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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.

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