at Hagley, the Wimpole Park Building could proposals for the estate, also visited in . Repton not be said to share either that building’s pedigree or did not pull his punches in the ensuing Red Book . He possess the same gravitas ; it was a whimsical was critical both of Stuart’s design and the way that product of its age, not a scholarly essay derived from the building had been constructed, offering his own ancient exemplar. In the diary of his ‘Tour in solution to how things might be improved: the Midlands’, the Hon. John Byng ( – ), The prospect room on the hill is in a state of decay generally dismissive of the Wimpole estate, which he partly from its bad foundation and partly from the felt exhibited ‘not a glimmering of taste’, and irritated absurdity of building a room on Columns for which not to have been given admission to the Hall by the there is no authority among the ancients. I am the servants in the absence of Lord and Lady Hardwicke, more surprised at this oversight, in an Artist to whom this country must ever be indebted for his valuable and described the structure as ‘an ugly summer-house accurate account of Athenian Architecture’. building’. Robert Adam, Stuart’s architectural rival
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL
Fig. . Sir William Chambers or James Stuart, giltwood side table, on loan to Spencer House. The Bambridge Collection, Wimpole Hall (The National Trust).
Fig. . Humphry Repton, watercolour proposal from the Wimpole Red Book for the remodelling of the Park Building, . The Bambridge Collection, Wimpole Hall (The National Trust).
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL
Fig. . Thomas West, plan, rear elevation and section of the proposed alterations to the Park Building, . British Library.
Fig. . John Peltro, engraved view of the Park Building, . Bodleian Library.
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL
He went on to advise: and ‘Best Chamber’ above. The space formerly This beautiful knoll seems to require a building to be occupied by the rear, or north-facing, loggia is shown placed upon it, but it is remarkable that either from the divided into three: Stuart’s statuary niches were, swell of the ground or the trees in the valley, there are rather ignominiously, to be incorporated within two very few spots from whence the lower part of this new service rooms ‒ a pantry and cellar ‒ to either building can ever be seen, and consequently the bases side of the central corridor which linked the cottage of the columns are always invisible, while the heavy mass and Park Building. Squeezed in above the pantry and above seems too mighty for its foundation, as indeed it has actually proved, for it will be necessary to take down cellar, but below the oversailing upper floor of the all the centre of the building, except the roof and cornice, Park Building, was to be a ‘Servants Chamber’. which I think may be shored up till it is restored and The diminutive scale of the cottage is revealed in the this I should advise to be done by filling up the lower elevation; its eaves are shown level with the string part to make a labourer’s cottage, without which a course which separates the ground and first floors of prospect room is seldom properly ventilated, and the columns may then be removed to the upper story in the the Park Building. A new oven is shown in the eastern manner described in the annexed Sketch No. III, in room on the ground floor of the Park Building marked which I have also shown the effect of planting round its ‘Back Kitchen’. The stair in the west room was to base, and on the sides of the building to correct its become a dairy. present isolated appearance. Repton’s proposal was to reuse the portico columns for a first floor loggia which would have been The structural failure of the building may not have supported by an arcade on the ground floor. It is not been directly Stuart’s fault for, leading a life ‘of cheerful clear whether this was ever realised. West’s plan does indolence’, his buildings were ‘often completed by not show the projecting portico on the south side, and other hands’. The remodelling proposed by Repton’s it may be that he planned to build the arcade along scheme (Fig. ), although perhaps a fairly standard the line of the two columns in antis . This would, neo-palladian arrangement, recalls in a quite striking however, have made the upper room unsatisfactorily way the north and south elevations of the Water House narrow. In order to neaten up the presentation of his designed in the s by the amateur architect drawing, West may simply have chosen not to show Henry Herbert, th Earl of Pembroke for the park at the portico; the positions of the four columns of the Houghton, Norfolk, a building which Repton would loggia are marked very roughly in pencil. certainly have known. John Peltro (? – ) drew and engraved a Amongst the Hardwicke papers in the British topographical view of the Park Building for the Library are two drawings for the Park Building which edition of William Peacock’s almanac The Polite can be dated to and safely attributed to Thomas Repository (Fig. ). Peltro’s view, which illustrated the West, the Wisbech architect-surveyor. Already month of January, does not necessarily add credence engaged in works on the estate, West’s task was to to the idea that either Repton’s or West’s proposals to produce an architectural scheme which translated recast the building were executed, because he often Repton’s advice into bricks and mortar. He proposed worked from Repton’s existing watercolours. (Fig. ) that a modestly-scaled addition should be Stuart’s charming, but sadly ephemeral, little built at the rear of the Park Building. This was to be building last appears on an estate survey plan T-shaped in plan, the downstroke of the T fitting into made by Robert Withers, a detail of which is shown the open loggia on the ground floor. West’s proposed as Fig. . The Park Building must have survived, addition provided a ‘kitchen’ and ‘parlour’ to either however, for much of the remainder of the nineteenth side of a central stair hall with a ‘Common Chamber’ century, for in his typescript essay Wimpole As I
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL
Fig. . Robert Withers, detail of an estate survey plan, . The Bambridge Collection, Wimpole Hall (The National Trust).
