Ian Goodall, ‘Storrs Hall, Windermere’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xV, 2006, pp. 159–214

text © the authors 2006 STORRS HALL, WINDERMERE

IAN GOODALL

rom the  s onwards a steady stream of century, but throughout the nineteenth and into the Fvisitors to the Lake District recorded their twentieth century,  and the early popularity of impressions of the area in journals, poetry and Windermere is evident from the sixth edition of sketches,  and by the  s this interest was reflected Thomas West’s Guide to the Lakes , published in in the production of guidebooks and maps, many of  , which records in a footnote added to that which went into multiple editions.  ‘To make a Tour edition: of the lakes, to speak in fashionable terms, is the ton On the banks of Windermere-water, have been lately of the present hour’, declared the Monthly Magazine built, or are now building, a number of elegant villas; in  , and in the  s this area gained new by Mr Law, at Brathay; Miss Pritchard, Croft-Lodge, recruits from those debarred from travel in Europe Clappersgate; Mr Harrison, above Ambleside; Mrs by the events which had ‘rendered part of the Taylor, Cottage, Ambleside; the Bishop of Llandaff, at  Calgarth; Mrs Taylor, Bells-Field, near Bowness; Sir continent a scene of horror and devestation’. The John Legard Bart. near Storrs; Mr Dixon, Fell-Foot; visitors included a number whose attachment led and others. These works of art, most of which are them to buy land and erect villas often on the scale of done in stiles suitable to their situations, give an air of modest country houses. Storrs Hall, which stands on great consequence to the country, and, with the the eastern shore of Windermere, some two miles surrounding natural beauties, have lately made this neighbourhood, and particularly about Ambleside, a south of Bowness, was one of these.  place of the greatest resort …  The first villa in the Lake District was built on Longholme, the largest of the islands on Windermere, by Thomas English, a London brass and iron founder.  Begun in  , this large classical villa, circular in plan, was not completed until after  SIR JOHN LEGARD when it was acquired by the trustees of Isabella Storrs Hall was built by Sir John Legard of Ganton Curwen of Workington Hall and renamed Belle Isle.  in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Sir John, sixth The next house built by one of the new landowners baronet ( c. – ),  succeeded his father in  was that erected on Vicar’s Island, now Derwent and was commissioned in the Royal Horse Guards Isle, on Derwentwater. Joseph Pocklington bought in  . He married Jane, daughter of Henry Aston, the island in  and built to his own designs a of Aston, Cheshire, in  , and was a man of conventional classical house, building two more on considerable literary attainments, one of an intimate opposite banks of the lake over the next two circle of cultivated English people living in decades.  It was the shores of Windermere, however, Switzerland in the early days of the French Revolution. which were overwhelmingly the most favoured In the early  s he and his wife were frequently on situation for villas, not only in the late eighteenth the continent. They were living near Lausanne in

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig. . Detail of James Clarke’s map of Lake Windermere, published in  .

 , and spent much of  and some of  in means of leading an outdoor life, and he eventually Italy; in January  Sir John was in Switzerland, had to be carried on board.  his party returning to England in June that year.  Sir John Legard built Storrs Hall on a promontory The Legards lived at Ganton Hall when not abroad, on the eastern shore of Windermere, about a mile and it must have been during the early  s that south of the ferry. James Clarke’s map of Windermere Sir John purchased the land running back from the (Fig. ), surveyed and published in  , shows the shore of Windermere which became the core of the promontory divided into fields with trees around the Storrs estate. His reasons for leaving Ganton, whose shore, and a number of farmhouses and cottages next house and estate he assigned on a twenty-one year to the road from Bowness to Newby Bridge. One of lease to his fourth brother, Digby, are not explained these buildings, some distance north of the in the family history, but it is known that in  promontory, is called ‘Stores’. It is not known when Sir John had lived in a country house close to Lake Legard started building Storrs Hall, but cartographic Geneva, about a mile from Lausanne, and that he evidence and the diaries and notes of travellers ‘was a great navigator’ who ‘had the best vessel on indicate that it was during the mid  s. The house the lake’.  Storrs Hall, built when he was in his is not among the mansions on the banks of thirties, and married but without children – as he Windermere which are noted in the description of was to remain – may have been an English substitute ‘Windermere lake’ in the entry on Ambleside in for the Swiss house and the associated sailing, The Universal British Directory , published in  , which, immediately after the French Revolution, and no building is shown on Storrs Nab, as the were no longer so accessible. Family letters indicate promontory is called, on the edition of Peter that he had exciting sailing matches on the lake in his Crosthwaite’s map of Windermere published in May boat, Victory , one describing his delight at defeating  . It is likely to have been under construction in a boat which had hitherto been champion. As he  , however, since it is known that Sir John Legard became crippled by gout, sailing became his only was then in residence in the area. William Wilberforce,

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig. . Detail of Peter Crosthwaite’s map of Lake Windermere, published in  . staying with Lord Muncaster at Muncaster Castle, June   is not significant since he crossed made an excursion during September that year to Windermere by ferry to its north and so never visit Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, who had passed by its site. According to a sale advertisement recently built Calgarth Park, north of Storrs, and published in  , however, Storrs Hall ‘was finished beyond Bowness. After visiting Watson, Wilberforce in the year  ’,  and confirmation of this date recorded in his Diary: ‘Went on to visit Sir John comes from a visit made to the Legards at Storrs by Legard – he out – Mrs Grimston and daughter an acquaintance, Madame de Boigne, who, as a bride there’.  Mrs Grimston was the widow of Robert of sixteen, was on honeymoon with her husband.  Grimston of Neswick, in the East Riding, and her The first map to show Storrs Hall is the edition of two daughters were wards of Sir John Legard.  Peter Crosthwaite’s map of Windermere which was Storrs Hall is not mentioned by Harriet Clark who, ‘Republished with further additions June   ’ in August  , in company with her sister Amelia (Fig. ).  This marks a building next to the name and their uncle, the York architect, John Carr, visited ‘Storrs’ which it annotates ‘Sir Jn o. Legard’s Bart.’ the Lake District as part of an extensive tour of the A guidebook published in  records the house as north of England. But, returning in August  , and it was seen from the western shore of Windermere: describing a journey ‘the greatest part of which’ was ‘The opposite side displays all the pleasing variety of ‘close to the [west] side of Windemeer Lake’, Amelia neat buildings (among which is that of Sir John noted that ‘Sir John Legard & Mr Dixon have also Legard, Bart., at Storrs), looking from thick groves of very pretty houses on the opposite side of the trees over the lake …’.  Lake’.  This coincides with Thomas West’s The identity of the architect of Sir John Legard’s inclusion of ‘Storrs’ in  among the villas in the buildings at Storrs is not known, although given his vicinity of Windermere which were ‘lately built, or Yorkshire origins, John Carr, William Lindley and are now building’.  Its absence from the manuscript Peter Atkinson might all be suggested. Of these, record of a tour in the Lakes made by William Gell in neither Lindley nor Atkinson seems to have worked

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Fig. . Detail of painting of Storrs Hall by Mary Dixon. Private Collection.

in the north-west, and it is the York architect, John and probably in  , too, it is inconceivable that Carr (  – ), whose extensive practice and Carr would not have visited it had he been its signature detail such as the canted bay make him the architect. Local architects are difficult to find. The strongest candidate, and the one whose potential mid  s is too late for John Hird, but Francis involvement must be considered. Carr undertook Webster must be a candidate: Allithwaite Lodge at work at Belle Isle and Belle Vue (now Claife Station), Allithwaite, Lancashire, built about  and both of them on the western side of Windermere, but attributed to him, is not dissimilar in appearance.  within sight of Storrs, at about the time that Storrs J M Gandy, who was to do work for a later owner of Hall was being built, and he was also involved over a Storrs, can be eliminated as its architect on both longer period at Workington Hall.  However, chronological and stylistic grounds, as he can for the despite visiting Belle Isle and other houses in the boathouse and Temple. He did, however, know vicinity, Carr and his nieces did not visit Storrs Hall Legard, since he produced a rather fantastic design either in  or  , even though, as noted above, for a boathouse at Storrs for him (see below). comment was passed on the existence of Legard’s Sir John Legard erected four principal buildings, house in the latter year.  The mention of Mr or groups of buildings, as well as a walled kitchen Dixon’s house, Fell Foot, close to the southern end garden, on the Storrs estate. Storrs Hall itself was built of Windermere, at the same time as that of Sir John on a site partly terraced into the southern edge of a Legard, is another tantalising but illusory link with small, rocky knoll, the land to its south and west John Carr, given Dixon’s contacts in Yorkshire.  sloping gently down to the lake’s edge and affording Since Storrs Hall was under construction in  , distant views down and across it. Stabling, a coach

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL house and farm buildings were built inland from the length, and by an internal passage on the fourth, gave house, and a boathouse and Storrs Temple on the the house the appearance of being just two-storeyed, water’s edge. The earliest illustration of any of these as one of Gandy’s sketches of  shows particularly buildings is a painting by Mary Dixon, wife of Jeremiah well (Fig. ). The basement walls of this house, Dixon of Fell Foot.  This, a view looking north up including the outer walls of the area, are built of Windermere, shows the Storrs promontory with Storrs stone rubble faced with roughcast, and the upper Hall set among trees and Storrs Temple projecting into floors seem originally have been finished in like the lake (Fig. ).  In the middle distance the domed manner.  The domed lantern over the central hall was roof of Belle Isle is visible, with the octagonal tower of added in the early nineteenth century; it is not shown Claife Station on the hillside above it and the mountains on Mary Dixon’s painting of the house (Fig. ). beyond both. The depiction of Claife Station enables Gandy’s sketches of the north and west elevations the painting to be dated to between  , when it was (Fig. ) indicate that both were three bays wide, built, and about  , when its ownership passed to although most of the windows in the outer bays of the Curwens of Belle Isle, who encased it in a the west elevation were blind. The east elevation was rectangular castellated structure and extended the similar to the west except that it had an off-centre site.  The painting therefore shows Storrs Hall during doorway into the stair hall and an attached Sir John Legard’s occupation, since he did not sell it greenhouse,  while the three-bay wide south until  . Its new owner, David Pike Watts, made no elevation had a broad canted bay of three lights at its significant changes during his two years’ ownership, centre. A moulded cornice surmounted by a blind and the representation of the Hall, and of the Temple, parapet ran around the house and is still visible on boathouse and farm offices in J M Gandy’s Sketchbook the north and south elevations, as are several original in  therefore shows what Legard built, albeit window openings. Gandy’s sketch shows that the overlaid by some proposed additions and alterations front door, in the centre of the north elevation, was by Gandy.  flanked by a pair of round-headed niches, and that all three were framed by a three-bay wide ‘Frontispiece’, as Gandy identified it on another of his sketches (Fig. ). Whether the ‘Frontispiece’, which supported SIR JOHN LEGARD ’ S HALL a flat entablature, had columns or pilasters is Sir John Legard’s house was a simple, classical villa, uncertain, since all this detail was lost in the early square in plan, with a porch on its north-facing nineteenth-century alterations. entrance front and a canted bay overlooking the Inside, the ground and first floors of the mid garden and the view down Windermere to the south.  s house were arranged around a central top-lit Although it was extended to the east and west in the hall, with a more labyrinthine arrangement in the early nineteenth century, when the porch was basement. The layout of the basement is known from replaced by the present loggia and a verandah was a sketch plan by Gandy (Fig.  ), but no early plans built across the south front, the original house can be of the ground and first floors, both of which were clearly recognised as the core of the main block of more severely affected by early nineteenth-century the present building (Figs.  and ). alterations, survive. The  sale advertisement, It was two storeys high over a basement, a low quoted in full below, notes that the rooms on the parapet wall hiding its shallow-pitched roofs. The ground floor, called the principal floor, were then a basement, entirely below ground and surrounded on drawing room, a dining room which opened into a three sides by a narrow area, open for much of its sixty-foot long greenhouse, a library, master’s

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig. . Storrs Hall. Entrance front and heightened service wing. © Crown copyright. NMR.

Fig. . Storrs Hall. Garden front and heightened service wing. © Crown copyright. NMR.

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig. . Storrs Hall. North and west elevations of mid  s house. Gandy Sketchbook, fol. v. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

Fig. . Storrs Hall. Details of mid  s house. Gandy Sketchbook, fol. v. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum. bedroom, two dressing rooms, vestibule, and arguably part of the vestibule (entrance hall). Room staircase, with nine bedrooms on the floor above, uses in  may have differed from those when the and ‘very commodious offices below’.  What the house was completed in  , since Sir John Legard advertisement omits to mention, but Gandy’s plan had become increasingly incapacitated by gout, and shows, is that the basement was approached by a his bedroom may at first have been on the first floor; long, subterranean service tunnel. the ground-floor bedroom and dressing rooms noted The ground floor of the house had nine rooms, in  perhaps originally had other uses. three across the north and south fronts – the The basic disposition of the original ground-floor entrance and garden fronts – and one on either side rooms is clear, despite later alterations, although in of a central hall. The  advertisement lists eight places it is not certain which rooms communicated rooms, the omission probably being the central hall, with each other. The front door opened into an

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig. . Storrs Hall. Cornice in ground-floor north-east room. Fig. . Storrs Hall. Cornice in ground-floor south-west room. © Crown copyright. NMR. © Crown copyright. NMR. entrance hall with rooms on either side and the floor and was next to the original service stair from central hall beyond, its circular shape evidently an the basement kitchen.  early nineteenth-century modification of a square. The first floor of the mid  s house was said in Doorways led from this hall into the stair hall to the  to have had nine bedrooms, but only eight left, perhaps to a room on the right, and ahead into rooms, in addition to the staircase and the upper part the largest room on the ground floor, that at the of the central, top-lit hall, can be identified. Most centre of the south front, which was lit from the have hearthstones indicating blocked fireplaces,  and canted bay and was flanked by two rooms. The plan it seems likely that at least the two interconnected is conventional, but the width of the room with the rooms in the north-east and the north-west corners canted bay, which is likely to have been the drawing served as bedroom and associated dressing room, an room, is worthy of comment since it created arrangement specifically noted on the ground floor comparatively narrow rooms on either side. The in  . The only original fittings which have room in the north-east corner may have been the survived on either floor are plaster cornices, some dining room; it is the second largest room on this just moulded (Fig. ), others enriched (Fig. ).

Fig.  . Storrs Hall. Plan of basement of mid  s house. Gandy Sketchbook, fol. v. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Storrs Hall. Kitchen in basement of Fig.  . Storrs Hall. Housekeeper’s room in basement mid  s house, converted into wine cellar in early of mid  s house, converted into cellar in early nineteenth century. © Crown copyright. NMR. nineteenth century. © Crown copyright. NMR.

The basement is the best understood part of the had a ‘Stove’ in one corner. The rooms against the original house, because of Gandy’s annotated sketch west side wall are annotated ‘House Keeper’ and plan of  (Fig.  ). Its rooms broadly reflect the ‘Kitchen’, a doorway from the latter opening into the disposition of those above, the principal difference ‘Scullery’. Evidence for the original use of some of being the lack of any reflection of the distinctive the rooms survives in places: the kitchen (Fig.  ) has shape of the circular central hall, an early nineteenth- a blocked fireplace in the centre of its east wall, and century modification. The doorway into the there are two blocked windows in its west wall, both basement, from the east, off the sunken area, opened of them shown on Gandy’s sketch of the west into a large L-shaped ‘Passage’ within which Gandy elevation of the house (Fig. ). The housekeeper’s sketched his proposed rotunda on the floor above, room (Fig.  ) has a blocked end window, and a and from which access was gained to all other rooms. semicircular recess in one corner of the scullery must Immediately inside the doorway rooms annotated be where there was once a sink or copper. The room ‘Servants Hall’ and ‘Bath’ opened off the narrow arm annotated ‘Bath’ has vents high in its walls which of the lobby, where the service stair must have been, reflect its original use. With the exception of the while a ‘Scullery’ opened off one side of its wider large hexagonal-shaped room created from the part. Opposite it a passage between two rectangular Laundry and closets in the twentieth century, all the closets, annotated ‘Closet’ and ‘Clot’, led to the rooms in the basement have segmental stone vaults, ‘Laundry’, which extended into the canted bay and including the two rooms below the central hall

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL which are not depicted on Gandy’s plan and which from its appearance. Stone-vaulted cellars opening must date from the early nineteenth century. The off its outer side on the north and east sides are cellars on the outside of the north and east sides of shown on Gandy’s plan and are therefore original. the basement are sketched in, those at the east and As well as providing access, the area contributed to west ends of the former being specifically identified the ventilation of the basement and enabled some as ‘Water Closet’ and ‘Bothy’. rooms to benefit from natural light. The basement was reached from within the house by a flight of steps below the main stairs. These service stairs, however, were solely for attending to the daily needs of the household, since SIR JOHN LEGARD ’ S STABLE , food, coal and other requisites were brought directly COACH HOUSE , FARM OFFICES into the basement along the subterranean, barrel- AND KITCHEN GARDEN vaulted passage which opened into the narrow Storrs Hall was a small country house, and the  sunken area around the house at its north-east sale advertisement indicates that it had ‘Stabling for corner. Rough straight joints in the rubble masonry eight horses, and double coach house, barn, cow of this passage, seven metres out from the wall of the house, and farming offices compleat; a kitchen house, indicate where, before its early nineteenth- garden, walled around, and well planted with trees, century extension, a ramp or steps must have led in full bearing’.  Gandy sketched three blocks of down into it, no doubt screened by shrubs from the farm buildings in  (Sketchbook, fols. r, r, r), nearby carriage drive up to the house. The sunken and the  map (Fig.  ) enables two of them to area around the basement lies outside the house on be identified as having been built in the teardrop- its south, east and west sides, but it runs as a passage shaped plantation inland from the hall. Virtually inside the north, entrance front, so as not to detract nothing now survives of these buildings, but the

Fig.  . Storrs Hall. Plan of stables, coach house and cow house. Gandy Sketchbook, fol. r. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Storrs Hall. Plan of cart house and cow sheds. Gandy Sketchbook, fol. r. Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum. large block at the south end of the plantation Joseph Michael Gandy (  – ), though by combined cow house, stable and a coach house training and profession an architect, was unable to (Fig.  ), while the smaller block at the north end establish a viable practice and worked instead included a cart house and stabling for cart horses primarily as a artist, noted for his accomplished and (Fig.  ). The location of a block of henhouses and highly imaginative perspectives.  In  he exhibited pigsties is uncertain. The kitchen garden, shown on a design at the Royal Academy for ‘A boat-house for the map close to the lake edge, north of the house, Sir J. Legard, Bart., on the lake Windmere’.  The was demolished when its site was built on after the watercolour, which has survived, shows a Greek Doric break-up of the Storrs Hall Estate at the very end of peripteral temple with its stone foundation cut away the nineteenth century. and its intercolumniation broken to provide an entrance for boats.  This impressive design, indebted both to the Temple of Poseidon at Paestum and St Paul’s, Covent Garden, was not adopted, although SIR JOHN LEGARD ’ S BOATHOUSE Gandy presumably must have known Legard. The Sir John Legard was a keen sailor and his decision to  exhibition date is not necessarily the date of the erect a boathouse is to be expected. However the watercolour: there was frequently a time lapse of some story is more complex, since it concerns two years between the execution of Gandy’s designs and boathouses, one of which was built, and one of which the exhibiting of them,  and neither has it a bearing was a fantasy. The fantasy, not uncharacteristically, on the date of the existing boathouse, which must date was the work of J. M. Gandy. from early in Legard’s occupation of Storrs.

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Storrs Hall. Boathouse and landing stage. © Crown copyright. NMR.

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Storrs Hall. Plan of boathouse. © Crown copyright. NMR.

The boathouse at Storrs stands on the lake edge, ground floor gave access to a now-lost timber a short distance north-west of Storrs Hall. It is not landing stage, which holes in the wall indicate mentioned in the  sale advertisement, but nor is originally ran along the south side of the boathouse, Storrs Temple, and that was certainly built by while above it a second doorway gave access to the Legard. The boathouse, given Sir John Legard’s loft. Three cross beams and two rows of staggered interest in sailing, is likely to have been erected in the intermediate beams support the joists of the loft mid  s, at the same time as the house. It is floor, and the roof is supported by king-post trusses. depicted on several of the sketches of Storrs which The landing stage in front of the boathouse, and Gandy made in  (Figs.  and  ), and is now the char pond to its south, are probably of the same part of a complex which also consists of a slate build. The landing stage, which abuts the front wall landing stage, a char pond and an ornamental, of the boathouse on the south side of the boat hole, crenellated lakeside wall (Fig.  ). The crenellated is paved with large slate slabs. It extends out for wall is not shown by Gandy, but it is possible that the some distance, terminating in three wide steps which landing stage and pond, as well as the boathouse, lead directly into the lake, and it incorporates, close date from Sir John Legard’s time. to its mid-point, a narrow flight of steps which The boathouse (Figs.  and  ), a rectangular provided access to and from boats. single-storey building with a loft for the storage of The fish of Windermere were a valuable asset,  sails and masts largely within its roof, is built of and for many hundreds of years they were exploited roughly coursed slate rubble, and has a slate roof. by fisheries, predominantly net fisheries operated The west gable wall facing the lake has a wide boat mainly by men who worked as full-time fishermen. hole with a depressed segmental arch and, above it, a Windermere was divided into fisheries, known as small doorway serving the loft. Four unglazed cobbles, and by  John Bolton of Storrs Hall rectangular openings in the side walls light and owned one, which passed to his successors and was ventilate the interior, access to which from land was included in the sale of the estate in  . The main through the rear gable wall. The doorway on the species of fish in Windermere were char, trout, pike,

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Left: Fig.  . Storrs Temple. View along causeway to Temple, with remnant of crenellated parapet wall in foreground. © Crown copyright. NMR.

Right: Fig.  . Storrs Temple. Detail showing doorway, tablets and added timber parapet. © Crown copyright. NMR.

perch and eels, the first being the most valuable. The SIR JOHN LEGARD ’ S TEMPLE char pond at Storrs was a means of farming this Storrs Temple, which also came to be known as the species, and it was created by taking in an area of the Temple of the Heroes, stands at the end of a water’s edge immediately south of the boathouse. causeway projecting into Windermere from the tip of The main landing stage of the boathouse doubled as Storrs promontory. It was erected by Sir John Legard, the northern edge of the char pond, a wide, slate since it is shown on Mary Dixon’s oil painting of the rubble wall curving south from its outer end to house (Fig. ), executed while he was the owner of enclose the pond. The water in the pond was Storrs. In addition Jessy Harden of Brathay Hall refreshed through an opening in the lake wall which visited it in May  and recorded that she was originally kept secure by an iron grille. A ‘breakfasted in the Temple of the Heroes , a summer crenellated parapet wall, built of rubble with slate house Sir John Legard built in honor of Lords coping, runs along the top of the lake wall and Howe, Vincent, Duncan & Nelson’.  The identity continues for some distance north of the channel of these four naval personalities suggests that the into the boathouse, albeit broken through by the Temple was erected not long after the completion of opening for the channel to an adjacent but now Storrs Hall in  , since all four had been involved demolished second boathouse. The crenellations are in victories over the French, Spanish and Dutch considerably larger than those which survive at the navies in the mid  s.  inner end of the causeway leading out to Storrs The construction of Storrs Temple aroused local Temple, and it is possible that they are the work of criticism, and Professor John Wilson of Elleray, near John Bolton rather than of Sir John Legard. Windermere, writing under the pseudonym

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THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

length of it now survives, at the landward end of the causeway (Fig.  ). It is built of coursed slate rubble and has slate coping stones. The Temple itself, octagonal in plan (Figs.  and  ), is set on a lozenge-shaped base which enabled the outer faces of its walls to be reached. It is built of coursed squared slate rubble with sandstone ashlar detailing which consists of a plinth with a bullnose moulding, door and window surrounds, and a moulded cornice. The single doorway, round-headed with a plain stone surround, faces the causeway to its east. Three windows, in alternate wall faces, which look north, west and south, also have round heads with plain stone surrounds rising from individual sills. The doorway has lost its door frame, and the window openings have internal set-backs for lost frames. The outer faces of the four blank walls are all set with rectangular sandstone tablets supported by pairs of Fig.  . Storrs Temple. Plan. guttae blocks and have moulded cornices. The © Crown copyright. NMR. tablets, clockwise from the doorway, each bear the name of an admiral, namely ‘S T VINCENT’, Christopher North, published a poetical Apology ‘HOWE’, ‘NELSON’ and ‘DUNCAN’. The panel for the Little Naval Temple, on Storrs’ Point, dedicated to Nelson has been renewed, as has the Winandermere in its defence. When the poem was cornice of that dedicated to Duncan. The external republished in a collection of Wilson’s works, a walls bear traces of colour wash similar to that on the footnote was added identifying the Temple’s builder house, and the tablet to Duncan has traces of a as ‘The late Sir John Legard, Bart. ’ The architect copper-coloured metallic wash possibly designed to of the Temple is not known. Gandy has been make it appear to be made of metal. Before a timber suggested, but not on the basis of firm evidence,  parapet was added to designs by Gandy, the Temple and he can be excluded for the reasons which had a flat roof level with the cornice. The present exclude him as architect of Storrs Hall, and arguably roof at this level, which doubles as the ceiling and is because of the alterations which he proposed to the constructed of two levels of wooden boards set in structure in  (see below). opposing directions and covered with lead sheets Storrs Temple, which is built on an island base of with rolled junctions, was renewed in  . The roughly squared slate boulders raised up from the internal walls of the Temple are of rough rubble with lake bed and topped with large slate flags, is reached traces of a former plaster finish. The windows are set from a long causeway paved with irregularly-shaped within square-cut walk-in bays, and the inner sides slabs. A crenellated parapet shown on one of of their surrounds have traces of two layers of paint- Gandy’s sketches of  (Fig.  ) and on later like material, a grey primer with a copper-based layer engravings of Storrs Hall,  originally ran the entire on top. The floor has slate flags and there is no length of the causeway, but only a short, curved evidence of a fireplace or flue.

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

DAVID PIKE WATTS house and its estate as it was barely a decade after Storrs Hall, with neither its name nor that of its he had commenced work on it. Legard retired to owner included, was advertised for sale in The Sunbury-on-Thames, Middlesex, where he continued Lancaster Gazetteer on  April  , the to entertain a cultivated circle of friends until his advertisement being repeated on  and  April, death in  . Storrs was bought by David Pike and  May. The advertisement reads: Watts, maternal uncle of the painter, John Constable. WINDERMERE LAKE . Watts (  – ) had spent most of his life working for Benjamin Keeton, a London wine merchant TO BE SOLD , Situated upon the justly admired whose business he took over on the latter’s LAKE OF WINDERMERE , retirement, and the chief part of whose immense fortune came to him on his death in May  . Watts A Capital MANSION and ESTATE , well worthy the attention of any gentleman who wishes to possess retired shortly afterwards, and was liberal in his acts one of the most desirable small properties in the of charity. At the age of forty-six, he undertook the kingdom. The house was built from the ground, task of establishing himself in the new way of life was finished in the year  , and is in the most which his wealth demanded. He obtained a grant of perfect repair: It consists of a drawing room, arms in  , and the purchase of Storrs Hall dining room, which opens into a greenhouse,  followed in  . feet long; library, master’s bed room, two dressing rooms, vestibule, and stair case, on the principal  was also the year in which the newly- floor; nine bed-rooms above, and very married John and Jessy Harden first rented Brathay commodious offices below. Stabling for eight Hall at the head of Windermere. The Hardens horses, and double coach house, barn, cow house, became members of a lively social, literary and and farming offices compleat; a kitchen garden, artistic circle which included William Wordsworth, walled around, and well planted with trees, in full bearing. Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge; The estate contains  statute acres,  of Storrs Hall, which could be reached either by road which are in ring fence, extending along the East or by boat, became one of their favourite places of bank of the Lake for more than a mile from the resort. Here they made friends with Mr Worgan, Ferry Southward. almoner to Mr Watts. Worgan, who lived in a cottage A post three times a week, excellent roads, and at Storrs, had musical talents,  and the Hardens and a good market at Kendal, within the distance of ten miles. A Fishery in the Lake will be included in their other friends spent many evenings there. Jessy the purchase. Harden recorded some of the excursions to Storrs in Particulars may be known by applying to her diary. On  May  she wrote: Messrs. RIGGE and MERRIFIELD , No. , Carey- Yesterday we all went to Storrs to breakfast with street, Lincoln’s Inn, London; or to Mr WILSON , Mr Worgan who had a party of  , & a most pleasant attorney, at Kendal. Mr Joseph Williamson, of morning we spent, some of them remained in the Storrs, near Bowness, will shew the premises; and house but  of us breakfasted in the Temple of the the house may be seen every Thursday, between Heroes , a summer house Sir John Legard built in ten in the morning and two o’clock in the honor of Lords Howe, Vincent, Duncan & Nelson. afternoon; but at no other time. Any person Mr W. intended to have had a barrel organ in one of applying to see the house, must send his name and the boats to regale us during breakfast but the wind place of abode, in writing. was rather high for that so we had some excellent The advertisement was placed on behalf of Sir John music from Miss Watson & him on the Grand Legard, who probably sold Storrs because of his Piano … deteriorating health, and its description reflects the

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Several other boating expeditions were mounted that or three years in their employment was sent out to May, and on  May Jessy wrote: St Vincent. He returned to Liverpool in  , and in  , having made enough money in the West Indies, To-day we set off again in the boat accompanied by Mrs Hunter & the remains of our supper in a basket & started his own business: Wosencroft’s Directory , got to Storrs about  o’clock where we met our three published in  , records John Bolton, merchant, at Beaux & had a pick nick dinner in the Summer  Duke Street, with a counting house at  Henry House, I think the pleasantest one I ever partook of. I Street.  Bolton rapidly became the leading West laughed more than I have done ever since I came to India merchant of his generation, becoming this country; the Trio met us in a boat, & the Organ president of the Liverpool Association of West India was playing to welcome us ...  Merchants, and one of the wealthiest men of his David Pike Watts does not feature in these events, and class.  He made the first of several fortunes as a it seems that he did not enjoy owning his Westmorland merchant in the ‘Africa trade’ – the slave trade – in seat. He sold Storrs in  , Jessy Harden referring the boom years after the ending of the war of to him in her journal on  September that year as American Independence. He owned several ships, ‘Mr Watts the late proprietor of Storrs’,  and moved and through the  s his profits from trade in back to a house in Portland Place, where he died in slaves, sugar, rum and cotton were rarely less than  . Little is known of his activities at Storrs, £ , per annum. On  May  Bolton married although it is evident that he was known to the Elizabeth Littledale, daughter of Henry Littledale, a Hardens, who regretted his departure from the merchant of Whitehaven and Liverpool. When the neighbourhood.  In the year in which he sold Storrs ‘Act for the better Security and Defence of the town he recommended that his nephew, John Constable, and port of Liverpool’ gained Royal Assent on  tour Westmorland and Cumberland ‘in search of June  , John Bolton was one of the seven Trustees subjects for his pencil’, and paid his expenses.  appointed to carry its purposes into execution. In Dated drawings indicate that Constable was in the  he raised and equipped at his own expense Lake District from  September to  October  . eight hundred men who became known as the First The first drawing is of Kendal, after which, according Battalion of the Liverpool Volunteers; the regiment to Jessy Harden’s diary, Constable stayed first was disbanded in  on the creation of a local with Mr Worgan in a cottage at Storrs before, on militia, but Bolton continued to be referred to as  September, moving on to Brathay Hall to stay with Colonel Bolton for the rest of his life.  He declined John Harden,  returning to Storrs on  September the offer of a peerage made on the accession of prior to travelling more widely.  Unfortunately no George IV in  . drawings that he might have made of Storrs survive. John Bolton retained his Liverpool house and counting house throughout his life, the latter continuing as the base for his merchant business.  He played a part in the political life of the town from JOHN BOLTON the early  s until his death, being an ardent Tory The Storrs estate was bought from David Pike Watts and supporter of George Canning. On many in  by John Bolton (  – ), a Liverpool occasions, Canning and William Huskisson delivered merchant.  Born in Ulverston, the son of an electioneering speeches to crowds from the balcony apothecary, Bolton moved to Liverpool where he was of his house in Duke Street.  Bolton’s wealth, apprenticed in the firm of Rawlinson & Chorley, however, enabled him to purchase not one, but two, West India merchants and shipowners, and after two country houses. First he bought Bolton Hall at

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Bolton-by-Bowland, Lancashire, in  , purchasing of Storrs Hall at the Royal Academy in London. The the manor and advowson for £ , , and in  – drawings have not survived, but the entry for  he made extensive alterations and improvements to reads ‘Storrs Hall, for J. Bolton, esq.  , Bold Street, it. The work, which included a new entrance on the Liverpool ’, and for  , ‘Storrs Hall, etc.’.  Although north side, rebuilding the south gable, and building Gandy had made proposals for work there in  , it gables and turrets on the west side, was undertaken is unlikely, given the work at Bolton Hall, that in the Gothic style to designs by J M Gandy.  construction work at Storrs commenced before  . John Bolton probably purchased Bolton Hall Bolton is known to have spent time in the Lake because of its name, but at the very time that he was District in  ,  and  , and if building work starting work altering it, he was entering into the was underway on Storrs Hall, he could have lived in purchase of Storrs Hall on Windermere. As noted other buildings on the estate. From the start, like above, the previous owner, David Pike Watts, had Legard, Bolton took part in regattas on the lake. An been called the ‘late proprietor of Storrs’ in account in a newspaper, The Star , about a regatta September  , so Bolton must have been its owner which had been held on Windermere on  August by then. He had already diverted Gandy from his  , refers to him as the owner of Storrs and notes work at Bolton Hall by commissioning him to visit that ‘The gentlemen’s sailing boats attended, but on Storrs and make proposal sketches for extending and account of Mr Bolton’s celebrated swift sailing boat improving the buildings. The evidence is in a the Victory appearing to sail, all others declined Sketchbook by Gandy which contains seventeen sailing against her for a prize’.  The title of a book drawings of Storrs, all of them identified as ‘Storrs by George Baillie, a London West India Merchant, Windermere’, ranging from plans, elevations and which was published in  and sought to discredit details of the existing buildings, through a series of John Bolton, implies that he was then resident at distant prospects which include different proposals Storrs Hall,  and in  William Green observed, for extending the house and enhancing its environs, in an apt choice of words, that Colonel Bolton had to sketch plans and elevations principally for new ‘recently added a magnificent house to that built by buildings, among them a lodge, a summerhouse, a the late Sir John Ledger, Bart.’.  There is another garden seat, and a Druidical Temple (see below, Figs. reference in  to Bolton, in letters from Miss –,  ,  – ,  –,  – ).  These drawings Weeton, a governess then resident at Dove’s Nest, presented Bolton with a series of options: he later near Ambleside. Referring to a regatta on  July proceeded with some, and modified or rejected  , she wrote: others. Gandy first used this sketchbook for Storrs, Col. Bolton, of Liverpool (now residing in a most interleaving these drawings with some of the Gothic elegant house bordering the lake) had a beautiful barge choir stalls and canopies in the Priory Church of St rowed by six men, dressed in white, the ladies in Mary in Lancaster, and of Roslin Castle and Chapel. which, twelve or fourteen in number, sat under a Since the page with the basement plan of Storrs Hall square canopy. A great number of boats of all sizes were on the water. A fine large, stately sailing boat of (Sketchbook, fol. v) has inserted a ‘view of Roslin Col. Bolton’s has invariably gained the prize for r Castle and Chapel Sept  ’, the drawings of several years, to the great mortification of Mr Wilson, Storrs must precede it. whose boat of a larger size, has generally been put in The date of Gandy’s remodelling of Storrs, competition with it. Mr Curwen was so hurt at being where his clerk of works was Francis Webster,  has so completely beaten, that he has given up the contest entirely, and all his boats are on sale.  always been stated to be  – ,  and  being the two years in which he exhibited drawings The balance of evidence suggests that building work

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

specified) ‘chiselling under sheds the ornamental stone work’ for Storrs Hall.  The date of  for a stable bell  – the stables were in a separate building some distance from the house – indicates activity there at this time, but the building of a brick garden wall in  cannot have been part of the main programme of work.  When Gandy met with Joseph Farington in London on  January  , to speak about the election to the Royal Academy, he reported that ‘He had been settled at Liverpool one year & a Half – and had been well employed, having built much there, and a House near Windermere for Mr Bolton’.  A series of four watercolours (Figs.  – and  ), three of Storrs Hall and one of its Lodge, all of them signed ‘J. Buckler  .’,  celebrate Bolton’s work here. The Storrs estate which John Bolton purchased in  was  acres in extent, the size noted in the sale advertisement of  , but immediately after acquiring it he enlarged it with the purchase of at least eight customary estates (or yeoman tenements),  and his wife bought further land after his death in  . The estate passed by inheritance after her death in  , and not until it was put up for sale in  do we know that it then had an area of  acres.  Bolton did not leave his enlarged estate untouched, for in his Tourist’s New Guide , published in  , William Green wrote: Storrs Hall stands something out from the side shores, on a promontory on a gentle elevation above the lake: it was built by the late Sir John Legard, Bart., who sold it to —-. Watts, Esq.; from this gentleman it was purchased by John Bolton, Esq., the present proprietor. Fig.  . Ordnance Survey : map, surveyed The house built by the worthy Baronet, is an excellent in  , showing Storrs Hall, its north and family residence; but Mr Bolton has added to it a south drives, and the lodge. superb mansion, from designs by Mr Gandy, which are at once fanciful and elegant. Mr Webb has likewise on Storrs Hall may have commenced in  and been here, and has driven in one grand straight line a that it may have been completed during  , road through the lower grounds, in contempt of those little Brunonian rigglelings bordering the old dwelling. perhaps continuing on at some of the other buildings The whole, in the process of time, if managed with an into  . Sandstone used for this new work is said eye comprehending the value of the surrounding to have come from Holker Quarry near Cartmel scenes, may be one of the finest things of its kind in the Priory, with workmen employed for two years (not island’. 

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Ordnance Survey : map, surveyed in  , showing Storrs Hall and its immediate environs.

The earliest detailed maps of Storrs Hall and its was ideal for entertaining in, and a high point in grounds are those surveyed by the Ordnance Survey in Bolton’s life there came in August  when he  . Published at six-inch (Fig.  ) and twenty-five entertained George Canning, Secretary of State for inch scales (Figs.  and  ), these show the house as Foreign Affairs, as well as William Wordsworth, Sir enlarged by John Bolton, as well as the farm offices, Walter Scott and other company. A full description drives and a lodge immediately north of Middle Farm. of the event, including the regatta with some fifty Storrs Hall, as enlarged and refitted by John barges, is given by J G Lockhart, son-in-law of Sir Bolton, was a spacious house in a perfect situation. It Walter Scott, who was staying at Elleray, the house of

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Professor John Wilson, High Admiral of the regatta. taken from Waagen’s Galleries and Cabinets of Art in At Storrs, Lockhart noted: Great Britain , which were ascribed to Guernico, Van de Velde, Teniers, Claude Lorraine and others. A large company had been assembled there in honour There was also a bust of Canning, by Chantrey, and of the Minister – it included already Mr Wordsworth. It has not, I suppose, often happened to a plain English ‘a rich collection of porcelain, with specimens of the  merchant, wholly the architect of his own fortunes, to different manufactories’. John Bolton’s widow, entertain at one time a party embracing so many Elizabeth, had directed in her will, drawn up in  , illustrious names. He was proud of his guests; they that all her furniture, library of books, plate, pictures respected him, and honoured and loved each other … and articles ‘in and appertaining to my said mansion The weather was as Elysian as the scenery. There were house of Storrs Hall’ were to pass as heirlooms with brilliant cavalcades through the woods in the  mornings, and delicious boatings on the Lake by the house. moonlight; and the last day ‘the Admiral of the Lakes’ Bolton is said to have been an arrogant man who presided over one of the most splendid regattas that was inclined to be vindictive, even vicious, with ever enlivened Windermere. Perhaps there were not those who dared to challenge his authority or thwart fewer than fifty barges following in the Professor’s his will. He nevertheless established himself firmly in radiant procession, when it paused at the point of Storrs to admit into the place of honour the vessel that Lake District society, in politics was a prominent carried kind and happy Mr Bolton and his guests. The Lowther supporter, and was a noted local benefactor. bards of the Lakes led the cheers that hailed Scott and He became a friend of William Wordsworth, who Canning; and music and sunshine, flags, streamers, and referred in a letter to ‘Mr Bolton, sometimes called gay dresses, the merry hum of voices, and the rapid the Liverpool Croesus’ after Bolton had donated £ splashing of innumerable oars, made up a dazzling to a charitable fund for which the Wordsworths were mixture of sensations as the flotilla wound its way  among the richly-foliaged islands, and along bays and seeking subscribers. John Bolton died in his house promontories peopled with enthusiastic spectators.  in Duke Street, Liverpool, on  February  , at the age of eighty-one. His coffin made a four-day Bolton did not always win the regattas which he progress from Liverpool, via Preston, Lancaster and entered: his boat, Victory , was, for example, beaten in Storrs Hall, to St Martin’s church, Bowness, the the regatta of  . It has been recorded that four parish church of Windermere, where he was buried, boats were kept at Storrs: Bolton’s grand cedar barge as willed, in a vault ‘at the end of the Church, near and three rowing boats, one of the latter for the my pew’.  The vault, outside the church, is marked owner, one for visitors, and one for staff.  The barge by an inscribed stone. Bowness Grammar School, was used in  to convey Queen Adelaide, the paid for by Bolton and designed by George Webster Queen Dowager, who, after visiting Storrs, travelled in  , was incomplete on his death.  It was ‘in Mrs Bolton’s barge’ to dine at Low Wood. On the opened by his widow on  September  , and a following day she visited Rayrigg and then rounded tablet with a wreathed portrait of him was erected at Curwen’s Island to go to Claife Station.  the school by grateful villagers.  Elizabeth Bolton Storrs Hall had an elegant interior which was survived her husband by eleven years. She died at exceptionally well furnished. Murray’s Handbook of Storrs Hall on  September  and was interred  , published when the house was occupied by next to her husband.  The Boltons had no John Bolton’s nephew, the Reverend Thomas children: the Bolton Hall Estate had already passed Staniforth, recorded that it contained ‘some pictures to the Littledale side of the family in  , and in of great merit. The collection was formed by Mr  the property at Storrs passed to the Reverend Bolton’. There followed a list of fourteen paintings, Thomas Staniforth, John Bolton’s nephew.

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Sketch of proposed remodelling of entrance front of Storrs Hall, also showing Storrs Temple and the boathouse. Gandy Sketchbook, fol. r. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

Fig.  . Sketch of proposed remodelling of garden front of Storrs Hall, also showing Storrs Temple. Gandy Sketchbook, fol. r. Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Watercolour of entrance front of Storrs Hall, signed ‘J. Buckler  ’. Private Collection.

Fig.  . Watercolour of entrance front of Storrs Hall, signed ‘J. Buckler  ’. Private Collection.

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Watercolour of garden front of Storrs Hall, signed ‘J. Buckler  ’. Private Collection.

JOHN BOLTON ’ S ALTERATIONS and r) (Figs.  and  ), were two-storey east and TO STORRS HALL west wings, a loggia between them across the John Bolton, in contrast to David Pike Watts, entrance front, a verandah across the garden front, embarked on a major programme of alteration and and a lower service wing further east, partly one and extension to the house and wider estate not long partly two-storeys high. The east and west wings are after purchasing it. His architect was J M Gandy, and faced with sandstone ashlar, but the service wing, the intention behind this work, evidently largely which was substantially remodelled in the early undertaken between  and  , was the creation  s, is of rendered rubble. of a more spacious, more imposing and more The east and west wings, though two storeys conveniently disposed house than previously existed. high, are not only slightly taller than the original house, but they project beyond both its entrance and garden fronts. Their dominance is reduced by the loggia and verandah which link them (compare Figs. THE EXTERIOR OF THE ,  and  – ). They are rectangular in plan, each ENLARGED HOUSE one bay wide and three bays deep, although the Gandy sketched several alternative schemes for service wing is built up against the east wing. They enlarging Storrs Hall on the occasion of his visit in both have distinctive detailing: shallow pilasters with  , but what was finally built, partially depicted on sunk faces rise from plain plinths to a simplified two of his preliminary sketches (Sketchbook, fols. r entablature supporting a blind parapet, and the

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL windows, which all have moulded surrounds and and pilasters of the colonnade are partly fluted, their include some of tripartite form, are variously entablature supporting a parapet of lotus buds on elaborated on the ground floor with console shaped bases. The wider central intercolumniation brackets, shallow triangular pediments and flat reflects the arrangement of the remodelled front door hoods with bands of lotus flowers. A number of (Fig.  ). The verandah across the garden front of the windows in the west wing retain original hung-sash original house (Fig. ) has been subject to much repair window frames with brass glazing bars which are no and is now glazed in, but in its original form, shown doubt the product of Gandy’s business relationship on Buckler’s watercolour of  (Fig.  ), it had with George Bullock (see below), and several doorways in its central and end bays, with frameless windows in the mid  s house have similar ‘windows’ in the bays between. The geometric renewed frames. openwork wooden panels which frame the bays Gandy remodelled the entrance front of the survive from Gandy’s original structure, but further original house, demolishing its porch and altering the openwork detailing has been lost, as has the full form, but not the position, of its front door. The loggia entablature and the lotus bud parapet which echoed which he threw across it (Fig.  ) took the form of a that on the loggia. Greek Doric colonnade between short screen walls, The service wing designed by Gandy at the east both incorporating a round-headed niche. These end of the house can just be seen on Buckler’s niches, shown empty on Buckler’s watercolour of  watercolours, and trees were clearly planted to screen (Fig.  ), contain early nineteenth-century style it from view. It was heightened to a uniform three pedestals which support lamps, while the columns storeys when Storrs Hall was converted to a hotel in

Fig.  . Entrance front of Storrs Hall, showing the loggia added in the early nineteenth century. © Crown copyright. NMR.

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Fig.  . The front door of Storrs Hall, Fig.  . Elevations of the service wing of Storrs Hall before as remodelled in the early nineteenth century. it was heightened, drawn by Joseph Pattinson,  . © Crown copyright. NMR. Cumbria Record Office (Kendal). the early  s, but its original form, hinted at by the south wall of the outermost range which also retains, evidence of the building, is more certainly known in the centre of its end wall, the tall, wide, gated, from elevation drawings (Fig.  ) and ground and round-headed entrance into the courtyard of the first-floor plans (Figs.  and  ) drawn up from field wing. The courtyard was originally surrounded by a surveys undertaken by Joseph Pattinson in June covered walkway with a pentice roof supported on  . The service wing originally had three distinct columns, but this no longer survives. parts, all within a long T-shaped building. A three- bay long, two-storey block, its roof hidden behind a blind parapet, was attached to the house, then came a two-bay, single-storey block with an inner courtyard, THE INTERIOR OF THE ENLARGED its single-pitch roofs again hidden by outside walls, HOUSE : FAMILY ACCOMMODATION and finally, across the outer end, was a one-bay deep, The interior of the enlarged early nineteenth-century three-bay wide, two-storey range with a hipped roof. house falls into two main parts, namely the family Moulded bands on the outside walls survived the accommodation on the ground and first floors of the heightening of the wing in the early  s, and they main block, which comprised the original house and confirm the differing wall heights of the three original the added east and west wings, and the service parts. Much of the original fenestration survives, accommodation in the new service wing and in the including the tripartite ground-floor window in the basement of the original house. The mid  s

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL house at the core of the enlarged building was altered early plans or detailed descriptions of the enlarged and refitted to Gandy’s designs as was found house are known, but later sources augment the necessary, the alterations being mainly associated physical evidence of the building. A list of rooms, with the need to draw more light into the house and with their uses and sizes as they had been in  to create circulation patterns which took access to when Storrs was last occupied as a private house, is the new wings into account. included in the Sales Particulars of  (see Gandy’s sketches of Storrs, made in  , below),  and plans and elevations of the service represent his first thoughts about potential changes wing (Figs.  ,  and  ) were made in  by the there, and they are the only surviving drawings Windermere architect, Joseph Pattinson, before the which relate to his work there for Bolton. No other former private house was converted into a hotel. 

Fig.  . Storrs Hall. Ground floor of the rotunda. © Crown copyright. NMR.

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Fig.  . Storrs Hall. First-floor gallery and lantern over the rotunda. © Crown copyright. NMR.

The rooms on the ground floor of the main block into each other and served as an anteroom to the of the enlarged house were all reception rooms, and rooms in the new west wing, and as also was the stair many of those in the original part built by Sir John hall. The rotunda, a circular top-lit hall with Legard were refitted by Gandy when he enlarged it. doorways and walk-in round-headed niches at He concentrated his work in those rooms which led ground floor (Fig.  ), a balustraded gallery with to the new wings and to the first floor. The three four doorways opening off it at first floor, and domed rooms across the south front of Legard’s house were lantern with polychrome glass overall (Fig.  ), was thus left virtually untouched, but the entrance hall created by Gandy, probably in place of an original and the rotunda, or central hall, were refitted, as were square hall. He was just as bold in the alterations he the two rooms to their west, which were opened out undertook to the stair hall which opened off it. No

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Storrs Hall. The main staircase at ground floor. © Crown copyright. NMR. vestige of the original staircase survives, so radical continue to display Gandy’s exuberant style. The was his work (Figs.  and  ). The end wall, where west wing had two separate rooms, the smaller, north the original stair window must have been, was cut room restrained in its detailing,  the larger room, back to increase space for the new cantilevered stone the library, much more ostentatious. A library, in an staircase with its decorative brass balustrade, and early nineteenth-century house, though invariably much of one side wall was cut out and replaced by a furnished with at least a few fitted bookcases, was by screen wall with Ionic detailing on the ground floor no means intended only or even primarily as a place and Composite on the first floor, a change related to for quiet reading. Rather was it a communal sitting creating access passages to the new east wing. An room,  a use perfectly served by this sumptuously oval, domed lantern was inserted in the ceiling to finished room (Fig.  ) with its windows overlooking light the remodelled stair hall. the lake to south and west. It has a pair of high The principal rooms in the east and west wings quality doors (Fig.  ) and an imposing marble

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Storrs Hall. The main staircase at first floor. © Crown copyright. NMR. chimneypiece (Fig.  ), and a bold, enriched (Fig.  ). The chimneypiece (Fig.  ) is so distinctive cornice. The east wing also had two rooms, the that it must be by Gandy. larger one, to the north, the dining room, separated The rooms on the first floor of the main block of from the smaller south room by a passage which the enlarged house were all bedrooms or dressing provided access from the service wing into the rooms, and, as on the ground floor, Gandy’s main house. The south room has a tripartite window but work in the original part of the house involved no original fittings, and though the dining room, also creating access to the rooms in the new wings. Most lit by a tripartite window, has a moulded cornice, the of the  s rooms were left untouched. Access to display within it comes not from that but from its the east wing was from the landing around two sides doorways and chimneypiece. Four doorways have of the main stair, which had the same brass doorcases enriched with vine trails and bunches of balustrade as the stair, while the west wing was grapes, and two retain their original mahogany doors reached via the gallery around the rotunda, again

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Storrs Hall. The library. © Crown copyright. NMR. with the same brass balustrade, and the wide passage established type,  but that in the dining room created from a former bedroom to its west. The two shows Gandy’s inimitable flair for design (Fig.  ). It wings each had a large bedroom at either end, and is of black marble with diagonally-set Doric columns although most were paired with what appear to have with fluted shafts and a gilt brass winged head set been smaller dressing rooms, they do not seem to centrally over the fire opening. Gandy’s fruitful have had linking doorways. Most of the rooms in the inspiration can also be recognised in the elaborate wings have enriched cornices and panelled reveals to plasterwork throughout the house. The lantern over the windows, but no chimneypieces survive. the rotunda (Fig.  ), with its exceptional light blue, The internal fittings in the enlarged house are of orange and yellow glass, rises from an entablature the highest quality. Only two early nineteenth- with a scalloped, fluted frieze and a cornice with a century chimneypieces remain, in the library and the band of pellets, and has overall a saucer dome with dining room. The marble chimneypiece in the moulded ribs and an enriched central roundel library (Fig.  ), with a central tablet depicting Leda incorporating a flower burst. The detail is on a par and the Swan and side panels with female figures, with the luxuriant plasterwork in the library (Figs.  one playing a lyre, the other a pipe, is of an and  ) in which acanthus leaves and scrolls are the

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Storrs Hall. The chimneypiece in the library. Fig.  . Storrs Hall. The chimneypiece in the © Crown copyright. NMR. dining room. © Crown copyright.NMR. principal element of the bold cornice around the several high quality mahogany doors: two three- main part of the room, the narrow and slightly lower panelled doors in the library (Fig.  ) have ebony end bays having ceilings divided into three beading and strips of decorative brass inlay, while compartments, the wider central ones with panels of two in the dining room have six beaded panels (Fig. Greek fret ornament.  The other ground-floor  ). Some brass fittings may be the product of the rooms, as well as the bedrooms, have cornices with short-lived partnership which Gandy established in more typical early nineteenth-century motifs, Liverpool in  – with the sculptor and furniture including square paterae, leaves, roundels and pellets maker, George Bullock, which was comprehensively (Figs.  – ), but they are employed in the styled ‘architects, modellers, sculptors, marble idiosyncratic manner typical of Gandy. There are masons, cabinet-makers and upholsterers’. 

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

The brass inlay on the library doors has been recognised as one of Bullock’s most common inlay patterns,  but some of the other brass fittings – the glazing bars of some windows, the mount on the dining room chimneypiece, and the balustrades in the stair hall and around the gallery in the rotunda – are likely to have come from the same foundry.

THE INTERIOR OF ENLARGED HOUSE : SERVICE ACCOMMODATION The service rooms of the mid  s house had all been in its basement, but Gandy’s early nineteenth- century alterations for John Bolton saw the principal service rooms, as well as the servants’ accommodation, housed in a service wing, partly two storeys high, partly one, attached to the east wing. The basement rooms nevertheless continued in service use as cellars, reached down steps inserted into one of the three original eastern cellars, and at the same time the original subterranean access tunnel was extended out under the service wing, emerging well outside the wing, with three further vaulted cellars attached to its south side. Joseph Pattinson’s  plan of this floor (Fig.  ) shows that all the original basement rooms were called ‘cellars’, some of them specifically identified as ‘beer’, ‘ale’ or ‘wine’ cellars, and rooms such as the original kitchen and housekeeper’s room can be seen to have inserted racks for wine and seating for barrels of beer (Figs.  and  ). Comparison of the From top:  and  plans of the basement shows three Figs. ‒ . Storrs Hall. Cornices in entrance hall, in extra cellars on the later plan, one the ‘stewards beer ground-floor north-west corner room of original house cellar’, the other two ‘coal cellars’. These new and in bedroom of south end of first floor of west wing. cellars, built of stone rubble with segmental vaults, © Crown copyright. NMR. and reached from the extended tunnel, are situated beneath the service wing and are Gandy’s work.  John Bolton’s heirs seem to have left the service wing largely unaltered, and the layout and use of its rooms on Joseph Pattinson’s plans of  (Figs.  and  ) therefore show it more or less as it had been

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Storrs Hall. Door in library. Fig.  . Storrs Hall. Door in dining room. © Crown copyright. NMR. © Crown copyright. NMR. designed by Gandy. These plans indicate that the side and the housekeeper’s room, a store and the ground floor had a full range of service rooms, and servants’ hall on the other. Beyond this, single-storey that the first floors of the two-storey blocks at either ranges on opposing sides of the courtyard contained end of the wing had bedrooms for staff. Since the cook’s pantry and a larder and the coal house, staircases within the wing linked all its floors, and three separate water closets and a room containing there was access between the wing and house on all water cisterns. With the exception of two water floors, Gandy dispensed with the mid  s service closets which were reached from outside the wing, stair when he remodelled the main staircase. all these rooms opened off a covered walkway which The  ground-floor plan (Fig.  ) shows that ran around much of the otherwise open courtyard. that part of the service wing next to the house had a There was no walkway where a tall, wide entrance central passage with a kitchen and scullery on one passage passed through the ground floor of the one-

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Storrs Hall. Plan of basement, drawn by Joseph Pattinson,  . Cumbria Record Office (Kendal).

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Plan of ground floor of service wing of Storrs Hall before its conversion to hotel use, drawn by Joseph Pattinson,  . Cumbria Record Office (Kendal).

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Plan of first floor of service wing of Storrs Hall before its conversion to hotel use, drawn by Joseph Pattinson,  . Cumbria Record Office (Kendal).

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Sketch of Storrs Temple, including proposed added parapet. Gandy Sketchbook, fol. r. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

room deep outer block of the service wing, which had the main house, and the first-floor room in its north- a wash house on one side and a store on the other. west corner, with its moulded cornice, may have The  first-floor plan (Fig.  ) shows the two been the housekeeper’s bedroom. separate blocks of staff bedrooms, each with its own staircase. The block attached to the east wing of the house, with a doorway between the two, was for female servants. The staircase leading up to it JOHN BOLTON ’ S ALTERATIONS opened on to a spine corridor: a water closet, TO THE TEMPLE bathroom, house maid’s sink and store opened off Among the preliminary schemes of alterations which this, and it also gave access to the eight bedrooms, Gandy proposed for Storrs in  was the addition five of them heated, which were disposed on the of a parapet to Storrs Temple. His sketchbook three outer sides of the block. The block at the outer includes a view of the Temple and causeway from the end of the service wing, for male servants, was north with the annotation ‘To raise a parapet on originally reached from a staircase off the covered Tem[ple] ’  high above present cornice’ (Fig.  ). walkway around the open yard. A first-floor passage The sketch shows the intended parapet and a central along its west side gave access to five bedrooms, box with a flagpole on the roof, as well as the causeway three of them heated. There was no water closet or with the existing crenellated parapet along its entire bathroom on this floor, the nearest water closet being length. The added parapet on top of the Temple is on the ground floor, off the courtyard walkway. constructed of timber and was restored after a public The service block retains few original fittings, appeal in  . The causeway, which was in a very although there are some early nineteenth-century poor state of repair, was also restored in  , but no six-panelled doors on both floors of the block next to attempt was made to restore the parapet.

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

JOHN BOLTON ’ S LODGE  , and this may be where Bolton came across AND GROUNDS him. Knowledge of Webb’s work at Storrs is In  Gandy sketched designs for two garden restricted to William Green’s statement, published buildings at Storrs, one a summerhouse in the form in  , that ‘Mr Webb has likewise been here, and of a temple (Sketchbook, fols.  v,  r) (Figs. ‒ ), has driven in one grand straight line a r oad through the other a garden seat in the form of an aedicule the lower grounds, in contempt of those little (Sketchbook, fol.  r, bottom) (Fig.  ), as well as a Brunonian rigglelings bordering the old dwelling’.  ‘proposed druidical Temple’ on an island in Comparison of maps shows that between  and Windermere (Sketchbook, fols.  v,  r) (Figs.  and  (Figs.  and  ) the old road from Bowness to  ),  but none of these schemes was put into effect Newby Bridge, which on the earlier map is shown when Bolton commenced work at Storrs a few years close to the lake edge, had been rerouted further up later. Instead he extended the estate north, towards the fell side by the later date. The old road was Bowness, by purchasing farms, and employed John curtailed at Middle Farm just after it was intersected Webb to undertake work on the enlarged estate. John by a sweeping drive running down from the new Webb ( c. – ) was an architect and landscape- road and on to Storrs Hall. This drive must, with gardener whose practice in the latter field was by artistic licence, be Webb’s ‘grand straight line’, and  reported to be ‘all over England’.  Among just after it crossed the old road the later map shows many other places, he was consulted about a ‘Lodge’ on its south side, sited to control access to landscaping the park and grounds at Lowther Castle, the hall. This lodge survives, and was designed by Westmorland, for which he produced proposals in Gandy.

Fig.  . Sketch of proposed summerhouse in grounds of Storrs Hall. Gandy Sketchbook, fol.  v. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

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Fig.  . Sketch showing site of proposed summer house in relation to Storrs Hall and the boathouse, together with a design for a garden seat in the form of an aedicule . Gandy Sketchbook, fol.  r. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

Fig.  . Views from and towards the Ferry, variously showing Storrs Hall, Storrs Temple, the proposed summer house, Belle Isle, and the proposed Druidical Temple on an island. Gandy Sketchbook, fol.  r. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

Fig.  . Plan of proposed Druidical Temple. Gandy Sketchbook, fol.  v. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

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Fig.  . Sketch plan and elevation of Gardeners Lodge. Gandy Sketchbook, fol.  r. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

Gandy had drawn two alternative sketches for a fronts an altered road pattern.  It is single-storeyed proposed lodge at Storrs in  (Sketchbook, fols. with a square front block under a shallow pyramidal v,  r), one of them (Fig.  ) including an elevation roof and a slightly lower rear range, its roof hipped at not dissimilar to that for a cottage in one of the the back. The walls are rendered and scored to copybooks he had published in  . Although simulate ashlar, and the roofs are slated, but the front the overall layout and some details, especially the block is distinguished by detailing which is form of the gate piers, are similar to the lodge which paralleled in Gandy’s work at Storrs Hall itself.  was built, Gandy clearly prepared a new design The detailing in question, which is generally of when construction actually went ahead. The lodge ashlar, comprises the sunk-panelled corner pilasters, is shown on one of John Buckler’s watercolours of which are linked at the top by a moulded band, and  (Fig.  ). This was taken from the east, since it the former doorway in the centre of the front wall, shows Windermere in the gap between the two now a window, which is recessed behind a screen of lodges, with Claife Heights rising as a distant two Greek Doric columns set in an opening with backdrop, but confusingly it shows a pair of lodges. pilasters of equivalent form against its sides. The The lodge which was built, together with a pair of columns are of wood, and they and the pilasters, like gate piers, is that on the left; that on the right was those in the loggia which Gandy threw across the never built,  as the  map (Fig.  ) shows. front of Storrs Hall, are fluted only on the upper The lodge (Fig.  ), which is now called Lower parts of their shafts. The side walls of the front block Lodge, has been slightly altered and extended, and have two-light windows with chamfered mullions,

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Watercolour of lodge to Storrs Hall, signed ‘J. Buckler  ’. Private Collection. and a chimneystack rises from the centre of the rear them, with its elongated intersecting ovals, is wall. The rear range, which has been doubled in identical to the gates shown by Buckler. This style of length, has a doorway in its east wall and windows in gate is one of several illustrated in a copybook by all elevations. The windows, larger than those in the Gandy which had been published in  . front block, were screened from view by walls and Inside the lodge, the front block is a single large plantations shown on the  map. room with closets in both front corners, each John Buckler’s watercolour of the lodge shows a retaining a six-panel door with mouldings which can pair of large gate piers flanking a wide, gated carriage be matched in the early nineteenth-century work at entrance set between a pair of pedestrian gates, each Storrs Hall. These closets project into the room, and with a small gate pier on its outer side. The two large in so doing create a lobby beside the original front gate piers, both of ashlar, each had deep plinths, door, a feature accentuated by the segmental arch square shafts, and shallow, pyramidal caps set on which separates it from main part of the room. The sunk-panelled blocks above bands. These have been fireplace in the centre of the rear wall has been dismantled and reset, not quite in their original form, blocked and is without a chimneypiece. The rear at the entrance to a carriage drive to The Yews, wing may originally have had just two rooms, both immediately uphill from the lodge. The sunk- perhaps entered from main front room, although panelled blocks have been reset next to the piers both are much altered. The room to the west has a rather than below the caps, but they are otherwise as late nineteenth-century cast-iron fireplace, while depicted in the watercolour. The iron gate between that to the east has been partitioned to create a

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV  STORRS HALL

Fig.  . Ordnance Survey : map, surveyed in  , showing the lodge beside the north drive to Storrs Hall. lobby off the back door, a bathroom, and a passage  map. John Bolton erected no lodge here. As well to the added kitchen and bedroom across the rear as giving an insight into what John Webb’s creation of the wing. of drives at Storrs is likely to have meant, comparison The drive past the lodge was the northern of the  and  maps also shows how field approach to Storrs Hall; there was also a southern divisions were dispensed with as parkland with approach, shown on the  map, which left the deliberately planted trees was established. Green had road from Newby Bridge at Black Beck Bridge, the ventured to suggest that Storrs might ‘in the process southern limit of the Storrs estate. For much of its of time … be one of the finest things of its kind in the length this drive appropriated the road shown on the island’.  This was not to be.

Fig.  . Lodge, the original gate piers and gates reset further up the hill at the entrance to a drive to The Yews. © Crown copyright. NMR.

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S T O R R S H A L L A F T E R Hall. Here, assisted by estates and property inherited T H E B O L T O N S from his father in  , he lived the life of a country John Bolton died in  , his wife, Elizabeth, in  , gentleman, shooting and fishing, and during the and without children the Storrs estate passed to the  s, introducing a flock of St Kilda sheep to its Reverend Thomas Staniforth (  – ) whose parkland.  Staniforth, an avid collector of silver, mother, Mary Littledale, was Elizabeth Bolton’s china and furniture, added to the books and pictures sister.  Staniforth spent most of his professional in Storrs Hall, but did nothing of note to the house career as rector of Bolton-by-Bowland, to which he and associated buildings. had been presented by his uncle in  . On his Staniforth died, without male heirs, on  July retirement in  he and his wife moved to Storrs  . The contents of Storrs Hall passed to his great

Fig.  . Elevations of the service wing of Storrs Hall showing the proposed heightening on conversion into a hotel, drawn by Joseph Pattinson,  . Cumbria Record Office (Kendal).

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Fig.  . Plan of the first floor of the service wing of Storrs Hall showing its proposed conversion to hotel use, drawn by Joseph Pattinson,  . Cumbria Record Office (Kendal).

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Fig.  . Plan of the second floor of the service wing of Storrs Hall showing its proposed conversion to hotel use, drawn by Joseph Pattinson,  . Cumbria Record Office (Kendal).

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Fig.  . Ground-floor plan of Storrs Hall Hotel from Particulars of Sale,  . Cumbria Record Office (Kendal). nephew, Edwin Wilfred Greenwood, but the hall and The Storrs Estate was sold in  not to a single lands were entailed to the Littledale side of the purchaser but in lots. Storrs Hall was conveyed to family . They, however, gained little benefit from their Benjamin Townson of Barrow-in-Furness on inheritance. Harold Littledale died on  March  ,  March  . It was empty at the time of the  his son, also Harold, dying a bachelor on  April census, but in May  the Windermere architect  . After a court case, the estate passed to two Joseph Pattinson surveyed much of the building in beneficiaries, and the Storrs Estate was advertised readiness for its conversion into a hotel, working up for sale by auction in London on  August  .  designs for the heightening of the whole service wing The ‘Particulars and Conditions of Sale’, into a substantial three-storey block with service accompanied by an estate map surveyed in  , note rooms as well as guest and staff accommodation the house as ‘by far the most important and (Figs.  – ).  Storrs Hall Hotel opened that year, best appointed residence in the whole district’. before conversion of the wing was complete, and The rooms, all of them listed in the Particulars, when advertised for sale in  it contained fifty-six were still essentially those of John Bolton’s house, bedrooms as well as other public and private rooms. only one, a billiard room, perhaps dating from The ground-floor plan of the hotel in the  Sale Staniforth’s time. The grounds included Storrs Particulars (Fig.  ) shows how the rooms on that Temple with a private pier and boat landing, kitchen floor had been put to new uses, with some rooms in gardens, stabling for sixteen horses, numerous the main block of the house subdivided and minor cottages for servants, gardeners, etc., as well as a additions made to the service wing to create a carriage drive nearly two miles long through the full Billiard Room and Refreshment Room. On the first length of the estate. The estate was favourable for game and second floors of the service wing, Pattinson’s and yachting facilities were claimed to be unrivalled. plans show that he created a block of five self- Low House was the home farm, and Middle Farm, contained servants’ bedrooms and thirty-three letting The Yews and other cottages were tenanted. bedrooms, with five water closets, three bathrooms

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Fig.  . Engraving of Storrs Hall Hotel published in  .

and two rooms with house maids’ sinks, on the ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS remodelled first and second floors. There had also I should like to thank Allan Adams, Keith Buck, been considerable investment in its grounds, which Adam Menuge, Simon Taylor and Nicola Wray, included tennis courts, a bowling green, an archery colleagues in RCHME, now English Heritage, for and croquet ground. Tennis courts and the enlarged their parts in recording Storrs Hall. Les Hindle and wing are shown on an engraving published in  Richard Livock gave permission to record Storrs (Fig.  ).  There was also the steamer pier of the Hall, where Nigel Lawrence assisted subsequent Furness Railway Company, which gave direct investigation, Sir Oliver Scott gave permission to communication with their station at Lake Side, at the record Lower Lodge, and Robert Maxwell of the southern end of Windermere.  National Trust assisted with access to Storrs Temple. The  auction was unsuccessful, since the Research was greatly helped by the knowledge of hotel was put up for auction again in  . John Borron, Sir Howard Colvin, Richard Hall, Some land north and south of the hotel had been Richard Hewlings, David Kinsman, Sir Charles sold in the intervening period to G H Pattinson, and Legard, Mrs D R Matthews, Margaret Richardson, was developed as building land, but the hotel was Ian St John and the late Robert Woof. The Trustees finally sold in  to two local hoteliers. It was of Sir John Soane’s Museum, National Monuments purchased by North British Hotels in  who, after Record (English Heritage), and Cumbria Record a public appeal in  , restored Storrs Temple and Office (Kendal) gave permission to publish material presented it to the National Trust. The hotel in their collections. was sold in the mid  s, and after extensive renovation in  – it re-opened as a country mansion hotel known as Storrs Hall, its ambience restored to a standard last seen in the era of John and Elizabeth Bolton.

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NOTES John Martin Robinson, A Guide to the Country  There is an extensive literature on the ‘discovery’ of Houses of the North West , London,  ,  –; the Lake District in the later eighteenth and early Angus Taylor, ‘Compulsive Lakeland Builder: nineteenth centuries. A concise summary is contained Joseph Pocklington  – ’, Country Life , in Esther Moir, The Discovery of Britain: The English September   ,  –; Angus Taylor, ‘ “More Tourists , London,  ,  – , while the fullest Vile Taste…”: The Pocklington Brothers and their general study, inaccurate on points of detail, is Buildings’, Country Life , May   ,  –. Norman Nicholson, The Lakers: the adventures of the  Taylor, op.cit .,  – ; Robinson, op.cit ., passim; First Tourists , London,  . A number of exhibitions J. Mordaunt Crook, The Rise of the Nouveaux in the  s covered the theme, with a particular Riches , London,  , esp. Chapter , ‘Privilege and emphasis on aesthetic developments, including Peter the picturesque: New Money in the Lake District, Bicknell and Robert Woof (eds.), The Discovery of the  – ’,  – . Lake District  – . A context for Wordsworth ,  Thomas West, A Guide to the Lakes, in Cumberland, Grasmere,  and John Murdoch, The Discovery of Westmorland, and Lancashire , th edn., London, the Lake District. A Northern Arcadia and its Uses ,  ,  –, footnote. The fifth edition of West, London,  . A more recent study is contained in published in  , has no such footnote. Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque ,  Information on Sir John Legard, unless otherwise Stanford,  ,  – . referenced, is taken from Colonel Sir James Digby  James Clarke’s eleven maps, first published in  , Legard, The Legards of Anlaby & Ganton: Their were reissued in  and  [Peter Bicknell, The Neighbours & Neighbourhood , London,  ,  –. Picturesque Scenery of the Lake District  – . The date of death given in this book [p.  ] is  , A Bibliographical Study , Winchester,  ,  –], whereas R S Boumphrey, C R Hudlestone and J whilst Peter Crosthwaite’s seven maps of the Lakes Hughes, An Armorial for Westmorland and came out during the  s, most of them in  , Lonsdale , Carlisle,  ,  , give it as  . The and were successively revised and republished Parish Register of St Mary’s Church, Sunbury-on- [Ibid.,  –; Alan Hankinson, The Regatta Men , Thames, held in the church, records the burial of Milnthorpe,  ]. The most popular early Guides Sir John Legard of Gunton ( sic ), aged  years, on were those by Thomas West, William Gilpin and  July  . William Wordsworth [Bicknell, op. cit.,  –,  –,  The portrait of Sir John Legard by George Romney,  – ]. for which he sat in March  [Humphry Ward and  Quoted in Moir, op.cit. ,  . W. Roberts, Romney. A biographical and critical essay  Storrs Hall was investigated in  by the Royal with a Catalogue Raisonné of his works , II, London, Commission on the Historical Monuments of  ,  ], and which is reproduced in Legard, op. England (since April  part of English Heritage), cit. , opp.  , hangs in Scampston Hall, North during the renovation of the building prior to its re- Yorkshire, where there is also a portrait by Opie. opening as a country mansion hotel. This article is  Boumphrey, Hudlestone and Hughes, op.cit .,  . based on, but takes forward, the interpretation  Legard, op. cit. ,  –; John Ingamells, Dictionary of included in Ian Goodall and Simon Taylor, ‘Storrs British and Irish Travellers in Italy,  – , Hall, Windermere, Cumbria’, BF No.  , New Haven and London,  ,  . Architectural Investigation Reports and Papers  Legard, op.cit .,  . B/  / [copy deposited in the National  Ibid .,  . Monuments Record Centre, Swindon].  James Clarke, A Map of the Southern part of the  I am grateful to Dr Blake Tyson for information Lake Winandermere and its Environs. Surveyed by about Thomas English’s background. James Clarke. Published Feby.  th  .  Adam Menuge, ‘Belle Isle, Windermere, Cumbria’,  Peter Barfoot and John Wilkes, The Universal British RCHME Historic Building Report, BF No.  , Directory of Trade, Commerce, and Manufacture ,  [copy deposited in the National Monuments London,  , reprinted with Foreword and Index by Record Centre, Swindon]. Clive Williams-Jones, Castle Rising,  , II,  .  Christopher D. Taylor, Portrait of Windermere ,  Peter Crosthwaite, An Accurate Map of the Grand London,  ; Hankinson, op.cit ., – and  – ; Lake of Windermere, being the largest in England,

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situate in Westmorland and Lancashire , London, situate in Westmorland and Lancashire , London,  .  .  Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce,  John Housman, A Descriptive Tour, and Guide to The Life of William Wilberforce , II, London,  , the Lakes, Caves, Mountains, and other Natural  . William Wilberforce (  – ), life-long Curiosities, in Cumberland, Westmorland, campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade, born Lancashire, and a Part of The West Riding of at Hull, elected M.P. for the town in  and for Yorkshire , nd edn., Carlisle,  ,  . Yorkshire in  , is likely to have known Sir John  Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Legard as a fellow landowner in the East Riding of Architects  – , New Haven and London,  , the county. Wilberforce had known the Lake District  ; Brian Wragg (ed. Giles Worsley), The Life and since the late  s, having toured there in  , Work of John Carr , Otley,  ,  ,  ,  –.  and  [C.E. Wrangham (ed.), Journey to the  Myerscough, op. cit. , –,  –. Lake District from Cambridge,  . A diary written  ‘Mr Dixon’ was Jeremiah Dixon, who, in the late by William Wilberforce, undergraduate of St John’s eighteenth century, had purchased and enlarged Fell College, Cambridge , Stocksfield,  ,  ]. For much Foot at the southern end of the east shore of of the  s, from  until spring  , he rented Windermere. Dixon, a Leeds merchant, was on the Rayrigg Hall, on the banks of Windermere, Committee of Leeds General Infirmary, built to Carr’s immediately north of Bowness, residing there when design in  – , and was Lord Mayor of the city in released from parliamentary attendance  –. Carr is said to have designed his town house [Wilberforce and Wilberforce, op. cit., I,  –, in Boar Lane, Leeds, in  , and possibly Gledhow  – ,  – ]. Wilberforce had met the Bishop of Hall, Leeds, which he built in  –. No architect is Llandaff before, the latter having stayed at Rayrigg known for the work at Fell Foot, and the house has in  [Ibid ., I,  ], his house at nearby Calgarth been demolished [Robinson, op. cit. ,  ; Colvin, Park not being built until  [Christopher D. op. cit. ,  – ; National Trust, Fell Foot Park & Taylor, op. cit. ,  ; Robinson op. cit. ,  ]. Garden , London,  ; Wragg (ed. Worsley), op. cit. ,  The daughters were Maria and Lucy: Maria had  ,  –]. married in August  and Lucy was to marry in  Angus Taylor (ed. Janet Martin), ‘The Websters of March  [Legard, op. cit. ,  ]. Kendal. A north-western architectural dynasty’,  Corita Myerscough (ed.), Uncle John Carr. The Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Diaries of his Great-nieces, Harriet and Amelia Archaeological Society Record Series, XVII,  ,  , Clark , York,  , – ,  . In  the party did  , ill. . not pass the site of Storrs Hall since they approached  Fell Foot, as noted above, stood at the south end of the Lake District from Kendal, continuing on to Windermere, and it was the subject of another of Bowness before travelling north to Ambleside and Mary Dixon’s oil paintings, reproduced in National beyond. The  reference to Sir John Legard is to Trust, op. cit. , . Storrs Hall, that to Mr Dixon is to Fell Foot.  The painting, in a private collection, is also  West, op. cit. ,  – (footnote). reproduced in Robert Woof, ‘The Matter of Fact  William Rollinson (ed.), William Gell. A Tour in the Paradise’, in John Murdoch (ed.), The Lake District: Lakes  , Otley,  ,  . A sort of national property , Cheltenham and London,  The Lancaster Gazetteer ,  ,  and  April,  May  , plate .  .  Murdoch, Discovery, cit. ,  . The painting by John  Legard, op. cit. ,  –,  . Adèle d’Osmond, Downman of ‘A lady in a boat’, [reproduced by afterwards Comtesse de Boigne, was born in  . Murdoch, ibid.,  , illustration on p.  ; Woof, op. The d’Osmonds lost all their possessions with the cit. , plate , and Andrews, op. cit. , Fig  ], which is Revolution in France, and after accepting the dated to  , clearly shows the castellated additions hospitality of the Queen of Naples, they accepted made by the Curwens. See also Wragg (ed. Worsley), that of Sir John Legard, travelling to Ganton, which op. cit. ,  , where it is dated to c. . was their home for two years.  Gandy had been commissioned by John Bolton,  Peter Crosthwaite, An Accurate Map of the Grand who bought Storrs from David Pike Watts in  , Lake of Windermere, being the largest in England, to sketch out proposals for altering and enlarging

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the buildings there. The Sketchbook is discussed  Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts. more fully below. A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their Work  The ground and first-floor elevations of the original from its foundation in  to  , III,  ,  . house are now only visible to north and south, and,  Lukacher, D.Phil. thesis, cit. ,  , pl.  . though they are faced with sandstone ashlar, close  Colvin, op. cit. ,  – . examination of this during repair work suggested  Charlotte Kipling, ‘The commercial fisheries of that it was an applied skin which must have been Windermere’, Transactions of the Cumberland and added by John Bolton in the early nineteenth Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological century. Roughcast was also observed, at the same Society ( hereafter TCWAAS) , LXXII,  , esp.  , time, at first-floor level on the outer face of the east  – ,  – . wall of the original house.  Daphne Foskett, John Harden of Brathay Hall,  The evidence for the doorway, which survives as a  – , Kendal,  ,  . ground-floor opening, takes the form of a vault over  Philip J. Haythornthwaite, Wellington’s Military the area immediately outside it along the east side of Machine , Staplehurst,  ,  – . the house. The existence of the window is assumed,  Professor Ferrier (ed.), The Works of Professor Wilson since the wall was removed at first-floor level in the of the University of Edinburgh. Edited by his son-in- early nineteenth century. That it lit the stair hall is law, Professsor Ferrier , London,  ,  –. based on the subsequent use of this space: the  Bruce Thompson [‘A Naval Temple on structure of the present staircase is entirely early Windermere’, Country Life , November   , nineteenth century in date.  ] is circumspect, noting the Temple and  The Lancaster Gazetteer ,  April  . The boathouse as ‘both probably designed by J M advertisement, repeated in later issues of the Gandy’, but Des Hill [‘Gandy’s professional career’, newspaper, is quoted in full, and further discussed, in Summerson, Lukacher and Hill, op. cit. ,  – ], later. attributes both to Gandy, and erroneously speaks of  The stair hall was enlarged to the north, at the the boathouse as demolished. Colvin [ op. cit. ,  ], expense of the suggested dining room, and totally refers to the exhibition of Gandy’s design for a refitted in the early  th century. The service stair, boathouse in  , noting, with Thompson as his which rose from the basement below the first authority, that the Temple may be by Gandy. ascending flight of the main staircase, in a void  Engravings include that in S. Austin, J. Harwood shown on the  basement plan (Fig.  ), was also and G. & C. Pyne, Lancashire Illustrated, from re-sited at this time. original drawings , London,  , opp.  . Its  The largest bedroom, in the centre of the south omission from Mary Dixon’s oil painting (Fig. ) is front, must have been heated, but evidence for the a reflection of the practical limitations of that position of the fireplace was not visible. painting’s diminutive size, not of the presence or  The Lancaster Gazetteer ,  April  . absence of the parapet. See also Fig.  .  Ordnance Survey : map, Westmorland, Sheet  Legard, op.cit. ,  . Sir John Legard’s will, made in  and : map, Westmorland, Sheet  ., both  (transcript in Leeds, Yorkshire Archaeological surveyed  . Society: MD  /Fam  ), names his wife as  For information about J.M. Gandy see especially ‘The Catherine. In June  Joseph Farington recorded vision of J M Gandy’, in John Summerson, Heavenly that Lady Legard lived in ‘Ulverstone in Lancashire’ Mansions and other Essays on Architecture , London, [Kathryn Cave (ed.), The Diary of Joseph Farington.  , reprinted New York and London,  ,  – ; Volume XI. January  –June  , New Haven John Summerson, Brian Lukacher and Des Hill, and London,  ,  –. Joseph Michael Gandy (  – ), London,  ;  A.H., ‘David Pike Watts, Esq.’, The Gentleman’s Brian Lukacher, ‘Joseph Michael Gandy: The poetical Magazine , LXXXVI,  ,  –; R.B. Beckett (ed.), representation and mythology of architecture’, D. ‘John Constable’s Correspondence. The Family at Phil. thesis, University of Delaware,  ; Brian East Bergholt  – ’, Suffolk Records Society , Lukacher, ‘John Soane and his draughtsman Joseph IV,  ,  – ,  ; J.L. Fraser, John Constable Michael Gandy’, Daidolos , XXV,  September  ,  – . The man and his mistress , London,  ,  – ; Colvin, op.cit. ,  – .  – .

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 Foskett, op. cit. ,  makes this statement about Lakes in  ’, Country Life , April  th.,  ; Beryl Mr Worgan. David Pike Watts was a generous Clay, An Exhibition of Watercolours and Drawings dispenser of charity, and the title ‘almoner’ suggests by John Harden , London,  ]. that Mr Worgan was his instrument for this. No  The fullest accounts of Constable’s visit to the Lake further information about Mr Worgan has been District include Clay and Clay, op. cit. ; Beckett, op. located, although it may be worth noting that there cit. , –; Charles Rhyne, ‘The Drawing of Mountains: was an English family of musicians by the name of Constable’s  Lake District Tour’, in John Worgan in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Murdoch (ed.), The Lake District: A sort of national [Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of property , Cheltenham and London,  ; Graham Music and Musicians , nd edn., London,  , Reynolds, The Early Paintings and Drawings of John  –]. Richard Worgan (baptised  , died after Constable , New Haven and London,  , esp.  .  ), composer, in a letter to Arthur Young dated  Examination of The Lancaster Gazette , as the  August  , described his work as ‘the study of Lancaster Gazetteer was renamed, for  and  , Divinity Physic & farming’, and his recreation as revealed no further advertisement relating to the sale ‘Music’. He composed A Set of Sonnets [London, of Storrs Hall, which may have been advertised  ], and one of his hymns, ‘Windermere’, was elsewhere or, perhaps more likely, have been sold by included in George Worgan’s collection Gems of private treaty. For information about John Bolton see Sacred Melody , published in London in  [Sadie, Robert Casson, A Few Furness Worthies , Ulverston, op. cit. ,  ]. , ‒ ; R. Casson, ‘Biographical Sketches of  These two extracts from the diary are taken from Local Worthies. No. . Colonel Bolton’, The North Foskett, op. cit. ,  . Lonsdale Magazine and Furness Miscellany , I. ,  R.B. Beckett, ‘John Constable’s Correspondence. V. December  ,  –; Godfrey W. Mathews, ‘John Various friends, with Charles Boner and the artist’s Bolton, a Liverpool merchant,  – ’, children’, Suffolk Records Society , XI,  , . Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire  Ibid. ,  ; A.H., op. cit. ,  ; J.L. Fraser, John and Cheshire [hereafter THSLC ], XCIII,  ; Sir Constable  – . The man and his mistress , Clement W. Jones, John Bolton of Storrs  – , London,  ,  . Watts’s two sons died in  Kendal,  ; David Thomason, ‘New light on John and  , but in the latter year his daughter Mary Bolton of Storrs’, Abbot Hall Quarto , XXIV. , April married Jesse Russell of Ilam Hall, Staffordshire,  , –; David Thomason, ‘New light on John and more comfortably played the role of country Bolton of Storrs. A postscript’, Abbot Hall Quarto , squire. Watts left virtually the whole of his ample XXIV. , July  , –; David Kinsman, Black Sheep fortune to his daughter, whose husband, Jesse Watts of Windermere. A history of the St Kilda or Hebridean Russell, rebuilt Ilam Hall in  – and in  sheep , Windermere,  ,  –. erected an imposing, octagonal memorial chapel at  Mathews, op. cit. ,  . Holy Cross church, Ilam, in memory of David Pike  Portraits of John Bolton are reproduced in George Watts, which contains a marble monument by Sir S. Veich, ‘Huskisson and Liverpool’, THSLC , Francis Chantrey [A.H., op. cit. ,  ; Nikolaus LXXX,  , Fig.  and Mathews, op. cit. , opp.  . Pevsner, The Buildings of England.. Staffordshire ,  Mathews, op. cit. ,  and Jones, op. cit. ,  , give the Harmondsworth,  ,  –, pl.  .] figure of  men. Casson, Furness Worthies, cit. ,   Beckett, op. cit. , . and Casson, Biographical Sketches , cit.,  , give that  C.R. Leslie (ed. Jonathan Mayne), Memoirs of the of  men. Life of John Constable composed chiefly of his letters ,  Casson, Furness Worthies , cit. ,  .  , London,  . The text in this volume is that of  Mathews, op. cit. ,  –, lists Directory entries from the fuller second edition of Leslie’s Memoirs ,  to  . From  to  , both the Duke Street published in  . and Henry Street addresses are entered under the  Watts left behind him a good name for charitable name ‘John Bolton, merchant’; in  and  the generosity, and he was also able to furnish Counting House is ‘John Bolton & Co.’; from  to Constable with introductions to local gentry.  it is ‘Bolton & Littledale’; and from  to  Harden was an accomplished amateur draughtsman both addresses revert to just ‘John Bolton, Esq.’ A [Beryl Clay and Noel Clay, ‘Constable’s Visit to the news item entitled ‘Storrs Hall and its owners’ in

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The Westmorland Gazette ,  August  , derived presumably Legard’s equally successful boat, which from an article headed ‘Old Liverpool Firms’ in ‘a Bolton must have purchased from him. Bolton was Liverpool paper’, noted that the ‘firm of Bolton and no stranger to sailing, having crossed and re-crossed Littledale, West India merchants, flourished … and the Atlantic to and from the West Indies. during the mad cotton speculation of the year  ,  George Baillie, Interesting Letters addressed to John when cotton advanced one hundred per cent, the firm Bolton, Esq., of Liverpool, Merchant, and Colonel of held a large parcel of West India cotton’. a Regiment of Volunteers, now residing at his country  Mathews, op. cit ,  –; Jones, op. cit. ,  . seat, on the lakes in Cumberland , London,  .  [Anon.], ‘Bolton Hall, juxta Bowland, Yorkshire’, The book contains no textual reference to Storrs Gentleman’s Magazine , New Series XV, January–June Hall other than that implied in its title – although  ,  –; Thomas Dunham Whitaker, The Storrs Hall was in Westmorland, not Cumberland. History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven, in Two thousand copies of the book were published, the County of York , rd edn., Leeds and London, for distribution to booksellers in London, Bristol,  ,  ; Colvin, op. cit. ,  ; J.W. Fishwick, ‘Did Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh, this man build the Hall at Bolton?’, unreferenced cities and towns where Bolton would have most and undated newspaper article in Clitheroe Library; valued his reputation. Bolton’s response was to buy Wilf Healey, ‘Bolton Hall’, typescript notes,  , in up the bulk of the stock, which was then destroyed. Clitheroe Reference Library. Bolton Hall was Baillie died in August  , and was no longer a demolished in  , but was recorded by the Royal thorn in Bolton’s side as he established his position Commission on the Historical Monuments of in Lake District society. A copy of the  book is England on  February that year: [R.W. McDowall, held in the library of The Wordsworth Trust at RCHME Historic Building Report, ‘Bolton Hall’, Dove Cottage, Grasmere, Cumbria. BF No.  ,  [copy deposited in the National  William Green, A Description of Sixty Studies from Monuments Record Centre, Swindon]]. Nature … A General Guide to the Beauties of the  The Sketchbook, in Sir John Soane’s Museum, North of England , London,  ,  . London, contains multiple sketches of Storrs,  Edward Hall (ed.), Miss Weeton: Journal of a Windermere; St Mary’s Church, Lancaster; Governess , Oxford,  ,  , reprinted, with Lancaster Castle; Roslin Church and Chapel; and Introduction by J.J. Bagley, as Miss Weeton’s Journal single sketches of Shrewsbury Market House, of a Governess , New York,  . Melrose Abbey, Kelso Abbey and unidentified  Henry Fletcher Rigge, ‘The Harrington Tomb, in schemes [Ian Goodall and Margaret Richardson, Cartmel Priory Church’, TCWAAS , V,  ,  ; ‘A recently discovered Gandy sketchbook’, Jones, op. cit. ,  . The architect Francis Webster is Architectural History , XLIV,  ,  – . Further incorrectly cited in Rigge’s article as the architect of sketches of Roslin Castle and Chapel are included Storrs Hall; he was in fact clerk of works. in Angelo Maggi, ‘Poetic stones: Roslin Chapel in  Information from notebooks written by George Gandy’s sketchbook and Daguerre’s diorama’, Pattinson, owned by Mrs D.R. Matthews. Architectural History , XLII,  ,  – .  A spirit level, in the ownership of Mrs D.R. Matthews,  Jones, op. cit. ,  ; Taylor (ed. Martin), op. cit. ,  . is recorded as having been ‘made by George Gardner Francis Webster (  – ), builder, marble mason in  when he built Storrs Hall brick garden wall’. and architect, moved from Cartmel to Kendal in   Kathryn Cave (ed.), The Diary of Joseph Farington. and by  had established a successful architectural Volume XI. January  – June  , New Haven practice in north Lancashire and Westmorland and London,  ,  . [Taylor (ed. Martin), op. cit. , esp. – ].  The four watercolours are in a private collection.  As, for example, in Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings They are signed ‘J. Buckler  .’, and the mounts of England. Cumberland and Westmorland , are separately titled ‘North View of …’, ‘North West Harmondsworth,  ,  ; Colvin, op. cit. ,  ; View of …’ and ‘South West View of Storrs Hall, Taylor (ed. Martin), op. cit. ,  . Windermere, Westmorland; The Seat of John  Graves, op. cit. ,  . Bolton Esqre’, and ‘Lodge to Storrs Hall …’. John  The Star ,  August  . Buckler (  – ) occasionally practised as an  Quoted in Mathews, op. cit. ,  . The Victory was architect, but he is principally known for his

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topographical sketches. At the end of his life he  York, University of York, Borthwick Institute for calculated that he had made over  , sketches Archives, Prerogative Court of York, June  , Will [Colvin, op. cit. ,  –]. of John Bolton. The account of the funeral published  These are listed in the Land Tax list for Bowness in The Westmorland Gazette ,  March  , is and Undermillbeck for  ; in a number of cases reproduced in full in Mathews, op. cit. ,  – . Jones, the former owners had probably become tenant op. cit. ,  – , includes further details. farmers [Marshall, op. cit. ,  ].  John Bolton’s ill-health prevented him laying the  Kendal, Cumbria Record Office (hereafter CRO), foundation stone, which was laid instead by William WDB/  , Abstract of Title to part of the Storrs Wordsworth [Owen and Smyser, op. cit. ,  – ; Hall Estate, Windermere,  . Jones, op. cit. ,  ].  CRO, WDB/  /SP  , ‘Particulars and Conditions of  Jones op. cit. ,  –. Sale of the exceptionally valuable and important  Taylor (ed. Martin), op. cit .,  . The tablet has been freehold and customary estate known as “Storrs,” reset on the wall of Wordsworth Court, below the comprising the noble Mansion of Storrs Hall, with its site of the school. magnificent Park and Woodlands. Also the capital  Elizabeth Bolton’s details were added to those of Farms of Low House & Lindeth, with various Lands her husband on the stone slab marking the burial and Grouse Moor. The Entirety comprising an Area vault [Mathews, op. cit. ,  ; Jones, op. cit. ,  ]. Will of  Acres … To be sold by auction … by Mr of Elizabeth Bolton, cit. . Alfred Baker … on th day of August  … at The  One of the pencil field survey drawings is dated June Mart, Tokenhouse Yard, Bank of England, E.C.’.  , but the pen and ink drawings worked up from  William Green, The Tourist’s New Guide, them are neither signed nor dated [CRO, WDB/  ]. containing A Description of the Lakes, Mountains  CRO, WDB/  /SP  , ‘Particulars and Conditions of and Scenery, in Cumberland, Westmorland, and Sale of the exceptionally valuable and important Lancashire, With Some Account of their bordering freehold and customary estate known as “Storrs,” towns and villages. I , Kendal,  ,  . comprising the noble Mansion of Storrs Hall, with its  J.G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter magnificent Park and Woodlands. Also the capital Scott , VI, Edinburgh,  ,  , republished in J.G. Farms of Low House & Lindeth, with various Lands Lockhart, The Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. , and Grouse Moor. The Entirety comprising an Area London,  ,  –; Sir William Forwood, of  Acres … To be sold by Auction … by Mr Windermere and the Royal Windermere Yacht Club , Alfred Baker … on th day of August  … at The Kendal,  , unpaginated, quotes other records by Mart, Tokenhouse Yard, Bank of England, E.C.’. Scott, Lockhart and Southey, describing this event.  CRO, WDB/  , Elevations, plans and sections of  Forwood, loc. cit. . Storrs Hall.  Jones, op. cit. ,  .  The room did not, when first built, communicate  The Westmorland Gazette ,  August  , . with the other room in the wing. The carved  [John Murray], Handbook for Westmorland, wooden chimneypiece was brought in during Cumberland, and the Lakes , London,  ,  –. renovation work in  .  York, University of York, Borthwick Institute for  Jill Franklin, The Gentleman’s Country House and Archives, Prerogative Court of York, January  , its plan,  – , London,  ,  –. Will of Elizabeth Bolton.  Angus Taylor, ‘Hearths of Heat’, Country Life ,  The letter was written by Wordsworth to John January   ,  –. Kenyon in late December  [Mary Moorman, The  The ceilings in the end bays are divided by Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Arranged moulded ribs associated with piers on the walls. and edited by the late Ernest de Selincourt. nd edn. II. The south bay survives virtually unaltered, whereas The Middle Year. Part I.  – , Oxford,  , that to the north has two inserted doorways which  ]. Wordsworth’s friendship with Bolton grew curtail the piers there (Fig.  ). The walls were thereafter: he was a guest at Storrs Hall, and at originally plain: the panels and roundels on the wall Bolton’s home in Duke Street, Liverpool [W.J.B. are all of late twentieth-century date. Owen and Jane W.Smyser (eds.), The Prose Works of  Clive Wainwright et al , G eorge Bullock Cabinet- William Wordsworth. III , Oxford,  ,  – ]. Maker , London,  ,  –; Lucy Wood, ‘George

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Bullock in Birmingham and Liverpool’, in splitting up of the Storrs estate after its sale in  , Wainwright, op. cit. ,  ; Colvin, op. cit. ,  –. and the development of a series of villas. Lower Bullock also carved a bust, now lost, of John Bolton Lodge stands on Middle Entrance Drive. which was exhibited at the Liverpool Academy in  The Storrs Hall lodge bears little resemblance to any  [Timothy Stevens, ‘George Bullock: Sculptor’, of the designs for lodges which Gandy included in the in Wainwright, op. cit. ,  ]. two copybooks which he published in  , but for  Wainwright, op. cit. ,  –. See inlaid strip above foot the occasional use of decorative pilasters. All of his of cabinet on page  . designs were for single-roomed buildings, sometimes  The ‘stewards beer cellar’ is under the servants’ hall, in pairs on opposing sides of a gateway – aesthetically and the ‘coal cellars’ are under the coal house and pleasing, but impractical in practice [Gandy, Designs water closets on the north side of the open courtyard. for Cottages, cit. , plates XXXVIII–XLIII; Joseph  Photographs in the National Monuments Record Gandy, The Rural Architect; consisting of various Centre, Swindon, taken in  , as well as that designs for Country Buildings, accompanied by ground published in Thompson, op. cit. ,  , show the plans, estimates, and descriptions , London,  , parapet two planks high; after restoration it has plates XXXVII–XLII. three planks.  Gandy, Designs for Cottages, cit. , plate XLII.  The location of these two proposed buildings is  Green, Tourist’s New Guide , cit. ,  . known from internal evidence in the sketchbook  For the full, referenced account of the Storrs Hall [fols.  r and  r]. The summerhouse was intended Estate after the Boltons, see Goodall and Taylor, op. to stand on the knoll immediately north of Storrs cit. , passim . Hall, the Druidical Temple on a small island, mid-  David Kinsman, Black Sheep of Windermere. A history way between Storrs and the ferry across the lake, of the St Kilda or Hebridean sheep , Windermere, called Berkshire Island on the  and  maps  ,  –. This book also contains an account of (Figs.  and ), but called Ramp Holme on the  the history of Storrs Hall, with particular emphasis and later maps (Fig.  ). This island was given to the on the later nineteenth century [pp.  – ]. National Trust in  by Robin Bagot of Levens  CRO, WDB/  /SP  , ‘Particulars and Conditions Hall, Cumbria, having previously belonged to that of Sale of the exceptionally valuable and important estate; there is no evidence that it ever belonged to freehold and customary estate known as “Storrs,” John Bolton, and Gandy’s proposed Druidical comprising the noble Mansion of Storrs Hall, with Temple would seem to have been a flight of fancy. its magnificent Park and Woodlands. Also the  Colvin, op. cit. ,  –. capital Farms of Low House & Lindeth, with  Howard Colvin, J. Mordaunt Crook and Terry various Lands and Grouse Moor. The Entirety Friedman (eds.), Architectural Drawings from comprising an Area of  Acres … To be sold by Lowther Castle, Westmorland , Society of Architectural Auction … by Mr Alfred Baker … on th day of Historians of Great Britain, Monograph No. , August  … at The Mart, Tokenhouse Yard,  ,  . Bank of England, E.C.’.  Green, Tourist’s New Guide , cit. ,  .  CRO, WDB/  , Elevations, plans and sections of  Joseph Gandy, Designs for Cottages, Cottage Farms, Storrs Hall. and other Rural Buildings; including Entrance  Casson, Biographical Sketches, cit. ,  . Gates and Lodges , London,  , Plate I. The  CRO, WDB/  , ‘Particulars, Plans, and Conditions designs for lodges [plates XXXVIII–XLIII] are of Sale of the valuable freehold estate consisting of a idiosyncratic, some quite fanciful. high-class residential hotel known as the Storrs Hall  As noted above, Gandy had spoken to Joseph Hotel … for sale by auction … at The Storrs Hall Farington in  about having built Storrs Hall for Hotel on  th August  ’. John Bolton, and the lodge was either be part of his  CRO, WD/BLT  , ‘Particulars, Plan and remodelling for Bolton or a later commission. The Conditions of Sale of the valuable freehold high depiction of the two lodges may be artistic licence, class residential hotel known as The Storrs Hall and might have been done with Bolton’s Hotel, Otherwise “The Grand Hotel” … for sale by encouragement. auction … at the Storrs Hall Hotel, Windermere, on  The changes to the road pattern followed the th May  ’.

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XV 