Knew It , the Rev. A. C. Yorke, then , wrote: ‘On the painted to look like green marble. From its upper hill to the W. of the mansion stood the “Hill House”, floor could be viewed a lovely prospect of wood and a Georgian pleasure house for tea and spadille. It was tilth to the Royston Hills’. of brick and stucco, with interior fittings of wood
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL
NOTES
The drawing was auctioned at Christie’s Sale of May , £ & July , £ ; , May , £ s; , British Drawings and Watercolours, including November , £ s; and , May , £ s. The Architectural Drawings , th December , and Rev. James Plumptre believed that the final cost of the illustrated, as lot . building had been in the order of £ , , and that John Harris, ‘Newly Acquired Designs by James Stuart Stuart had received some £ . in the British Architectural Library, Drawings Between and Stuart also designed a London Collection’, Architectural History , XX, , and mansion for Thomas Anson ‒ Lichfield House at , pls. a & b. The drawings are at London, British St. James’s Square [Survey of London , XXIX, London, Architectural Library, RIBA, Drawings Collection, , – ]. CC / ( & ). This date is given in Howard Colvin, Philip Yorke’s journal of the ‘Midland Tour’ is A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, reproduced in Joyce Godber, The Marchioness Grey of – , New Haven and London, , , and is Wrest Park , Publications of the Bedfordshire Historica l repeated in Dorothy Stroud, ‘The Charms of Natural Record Society, XLVII, , – . During the Landscape: The Park and Gardens at Wimpole ‒ II’, couple’s visit, of the th to the th August, Philip Country Life , CLXVI, September , , – noted: ‘... Hagley, a most delightful place; great variety and Gervase Jackson-Stops, An English Arcadia of ground and pleasant views in the park, decorated – , London, , . with buildings or seats in the most favourite spots; a London, British Library (hereafter BL), Add MS seat designed by Pope; a Doric temple by Stewart; a , , fo. (r.), James Stuart to Philip Yorke, nd Palladian bridge by Mr. Thomas Pitt’. Earl of Hardwicke, th January , quoted in part in Arnold Root, The Wimpole Landscape , unpublished Ingrid Roscoe, ‘James “Athenian” Stuart and the M.A. dissertation, Department of Architecture, Scheemakers Family’, Apollo , CXXVI, September University of Cambridge, , , first noted this. , , note . Stuart was dilatory by nature and, David Adshead, ‘The design and building of the despite his professed intention in to think about Gothic Folly at Wimpole, Cambridgeshire’, The the project, it is not implausible that he might have Burlington Magazine , CXL, February , – . taken several more years to produce the drawings for Historic Manuscripts Commission, MSS Dartmouth, the Park Building. Report , appendix I, , –, Lord Hardwicke Jackson-Stops, op.cit. , , expresses surprise that to the Earl of Dartmouth, February th , quoted Stuart was the author of the building, perhaps because in Jackson-Stops, op. cit., . of the ten year hiatus which he supposed there to be Watkin, op.cit , . between Stuart’s earlier work in the church at Unless a smokescreen, this statement disproves the Wimpole and the design of the Park Building. suggestion that the verses were written by Hardwicke These monuments, in the parish church of St. Andrew, [Jackson-Stops, op. cit ., ]. preserve the memory of Catharine, the wife of the The inclusion, on the far right of the engraving, of a Hon. Charles Yorke, and her father-in-law Philip rustic figure shouldering a spade finds analogies in Yorke, the st Earl of Hardwicke and Lord Chancellor. Stuart’s drawings of classical sites which are often For a description of these and the other monuments in sparsely but characterfully peopled. The Rev. James the church ‒ which include work by Flaxman and the Plumptre (see note below) refers to Lerpinière’s two Westmacotts ‒ see Royal Commission on engraving and to a smaller version, ‘Publish’d Historical Monuments, England, County of Cambridge , March, by Fielding & Walker, Paternoster Row’, I, (hereafter RCHME), – . See also David explaining: ‘There is a large print of this, which I believe Watkin, James Athenian Stuart, Pioneer of the Greek is only a private plate in the family. From this a small Revival , , ; Roscoe, op.cit. , – ; and Ingrid one was done for the Westminster Magazine for Feb.’. Roscoe, ‘Peter Scheemaker’, Walpole Society , LXI, Michael Raeburn, Ludmila Voronikhina, and Andrew , for full catalogue entries for the above, and for Nunberg (eds.), The Green Frog Service , London and Scheemaker’s solo enterprise, the monument to St. Petersburg, , Cat. , view ; Hilary Young the Hon. Charles Yorke. (ed.), The Genius of Wedgwood , , , Cat. G ; Hertford, Hertfordshire Record Office, Ecd F : , and David Adshead, ‘Wedgwood, Wimpole and Wrest:
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL
The landscape drawings of Lady Amabel Polwarth’, collaborated with Thomas on a number of projects. Apollo , CXLIII, April , – . In , in We cannot be certain whether the Park Building was celebration of the bicentenary of Wedgwood’s death, built before or after . Wedgwood reproduced a number of the Frog Service This elaborate arrangement might suggest that the plates, including one illustrating the Park Building back of the building was also intended to play a role in at Wimpole. the landscape ‒ whether to close or command a view ‒ See L.P. Wilkinson (trans.), The Georgics , but neither the setting nor the otherwise plain rear Harmondsworth, , , Book II, lines – and elevation would seem to bear this out. A near – . I am indebted to Dr. Marcus Lodwick for contemporary design for a garden building which is identifying the source. Hardwicke excised the more satisfactorily Janus-faced was made by the inappropriate words ‘caverns, living lakes/cool Temples’. architect Edward Stevens ( c. – ) [Alistair ‘The Georgics’ were modelled on the didactic poems Rowan, Garden Buildings , Feltham, , plate ]. of Nicander, and celebrate Roman country life. This sectional drawing is remarkably similar in spirit The Spectator , No. , th June , quoted in John to Stuart’s drawing. A small, spiral staircase in Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis (eds.), The Genius of the Stevens’s scheme provides access to the flat roof which Place: The English Landscape Garden – , would have served as a viewing platform. London, , – . Joseph Friedman, Spencer House , London, , . See the first part of Peter Willis’s ‘Introduction’, to Letter from Mrs. Eliot to Lady Beauchamp, , Charles Bridgeman and the English Landscape quoted in Elizabeth P. Biddulph, Charles Philip Yorke, Garden , London, , –, for the connection th Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral, R .N., A Memoir , between the ancient idea of Elysium and the eighteenth London, , . Lady Beauchamp was the wife of century landscape garden. Sir William Beauchamp of Langley Park, Norfolk, and With his brother, the Hon. Charles Yorke, Philip wrote, sister of Mrs. Charles Yorke. Mrs. Eliot was the wife of pseudonymously, the greater part of the Athenian John Eliot, who became nd . Lord Eliot in and st . Letters; or the Epistolary Correspondence of an Agent of Earl of St. Germans in ; she was the sister of the the King of Persia, residing at Athens during the rd . Earl of Hardwicke. Peloponnesian War , London, –, a plausible BL, Add MSS , , fo. , letter from Richard historic fiction which was pirated for re-publication. Barton to nd Earl of Hardwicke, from Wimpole, Colvin, op.cit. , . January rd . In the same letter Barton reports that John Phibbs, Wimpole Park, Cambridgeshire , the architect James Essex had inspected ‘the unpublished survey for the National Trust, , Greenhouse’ which was then in need of repair. and . BL, Add MSS , , fo. , Richard Barton to nd Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, W.M. Earl of Hardwicke, Wimpole, December th .A Palmer Collection, B. , , , Rev. A. C. Yorke’s letter from Barton to a Mr. Stamford [BL, Add MSS manuscript entitled STVDIVNCVLA WINEPOLANA , , , fo. , December th ] records the ‘where used to stand, above the chalk pit in the park, following: ‘John Favel’s [bill] for new painting at the the “Hill house”, a tea-house of the L d. Chancellor Park Building : : ’ and ‘John Layor for repairing Hardwicke, were shreds of an old Garden & orchard, the Stucco Work &c. : :’. fruit-trees & gooseberry bushes. May not these have Watkin, op.cit ., , identifies Stuart’s Greek Revival been the survival of the Gaunte manor?’ Temple at Hagley as being the first correct example of Damie Stillman, English Neo-classical Architecture , the use of the fluted baseless Greek Doric order in London, , I, , explains that one of the distinctive modern times. It was based on the Hephaesteum, or elements in Stuart’s decorative style was the placing of the Theseum as it was known in the th century, in urns and wreathed medallions on the top of doorcases. Athens, begun c. B.C. In Lord Lyttelton wrote BL, Add MSS , , fo. , Daintry to nd Earl of a letter explaining: ‘[Stuart] is going to embellish one Hardwicke, Royston, th June . of the Hills with a true Attick building, a Portico of six Roscoe, , op.cit , , explains that Stuart may have pillars, which will make a fine object to my new house, encouraged the young artist to compete in various and command a most beautiful view of the country’. It sculptural competitions and that, during the ten years seems that this archaeological approach was not which followed Peter’s return to Antwerp in , he required at Wimpole.
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X A MODERN ITALIAN LOGGIA AT WIMPOLE HALL
C.B.Andrews (ed.), The Torrington Diaries , London, Watkin, op.cit. , . , II, . Rosemary Bowden-Smith, The Water House, For a discussion of the significance of the words Houghton Hall, Norfolk , English Garden Features, ‘Etruscan figures painted in colours’ see Kerry Bristol, – , Number One, Woodbridge, . ‘The painted rooms of “Athenian” Stuart’, in this BL, Add MS , , M. . A second drawing gives volume. details of the rafter layout for the roof of the new Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Add. addition. In the same hand, and at the same location, , J. Plumptre, A JOURNAL of a TOUR to the are a number of, unexecuted, alternative proposals for SOURCE of the RIVER CAM made in July by the remodelling of the late th century stables at WALTER BLACKETT TREVILYAN Esq r., A.B. of S t. Wimpole ‒ accompanied by a dated estimate signed by John ’s College, and the Rev d. JAMES PLUMPTRE. Thomas West. West may also have been responsible A.M. Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge (hereafter for realising another of Repton’s suggestions ‒ the Plumptre). I am grateful to Ian Ousby for sending me a game-keeper’s cottage in the central tower of the gothic full transcription of those parts of the journal which folly. describe Wimpole. Extracts from the journal, entitled On the road to Wimpole on December th, , the Wimpole Hall , were published in Cambridge, Revd. James Plumptre encountered a ‘M r. West, Michaelmas , by SCB, MMB, TDH, DJM, LQ, Engineer, of Wisbeach, who was inspecting a mill &c., JQ, NAS & WDT. James Plumptre was the son of Dr. erecting there’ [Plumptre, op.cit., fo . ]. The mill in Robert Plumptre, who had been the Rector of question was probably the water-powered threshing Wimpole and President of Queen’s College, mill at Thornberry Hill Farm [RCHME, op.cit., Cambridge. –]; the mill was completed in to the designs J. Britton and E.W. Brayley, The Beauties of England of a Mr. Hume of Midlothian, and was ‘constructed by and Wales , II, , . On nd June Thomas the “Bankers of Wisbech” at a cost of £ ’. Sheepshanks wrote to Lord Hardwicke from Wimpole Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. Misc. g. . [BL, Add MSS , , fo. v.] explaining: ‘A Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, W. M. Gentleman of the name of Brayley, and one of the Palmer Collection, B. , – , Rev. A.C. Yorke, Wimpole Authors or Editors of a Work called the Beauties of As I Knew It , , typescript. Excerpts from the England and Wales called upon me two Days since typescript were printed in D. Ellison (ed.), Wimpole As with a letter of Recommendation requesting me to I Knew It ..., Bassingbourn, . Spadille is the name furnish him with such Information respecting your given to the ace of spades in the card-game quadrille. Lordship’s Seat and Family as may be proper for Communication and Insertion in this Work’. Humphry Repton’s Red Book for Wimpole, – . The text leaves and plates, long-since removed from their morocco leather binding, survive at Wimpole.
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME X