Ann-Marie Akehurst, ‘Hawksmoor, Obelisk Language and the Campagna’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xIX, 2011, pp. 1–16

text © the authors 2011 NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR, ‘OBELISK LANGUAGE’ AND THE YORKSHIRE CAMPAGNA

ANN - MARIE AKEHURST

A monumental obelisk, erected in  for the Mayor ( of Studley Royal) and Corporation of to the design of Nicholas Hawksmoor, is situated in the centre of the market place there. This article asks why Hawksmoor selected an obelisk form. It locates the project in a wider cultural context and argues that the obelisk represents an early attempt to construct a rhetorical landscape. The choice of form and location signified not only Aislabie’s political ambitions but also memorialised King William III and signified a wider and deeper local connection with the past.

‘The oldest free-standing monumental obelisk in these islands still to survive’ is situated in the centre of the market place in Ripon, .  An article by Richard Hewlings in Architectural History ( ) detailed the building history of the monument, which was erected in  as a market cross for the Mayor , John Aislabie of Studley Royal (  – ) and the Corporation of Ripon, to the design of  Nicholas Hawksmoor. Thomas Gent described it Fig. . The Ripon Obelisk, designed by Nicholas in  : Hawksmoor in  , from Thomas Gent’s The Antient and Modern History of the Loyal town of Rippon () ‘ […] this year the Market Place at Rippon was new [ ] p.  . paved, and adorn’d with an Obelisk, one of the Finest in , of Free Stone,  feet high. The spindle (on which is the Star, Horn and Flower-De-Luce) is fortunes of Aislabie through his association with the six feet long. All which cost  l.  s. d.’ (Fig. ) improvement of Ripon. He asserted that most of the subscribers were unaware of funerary symbolism of Hewlings set its construction in the context of a the obelisk form and that it was erected in an scheme for developing the whole market place into a ‘iconological void’.  Giles Worsley suggested that type of Roman forum. He argued that its erection Hawksmoor initiated an ‘obelisk craze’ with its was used a vehicle for promoting the political erection.  In his recent monograph on Hawksmoor –

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Fig. . ‘The Church and Gothick Steeple of Allhallows in the Pavement; with the Market Cross before it’, from Francis Drake’s (London,  ), plate facing p.  .

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIX  NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR , ‘ OBELISK LANGUAGE ’ AND THE YORKSHIRE CAMPAGNA and in the context of obelisk construction – Vaughan ‘ OBELISK LANGUAGE ’ Hart stresses Hawksmoor’s ‘concern to understand It is not known how Hawksmoor came to be asked the original historical meaning and symbolic purpose by Ripon Corporation to design a new market cross behind his vocabulary of forms’.  The present article for their town. The most likely connection is that assumes a dynamic and slippery relation between Hawksmoor was working at with form and meaning; it examines the importance of the Vanbrugh for the third Earl of Carlisle from  , monument and asks why Hawksmoor selected an and would have been familiar with the regional obelisk form. It also complements and extends sensibility characterised below as the desire to evoke Hewlings’ article by locating the building of the the Roman Campagna. It is not the intention to monument within the wider cultural context of early rehearse a detailed construction history of the Ripon modern Yorkshire. obelisk, so thoroughly documented by Richard Obelisks, monuments derived from Antique Hewlings, but to argue that Hawksmoor’s choice of an funerary and commemorative models, and other innovative architectural form was sensitive to timing intermediate structures erected in the vicinity of York and cultural context. Hawksmoor was ‘perfectly – formerly Eboracum – articulated a relationship skill’d in the history of Architecture’,  and the between the past and the present, signalling a obelisk was a response to an increasingly influential rhetorical landscape, both urban and rural, which antiquarian vision articulated in Yorkshire histories. was in part – but not exclusively – a reimagined In the archives the monument is referred to Roman Yorkshire, drawing parallels between a continuously as the ‘Ripon Cross.’  Hewlings argued shared historical grandeur and current relative that this nomenclature shows that the iconological decline.  The early modern notion of a Yorkshire significance of its form was not in the forefront of the Campagna helps contextualise work conducted by commissioners’ minds since it was understood by Hawksmoor, Aislabie and others as a self-conscious the majority to have emerged from the local tradition linking of existing remains with the creation of of building market crosses in prosperous seventeenth - modern tributes, while proposing a moral dimension century Yorkshire towns. Yet the opening words of that may account for why the Romanising of the the earliest letter from Hawksmoor reflect his Yorkshire landscape was embraced enthusiastically punctilious character: ‘I have drawn this obelisk to and at such an early date. Neil Levine emphasised the most exact antient symmetry’.  While this refers the primacy of nearby Castle Howard in the creation to the precision of Hawksmoor’s projected dimensions of remote focal points on an extensive landscape that of the monument, Hawksmoor did not make decisions generates ‘a spatial nexus in which the beholder must lightly and was well aware of the symbolic content of assume a new subjective stance and thus a much his design. Hawksmoor represents another cultural more personal and active role in the determination cadre; the architecturally literate practitioners of of meaning’.  He claimed that this break with design who articulated a complementary visual dialect. previous modes of generating architectural meaning Hawksmoor derived inspiration from his extensive was initiated in the erection of Vanbrugh’s obelisk reading: in this instance funerary monuments from there in  . This article argues that the Ripon pagan Antiquity, and Constantinian and early obelisk is an earlier attempt to construct such a Christian architecture seem to have played a part, as rhetorical landscape. we shall see.  Alongside estimates for the obelisk, the archive bundle includes ‘An Estimate of the Doome’  which Hewlings calculated would have produced ‘a circular

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIX  NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR , ‘ OBELISK LANGUAGE ’ AND THE YORKSHIRE CAMPAGNA peripteral temple, with a stepped dome supporting a figure on a pedestal’.  It is likely this design was also influenced by the local context – a market cross in the form of a peripteral Ionic hall with a shallow domed roof, surmounted by an octagonal lantern, located in Pavement, York, described by the historian Francis Drake (bap.  , d.  ),  as being built at a date before  : ‘Being a square dome, ascended into by a pair of winding , and supported by twelve pillars of the Ionick order, but ill executed’.  (Fig. ) By  June  , however, Aislabie had signed the articles of agreement to erect an obelisk.  In a fragmentary letter Hawksmoor alludes to a lack of familiarity of the craftsmen with this new architectural form: ‘I ask your Pardon for not taking time enough to degest these Instructions fearing I may put you to some difficulty of understanding my Obelisk Language. ’  To those versed in architectural history the obelisk form was part of a classical lexicon requiring interpretation. What Hawksmoor understood by ‘Obelisk Language’ is illuminated in his pamphlet The Explanation of the Obelisk held at Blenheim.  Hawksmoor regarded the obelisk as an appropriate monument for military heroes, to mark ‘the Virtues and Actions of great and illustrious men’. They were associated with great Roman emperors: Trajan, ‘one of the best of the Roman Emperours’ Fig. . Nicholas Hawksmoor, unexecuted design for the Ripon Obelisk. [sic. ], and Constantine, who ‘set one up at Rome’. Archive Service, Leeds, The decision to reject the ‘doome’ in favour of WYL  , envelope VR  ( /). the obelisk must have been in part coloured by the timing of the scheme for just over a month before Hawksmoor’s first recorded letter to Aisabie, on Works at from  to  , the King’s  March,  /, King William III died.  This contribution to which – some £  , – was three surmise would seem to be supported by the clearest times that of the next most generous benefactor.  of the three drawings in Hawksmoor’s hand.  (Fig. ) Hawksmoor designed an equestrian monument as a This first design with the prominent Garter motto – mausoleum for William III that remained unexecuted, which was not executed – suggests that there was a confirming that Hawksmoor acknowledged the distinctly regal colour to Hawksmoor’s original monarch’s martial heroism.  Indeed, his initial intentions. Hawksmoor had good reason to be design for the Ripon obelisk spoke directly to its grateful to the dead King. He had been Clerk of Works audiences since it included an inscription that he at Kensington Palace from   and was Clerk of recognized may not be well received: ‘I humbly ask

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIX  NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR , ‘ OBELISK LANGUAGE ’ AND THE YORKSHIRE CAMPAGNA your pardon for the inscriptions, for I intend no was created through the architectural form and its more in ‘em but to show where the inscriptions context. Hewlings has observed that Aislabie’s self- usually were’.  It is interesting to speculate on the consciously archaic idiom, in particular the phrase: dedication that was not included. ‘in foro Columnam’ is suggestive of his understanding There would have been some support in Ripon that the obelisk was envisioned as part of a Romanising for King William, who was locally known to have development which was to include a paved forum been a personally courageous monarch. In  and the erection of a symbol of civic authority – the Christopher Wyvill, Dean of Ripon, prompted the pillory.  The subsequent population of the county congregation to be grateful to the King, ‘who hath with monuments that were redolent of the Campagna hazarded his Royal Person and Life in the Defence, confirms Hewlings’ interpretation, but there is an and for the Honour of our Church and Nation’ ;  additional reason why Hawksmoor chose to design and October  saw a ‘Loyal address from the an obelisk for Ripon. corporation, the JPs of the liberty and other gentlemen and freeholders, to the king’.  So the late King William’s stature as a military hero was one factor in the decision to erect an obelisk, and for some ISURIUM Yorkshire gentlemen, architects and antiquarians The obelisk stands in the market square, which was who understood this newly articulated architectural understood to be a kind of paved forum, close to language, the obelisk can be understood as a patriotic Ripon Minster. Daniel Defoe proclaimed: memorial in addition to an expression of civic pride ‘The market place is the finest and most beautiful and a tangible symbol of Aislabie’s active patronage. square that is to be seen of its kind in England. In the A letter to Aislabie from Cornelius Barker, the middle of it stands a curious column of stone, Clerk of Works, indicates that the scheme had been imitating the obelisks of the antients, tho’ not so high, locally controversial: ‘the form is very well approved but rather like a pillar in the middle of Covent Garden; or that in Lincoln’s Inn, with dials also upon it’.  on, and our Obelisk now begins to get ye applause of its enemeys’.  Whether the cause of opposition was It has been suggested that the obelisk represents a an intended Royal dedication is not known, but in reflection of the original spires on Ripon Minster that Aislabie’s papers – and in his hand – the replacement were removed between  – , thus reaffirming Latin inscription exists in two forms.  Aislabie, as an architectural presence which had been lost in the the patron, prevailed and Hawksmoor was unlikely to recent past which would have had local resonances.  object since he was paid for this commission,  and Hawksmoor’s Explanation of the Obelisk because he needed to keep Aislabie’s good opinion. described how: Hawksmoor was currently involved in a controversy  ‘That Obelisk at Rome (Now in ye place of St John concerning the quality of the work at Greenwich. Lateran […] was brought from Thebes (in Egypt) to He must have been anxious that nothing was found Alexandria by , afterwards amiss by the parliamentary inspectors, and his desire brought to Rome by Constantius and set up there. to secure the committee’s good opinion, through The Goths when they burnt Rome overturn’d this Aislabie’s intervention, is documented in his letter to Obelisk, and broke it into  pieces Anno: D:  . Sixtus Quintus the Pope set it up again where it Still Aislabie dated  April  . In the event all was well. remains in the Piazza of St Jno Lateran.’  Aislabie’s obelisk inscriptions, like those of earlier market crosses, spoke directly of the local benefactors The act of constructing an obelisk in a square and Aislabie’s mayoralty, but an additional inflection adjacent to an important Christian church was a self-

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Fig. . ‘The South-East Prospect of Rippon’, from Samuel Buck’s A Collection of Views of the Cities and Chief Towns of England [London], [  – ],  vols, , (  ).

conscious re-enactment of the actions of Constantine accounts ascribed Isurium to Boroughbridge and whose importance to Yorkshire will be discussed its satellite village Aldborough, seven miles closer below. The relation between the two structures was to York on the Roman road.  A great deal of apparent from a great distance: two prospect views, antiquarian energy was expended investigating the from Thomas Gent  and Samuel Buck  (Fig. ) course of Roman roads; Thomas Hearne asserted underline the effect of the obelisk on the Ripon that planned to drain the Fens and skyline. The polite market town nestles between the construct ‘the Appian Way though them’.  Drake massive Ripon Minster and the slender obelisk – included an engraving of ‘The Roman Roads in the symbols of its ecclesiastical and corporate authority. County of York’ that he dedicated to the Society of While to our eyes the Minster is patently a mediaeval Antiquaries.  (Fig. ) The Roman roads radiated Gothic structure, the eighteenth-century gaze differed. from Eboracum in dynamic avenues of occupation For Alexander Pope Gothic and Classical were and the map included the location of some of the new interchangeable signifiers of the past; he speculated Romanising estates being constructed at Rokeby, about ‘planting an old Gothic cathedral, or rather Londesborough and Bramham. The map significantly some old Roman temple, in trees’.  The obelisk was does not include Ripon, and Drake dismissed simultaneously a modern market cross, a memorial Salmon’s assertion that it was Isurium in his text;  and an acknowledgment of Ripon’s heritage. however, from William Camden’s Britannia onwards There was some debate in antiquarian circles as it was known that Boroughbridge – located en route to the historic importance of Ripon, and at least one from Cateractonium (Catterick) to Eboracum – bore authority believed the town to have Roman origins. considerable evidence of Roman settlement.  Nathanael Salmon, (  – ) equated it with the Camden identified ‘four huge stones of pyramidal important Roman town of Isurium.  More accurate form’ there as being a ‘Roman trophy raised by the

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Fig. . ‘The Roman Roads in the County of York’ from Francis Drake’s Eboracum (London,  ), plate facing p.  . highway’.  Drake devoted a great deal of space to planned grand axial vistas. In Yorkshire we see the these pseudo-obelisks that flank the Roman road start of an expression of this preoccupation on a and had them engraved ‘lest time should at length wider scale. overthrow and destroy these stupendous In the light of the belief that Ripon may have had monuments of Antiquity’.  (Fig. ) Roman origins, the proximity to authentic obelisks Hawksmoor was also familiar with Renaissance scattered across the landscape, and the presence of a architectural theory; the writings of Alberti, not only monumental Minster, Hawksmoor was exercising the concerning the use of ornament, but also with regard same sensitivity to context that he was to demonstrate to town planning; and Pope Sixtus V’s reordering throughout his career, such as at Beverley Minster in of sixteenth-century Rome along axial models,  . There he effected repairs and refitted the influenced his landscape schemes.  His unexecuted interior with a mixture of Gothic and Classical plans for and Cambridge responded to this styling, with the help of William Etty, who had been organizing principle whereby space was articulated contracted to build the Ripon obelisk.  So, as at through the creation of vistas and the careful Beverley, the Ripon obelisk also signified continuity positioning of monuments. At Greenwich he also with the past in addition to its other interpretations.

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Chiswick Gardens: ‘On those Roman uplands of North Yorkshire, I believe, Carlisle took a considered decision from  to the making of his Anglo-Roman Campagna’.  While these influences are unmistakable, something more nuanced was afoot than a direct imitation, for this allusive landscape – as in the case of Ripon – linked private and shared associations, and the present with the past. It has been argued that Edmund Gibson’s  edition of William Camden’s Britannia was the stimulus for the renaissance in interest in British Roman ,  accelerated by the sense that Britain, north and south of ’s Wall, was, for the first time since the Roman occupation, united by the  Act of Union. But York’s ancient role as a Roman had been recognised in the discovery of a sarcophagus in February  / . Antiquarian interest in Yorkshire’s archaeological remains can be documented from at least the second quarter of the seventeenth century when Sir (c.  – ),  then the Recorder of the City of York, delivered an address to King Charles II in  , Fig. . ‘The Obelisks at Boroughbridge’, from Francis in which he extolled the city’s grand imperial past.  Drake’s Eboracum (London,  ), plate facing p.  . Widdrington stressed the primacy of Eboracum as ‘the chief Seat and Court of the Emperors in Britain’.  EBORACUM AND THE YORKSHIRE The continuous occupation of York from the first CAMPAGNA century had left a rich legacy of material remains, and The obelisk can be more fully understood by placing the building activity – a feature of the early modern it in a wider cultural and ideological context. The English urban renaissance – resulted in fragments of extensive county of Yorkshire is home to many of the the county’s past, including Roman ones, being earliest examples of Classical architectural design. disinterred.  Widdrington had seen a Roman altar, For Giles Worsley the Castle Howard landscape discovered in  , in a cellar in York.  Knowledge represented ‘the deliberate desire to recall, even of this inscribed stone was widespread among the recapture, Antiquity, and specifically the Roman intellectually curious antiquarian community Campagna’.  He recognised that the archaeological concerned with material culture in Restoration recovery of the remains of Roman Antiquity in Yorkshire.  Martin Lister (  – ),  a Fellow of England had a direct influence on architectural the Royal Society and eventually its vice-president, design, pushing back the origins of neo-Classicism lived in York between  and  where he to the start of the eighteenth century and arguing gathered an informal grouping of antiquarians, artists that patrons intended to reconstruct Roman remains. and natural philosophers known collectively as the The notion has gained support more recently from York Virtuosi.  Lister’s circle included Ralph John Harris’s discussion of influences on Burlington’s Thoresby, (  – ),  the antiquarian author of

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Ducatus Leodiensis, or, The Topography of Leedes identification made from the Restoration onwards ( ), and Thomas Gale, (  /– ),  sometime between some members of the contemporary ruling Dean of York, father of a dynasty of antiquarians and elite and their august predecessors.  This knowledge a prolific author. Lister wrote to the Royal Society was widely rehearsed in gazetteers.  regarding finds in York.  In  – the year of the The York histories are coloured by a nostalgic obelisk’s construction – a dedication tablet bearing tone that articulated an acute sense of relative the inscription GENIO LOCI FELICITER was decline. Widdrington regretfully opined that ‘the dial discovered while a cellar was being dug.  of this city hath a long time gone backward, and This devotion to the spirit of the place resonated many special pieces of antiquities are already with another distinct circle – Yorkshire gentlemen – mouldered dust’.  The most extensive expression for their land was scattered with Roman remains. In of this yearning is to be found in Francis Drake’s the same year, Thoresby notified the Royal Society magisterial county history of York, Eboracum: or the of a Roman Town discovered near Leeds where they History and Antiquities of the City of York, from its had found the remains of houses, statues, pillars, original to the present times ( ), – a model of millstones and an aqueduct.  There was also rational and erudite endeavour imbued with intense evidence of burials, urns and funerary monuments. longing. Drake’s second chapter – in excess of Thoresby described a network of military Roman  , words – concerns ‘The State of the City roads that traversed the region, one so prominent under the Roman government in Britain’.  It blends that Camden had asserted that he never saw ‘in any evidence of archaeological fieldwork by antiquarians, part of England so manifest a token as here [Bramham including himself, with literary sources from Antiquity Moor Road]’.  and contemporary scholarship, including that of the Antiquarian writing was critical in constructing Royal Society, to construct York as the pre-eminent a shared understanding of the artefacts for these Roman city in Britannia. He evokes the Roman overlapping audiences of the landowners, virtuosi concept of Civitas – applicable to Eboracum – which and architectural patrons and designers. Before  , ‘does not only denote a city, but a place, people, Yorkshire was a focus for an unusually high constitution, custom, laws, religion, and everything concentration of urban histories,  and close reading annexed to its jurisdiction, within the whole of them reveals an expression of a particular province’.  So Drake includes a detailed account enduring sensibility. Widdrington, who was MP for of much of York’s hinterland and connects the York in the late seventeenth century, composed topography of Rome and Eboracum: ‘what is on the Analecta Eboracensia at some point around  . west side of the River Ouse with us seems to agree He recounted how the Emperor Severus, who had also with the old Transtyberium of Rome’.  erected a palace in Eboracum, was cremated in Alongside empirical archaeological extrapolation Acomb, west of York. Emperor Drake conjures an image of Eboracum when ‘our city died in York after having ‘laid good beginnings for shone in full lustre […] the height of sublunary the introduction of Christianity’,  and ‘Constantine grandeur’,  and he evokes the pageantry at the the Great […] was first saluted Emperor in this place, apotheosis of Constantius Chlorus.  Eboracum and, as some conjecture, born here’.  Widdrington’s becomes a metonym for Rome in Britannia – an eulogy of Constantine is unstinting in its praise.  understanding reinforced with the description of the This accepted association of Yorkshire with the acclamation of Constantine, which ‘gives me reason origins of the Christianising of the to call it here once again Altera Roma’.  In the was crucial in morally validating the intense absence of concrete evidence that Constantine was a

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Fig. . Castle Howard and its monuments, from Thomas Gent’s The Antient and Modern History of the Loyal town of Rippon (York) [  ] Preface, p. iii.

Yorkshireman, Drake concludes ‘that if the birth of during the Civil War, and Drake’s identification with Constantine cannot be clearly made out, York has Rome extended to the ruinous present as well as the more to say for it than any other city in the world’.  glorious past.  He lamented: ‘Rome is still in Italy, The identification of York with Rome extended and Eboracum is York; but alas! How mutilated from from the city to its Roman occupiers: Drake surmised both their former states may be easily conjectured’.  that legionaries based in York over the course of For some then there was a shared imperative to three hundred years must have had cause to marry memorialise the putative birthplace of the Christian with the local population and therefore this should Roman Empire through a restoration of the vanished ‘make a York man proud of his decent’.  Thus the glories of Imperial Britain, and to stimulate such people of Yorkshire embodied a direct line of reimagining there were traces of the Roman succession – an important concept especially for a occupation still inscribed on the palimpsest of the class for whom genealogy was a key tool in landscape. Drake identified burial places in the city, establishing social identity. Drake animated noble and told of how Severus was commemorated by the events that took place there,  and the direct construction of three tumuli on the outskirts of association with the great Christianiser of the Roman Eboracum.  Drake and Widdrington were not alone Empire legitimated the deep resonance with the in lamenting York’s past glories: Heneage Dering Roman past by investing it with a moral dimension. ( – ),  the sometime Dean of Ripon, Drake was acutely aware – almost embarrassed – published Reliquiæ Eboracenses – a lively narrative that few substantial vestiges of ‘Roman grandeur’ poem set during the Roman occupation of Yorkshire remained.  The city of York had been badly damaged that combines topographical references with animated

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Roman personalities.  Such an imaginative response a key in the creation of local identity, so equally to the known facts of the importance of Eboracum were the monumental remains of monastic Yorkshire found expression not only on the page but also on in the countryside, and the seat of the Primate at the ground. . Thomas Gent’s The Antient and Modern History of the Loyal town of Rippon [ ] commences with a Preface surmounted – rather unexpectedly – with a view of Castle Howard. (Fig. ) This is surprising VIA APPIA since Castle Howard is forty miles from Ripon. The architectural parterre, shown in Gent’s woodcut, In the view a radiant sun is flanked to the left by the and the Pyramid Gate joined Vanbrugh’s Castle pedimented garden front of the house, surmounted Howard obelisk, during the  s and  s. by its distinctive dome, which dominates the image, Vanbrugh’s correspondence regarding the positioning and to the right by Ray Wood – the strikingly informal of these structures in  makes it clear that they garden. The foreground is crowded with monuments formed a part of his overall scheme for the house.  from the estate; there among the Temple Belvedere, While Vanbrugh was the designer, the man on the the Mausoleum and the Pyramid cenotaph, is ‘a small ground in Yorkshire was William Etty, Clerk of plantation of obelisks’.  The woodcut suggests a Works at Castle Howard. Eventually obelisks forty landscape densely populated with memorials and feet high were erected around an Ionic pillar of fifty overlooked by the Classical cupola of the house. feet and interspersed with lead statuary and urns – Gent’s history of Ripon was conceived as a all contributing to the memorialising element of the complementary extension to his Antient and Modern landscape.  The Belvedere Temple was followed by History of the Famous City of York published three Hawkmoor’s Pyramid, erected by Etty,  the Temple years earlier.  Perplexingly, he also includes in of Venus (since demolished) and the Mausoleum.  Ripon’s history, a description of the York Assembly As the visitor approached Castle Howard from York, Rooms: a ‘Palace of Delight, founded by the Maecenas along the avenue, which should be understood as a of the Age’;  an account of Beverley, its Minster and continuation of Roman road making, they were the repairs that were recently conducted upon its confronted with the Carrmire Gate. While its central fabric by Hawksmoor; and descriptions of other local focus is loosely reminiscent of the Tomb of Porsenna, antiquities across the county. To the modern reader its flanking towers evoke nothing so forcefully as the this all seems evidence of his eccentric – even chaotic Roman Multangular Tower in York, which was – method, yet Gent’s work is not so disordered at it published by the Royal Society in  and, for a might first appear, for both the collocation of these later generation, in Eboracum.  (Fig. ) The monumental forms, derived from classical Antiquity conflation of actual and literary, Antique, mediaeval and Renaissance Rome, and the topographical and Gothic sources articulated continuity with the slippage which permits Castle Howard to front a text past informed by the antiquarian vision shared by which is notionally about Ripon – are indicative of architectural practitioners and classically educated the intensely-lived imagination shared by some of the patrons. As Levine has argued, the rhyming of forms culturally engaged which permitted Gent’s easy and the monumental scale invited the beholder to movement between towns since they were all part of derive personal and contingent meaning by moving the Yorkshire Campagna. This was not an exclusive across the landscape.  vision however, for while the Roman occupation John Aislabie responded to the same cultural was one focus in the antiquarian local histories, and influences at Studley Royal near Ripon.  Peter

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIX  NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR , ‘ OBELISK LANGUAGE ’ AND THE YORKSHIRE CAMPAGNA

Fig. . ‘A Roman Tower and Wall in York’, from Francis Drake’s Eboracum (London,  ), plate facing p.  .

Aram’s Virgilian Eclogue ‘Studley Park’ self- movement through a landscape which evoked a half- consciously avoided topographical description in remembered longed-for past and resonated with a favour of a poetic evocation of an Arcadia, inspired rich cultural heritage across an extensive landscape. by the ‘Genius of the Place’, populated with nymphs Arthur Young described the effect of happening and muses, and presided over by a Christian deity. It upon the avenue aligned on Ripon Minster: ‘You rise recreates a dynamic rather than pictorial engagement to the command of a vast prospect of distant country. with the landscape, taking the form of a perambulation The town of Rippon and its minster is seen in the around the park, pleasure gardens and wider estate, centre of a finely cultivated and well peopled vale’.  at points punctuated by reflections on the seasons, The start of that avenue was originally marked by a country pursuits and the passage of time. The sixty foot high stepped pyramid – like the Tomb of relationship between Studley Royal and Ripon was Mausolus at Halicarnassus – now replaced by an visual, historical and intimate: obelisk and obscured by trees and St Mary’s Church  ‘No Rippon, Thee the Muse shall not forget, at Studley Royal. Young recorded other obelisks Proud to be Neighbour to this beauteous Seat: in the garden and ‘upon the edge of this bank of Thy Domes and Towers in pleas’d Confusion rise, wood stands the Roman monument, the model of View’d from two Avenues, they meet our Eyes, that erected to the Horatii and Curiatii’.  Aislabie’s And greet the Prospect from the Paradise original landscape was populated, like Lord Carlisle’s, Plac’d in rich Soil, and a salubrious Air’.  with an eclectic range of forms derived from the past, The ‘pleas’d Confusion’ of the monuments suggests including funerary monuments. Both men planted not a linear equivalence between the remnants of the far-reaching avenues, like Roman roads, and a past and the present understanding but a fluid collocation of monuments whose architectural form

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIX  NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR , ‘ OBELISK LANGUAGE ’ AND THE YORKSHIRE CAMPAGNA was derived from Antiquity that had the effect, in NOTES part, of evoking, for those schooled in architectural  Richard Hewlings, ‘Ripon’s Forum Populi’, history, the Appian Way. Yet Studley was also linked Architectural History ,  ( ), p.  .  Stuart Handley, ‘Aislabie, John (  – )’, Oxford dialectically to Ripon – the seat of Aislabie’s Dictionary of National Biography ), online edn. personal political influence and an ancient Christian (hereafter ODNB online), accessed  September community.  . An antiquarian vision of the past conditioned  Kerry Downes, ‘Hawksmoor, Nicholas (  ?–  )’, Gent’s prefacing the history of Ripon with an image ODNB online, accessed  June  .  Thomas Gent, The Antient and Modern History of of Castle Howard as an expression of a reimagined the Loyal town of Rippon (York) [  ], p.  . local history that included, but was not limited to,  Hewlings, op. cit. p.  . He has since comprehensively Roman Antiquity in the Yorkshire Campagna. demonstrated the importance of meaning. See ‘The Hawksmoor and others continued to articulate the Link Room at House: Lord Burlington as Yorkshire landscape for the following half century antiquarian’, Apollo , CXLI (January  ), pp.  –; ‘Chiswick House and Gardens: Appearance and with monuments that commemorate personalities Meaning’, in Jane Clark and Toby Barnard (eds.), and events from recent memory while evoking a Lord Burlington: Architecture and Politics , (London deeper understanding of the place. Yorkshire & Rio Grande,  ), pp. – ; ‘Chiswick House: gentlemen and architects were not rebuilding the recent historiography’, in Franco Barbieri, Donata Roman Campagna. Rather, an understanding of Battilotti and Guido Beltramini (eds.), Palladio  – : Il Simposio del Cinquecentenario architectural history, local tradition, the scenographic (,  ), pp.  – ; ‘England’s Palladio’, qualities of their projects and the overall relationship Country Life , January  ,  , pp.  –. between them evoked a memory of place – at once  Giles Worsley, ‘After Ye Antique’: Vanbrugh, personal and shared – and a moral warning regarding Hawksmoor and Kent’, in Christopher Ridgeway the mutability of human life and of Empires. and Robert Williams (eds.), Sir John Vanbrugh and Landscape Architecture in Baroque England  – (Stroud,  ), p.  .  Vaughan Hart, Nicholas Hawksmoor: Rebuilding Ancient Wonders (London,  ), p.  . ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS  I am here extending Diana Balmori’s category: see This article was prompted by a public lecture of the ‘Architecture, Landscape and the Intermediate same title – but not content – given to Ripon Civic Structure: Eighteenth-Century Experiments in Mediation’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Society in April  . The staff at the North Historians (JSAH),  , No.  (March  ), p.  . Yorkshire County Record Office and at the West  Neil Levine, ‘Castle Howard and the Emergence of Yorkshire Archive Service have been knowledgeable the Modern Architectural Subject’, JSAH,  , No.  and patient with my queries. Thanks are due to Alex (September,  ), pp.  – . Akehurst for her assistance with Latin transcription,  Ibid., p.  .  Letter from Hawksmoor to Howard dated and I am grateful for the generously offered comments Henderskelfe,  May  reproduced in Kerry of John Harris, Dr Richard Hewlings and James Jago. Downes, Hawksmoor (London,  ), Appendix A, My thinking was prompted in discussions with pp.  – . Professor Christopher Norton, Dr Matthew Walker,  Nathaniel Blackerby, Obituary Notice for Nicholas Frances Sands and History of Art students from the Hawksmoor, Read’s Weekly Journal ,  March  , reproduced in Downes, op. cit., p. . throughout a field trip to Castle  North Yorkshire Country Record Office (henceforth Howard, and as ever, my thanks go in particular to NYCRO), Ripon City District Council Records Dr Anthony Geraghty.  – , DC/RIC; MIC  (Ripon Corporation

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIX  NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR , ‘ OBELISK LANGUAGE ’ AND THE YORKSHIRE CAMPAGNA

Minute Book,  / –  / ). For the subscription  WYAS, WYL  / ( /), Letter from list for the market cross or obelisk, see pp.  – ; Cornelius Barker to the Worshipfull John Aislabie West Yorkshire Archive Service (henceforth WYAS) Esquire a Member of Parliament, , WYL  (Vyner of Studley Royal, Family and Estate dated Ripon  November  . Archive); WYAS, WYL  / ( /) Bundle  The text of the relevant inscription runs: Solutis plus envelope VR  ( /) Drawing of Obelisk. hoc Anno in manus Johannis Aislabie Majoris/  WYAS, WYL  / ( /), Letter from Nicholas Quinquaginta libris quas ad extruendam in foro Hawksmoor to John Aislabie,  April  . Columnam/Ex testamento dedit Guliebrius Gibson,  Downes, op. cit., p.  – ; Hart, op. cit., pp.  – . hujus Burgi/Modo Aldermannus:/Rev mus in Xto  WYAS, WYL  / ( /), An Estimate of the Pater Johannes Archiepus Ebor/Ex Summa Sua in Doome to be Erected on Ripon Markett Place May hume Burgum gratia et munificentia/ Quinquaginta ye  :  . Libras operi addi dedicariq jussit./In cujus Rei  Hewlings, op. cit., p.  . Exemplum, inter alios benefactores/quorum nomina  C. Bernard L. Barr, ‘Drake, Francis (bap.  , Subscribuntur, Rev di admodum Decanus et Capit d.  )’, ODNB online, accessed  Dec  . [illeg.]/Ecclesia Collegiatae de Ripon Viginti Libras  Francis Drake, Eboracum: or the History and Impendebant./Johannes Ingleby Bar tus –  : : Antiquities of the City of York, from its original to the /Ec. /Hic impensis et auspicijs[illeg.] ad Tantam present times (London,  ), p.  . molem Surgit Obeliscus/Curante Joh. Aislabie  WYAS, WYL  / ( /), Articles of Majore/ . Agreement,  June,  .  Ibid ., Note on the verso of a memorandum to self  Ibid. , Hawksmoor, undated fragmentary letter. by John Aislabie, includes reminders ‘to write to  Blenheim, Long Library, portfolio ‘Inscriptions of my uncle Ingram; to write to sister Betty; to pay Blenheim I’; No.  F. The full text can be found in Mr Hawksmoor’. Downes, op cit. , pp.  – .  Hawksmoor, (  ) op. cit., p.  .  Tony Claydon, ‘William III and II (  – )’,  WYAS, WYL  / ( /), Letter from Nicholas ODNB online, accessed  September  . Hawksmoor at to John Aislabie, dated  WYAS WYL  / ( /) Bundle plus envelope  April  : ‘I take the liberty to tell you that the VR  ( /) Drawing of Obelisk. Committee of Parliament will visit Greenwich  Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of hospital next Tuesday in the morning and wish your British Architects  – (New Haven & London, affairs would permit you to be there. I shall desire  ), p.  . nothing of you relating to my character but what  Nicholas Hawksmoor, Remarks on the Founding you find just and honourable so far I entrust your and Carrying on the Buildings of the Royal Hospital patronage’. Hawksmoor subsequently recorded: at Greenwich, (London,  ), p.  . ‘The Committee, instead of finding Things as  Downes, op. cit. For work executed for King represented, in a very bad Condition; on the William III, see p.  – ; for the mausoleum, p.  contrary, found every Thing right and well to their and plate  b. Satisfaction, which was reported accordingly’,  WYAS, WYL  / ( /), Letter from Nicholas Hawksmoor, (  ), op. cit., p.  . Hawksmoor at Whitehall to John Aislabie, dated  Hewlings, op. cit., pp.  – .  April  .  Daniel Defoe, A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great  Christopher Wyvill, D.D., A sermon preach’d in the Britain (London [  ]), III, p.  . Collegiate-Church of Ripon, on Sunday  of  I am grateful to James Jago for this idea. See Daniel September,  , for the Right Worshipful the mayor, King, Cathedrall and Conventuall Churches of Recorder, and Aldermen and other inhabitants of the England and (London,  ), plate  . Town of Ripon (London,  ).  Hawksmoor, Obelisk, op. cit.  NYCRO, DC/RIC (Ripon Corporation Minute  Gent, op. cit., Frontispiece. Books), MIC  / ., Loyal address dated  Samuel Buck, A Collection of Views of the Cities and  October in the thirteenth year of the Reign of Chief Towns of England [London], [  – ], II. William III (  ). The engraving is dated  .

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIX  NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR , ‘ OBELISK LANGUAGE ’ AND THE YORKSHIRE CAMPAGNA

 Alexander Pope recorded in Joseph Spence  Widdrington, op. cit., p. xxiii. Observations, Anecdotes and Characters of Books and  Ibid ., p.  . Men (Oxford,  ), cited in Cinzia Maria Sicca,  Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance ‘Lord Burlington at Chiswick: Architecture and  – (Oxford,  ). Landscape’, Garden History ,  , no.  ( ), p.  .  Widdrington, op. cit., p.  .  W. Raymond Powell, ‘Salmon, Nathanael (  –  Caine’s footnote states the altar was recorded in  )’, ODNB online, accessed  September  . Camden’s  edition of Britannia, that it rested  Nathanael Salmon , A New Survey of England, for some time in Widdrington’s own home in wherein the Defects of Camden are Supplied ( parts, Lendal, and that it that it was published in ‘Hook’s  –, this edn  ), II, pp.  – ,  – . [sic. ] Philosophical Collections of  ’.  Thomas Hearne, ‘A Discourse Concerning some  J. D. Woodley, ‘Lister, Martin (bap.  , d.  )’, Antiquities found in Yorkshire’, The itinerary of ODNB online, accessed  June  . John Leland the Antiquary (Oxford,  ), p.  .  J. T. Brighton, ‘Henry Giles and the York Virtuosi’,  Hearne, op. cit., p. . York Historian,  ( ); R. J. Malden, ‘Elusive  Drake, op. cit., plate facing p.  . Virtuosi – Thomas and Joshua Mann’, York  Ibid., p.  . Historian,  ( ); Richard Green, York Through  William Camden, Britannia (London,  ), the Eyes of the Artist, (York,  ), p. . p.  – ; Drake, op. cit., pp.  – .  P. E. Kell, ‘Thoresby, Ralph (  – )’, ODNB  Camden, op. cit., p.  . online, accessed  June  .  Drake, op. cit., plate facing p.  .  Nicholas Doggett, ‘Gale, Thomas (  /– )’,  For planning, see Howard Colvin, Unbuilt Oxford ODNB online, accessed  Jan . (London,  ) pp.  – ; for Rome, Hart, op. cit .,  ‘Roman Urns and other Antiquities near York’, pp.  – ; for Greenwich see Downes, op. cit., Royal Society, Philosophical Collections ( ), p.  ; pp.  – ; Hart, op. cit. pp.  – . also ‘An Account of a Roman Monument Found in  WYAS, WYL  / ( /) Articles of agreement the Bishoprick of Durham, and of Some Roman dated  June,  . William Etty, a carpenter, was Antiquities at York’, Royal Society, Philosophical simultaneously being paid as ‘Surveyor’ at Castle Transactions ,  ( ), pp.  – , and ‘Some Howard where he had day-to-day oversight of the Observations upon the of a Roman Wall and works. See Charles Saumarez Smith, The Building Multangular Tower at York’, ibid., pp.  – . of Castle Howard , (London,  ), pp.  ,  .  Ralph Thoresby, ‘A Letter from Mr Ralph Samuel Carpenter also worked at Ripon and at Thoresby, FRS, concerning a Roman inscription Castle Howard, p.  . Gent , op. cit., pp.  – ; lately found at York’, Royal Society, Philosophical For an account of the restorations see Ivan Hall, Transactions,  ( ), pp.  – . ‘The First Georgian Restoration of Beverley Minster’  Ralph Thoresby, ‘Letter from Mr Thoresby F.R.S. Georgian Group Journal ( ), pp.  – . to the Publisher concerning the Vestigia of a Roman  Giles Worsley, in Britain: Town Lately Discovered near Leedes [ sic. ] in The Heroic Age , (London,  ), pp.  – . Yorkshire’, Royal Society, Philosophical Transactions,  John Harris, ‘Is Chiswick a “Palladian” Garden?’,  , (  ), pp.  – . Garden History,  , No  (Spring,  ), pp.  – ,  Thoresby (  ) op. cit., p.  . (p.  ). Sir Richard Temple, the primary  Rosemary Sweet, The Writing of Urban Histories in contemporary authority on ancient Rome, visited Eighteenth-Century England, (Oxford,  ), Castle Howard at an early date (ex. inf. John Harris). Appendix A, p.  .  Rosemary Sweet, Antiquaries: The Discovery of the  Widdrington, op. cit., p.  . Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain, (London,  ),  Ibid., p.  . For a fuller account, see pp.  – . pp.  – .  Widdrington, op. cit., p.  .  Thomas Widdrington, Analecta Eboracensia, ed.  Despite being unpublished, Widdrington’s Caesar Caine (London,  ), p.  , n. . manuscript would have had some local exposure  David Scott, ‘Widdrington, Sir Thomas ( c.  – since such chronicles were consumed privately by  )’, ODNB online, accessed  June  ]. the social elite and there were multiple copies of the

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIX  NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR , ‘ OBELISK LANGUAGE ’ AND THE YORKSHIRE CAMPAGNA

manuscript lodged with members of the family and (London,  ), p.  . William Freeman described other members of the Yorkshire gentry, see Sweet the parterre as ‘almost filled with obelisks’, MS ( ), op. cit. , p.  . For the location of the copies diary (  ), Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, of Widdrington’s manuscript see Widdrington, cited in Harris, op. cit., n.  . op. cit. pp. xi–xix.  Thomas Gent, The Antient and Modern History of  Guy Miège, The New State of England, under our the Famous City of York [York,  ]. Present monarch K. William III , (London,  ),  Gent [ ], p. xiii. pp.  – ; William Howell, Medulla historiæ  Saumarez Smith, op. cit., p.  . Anglicanæ (London  ) p.  .  Ibid ., p.  .  Thomas Widdrington, ‘Letter to the Lord Mayor of  Ibid ., p.  . the City of York, and the Aldermen, Sheriffs,  Ibid., p.  . common-council and citizens of the same city’,  For Porsenna see Hart, op. cit., p.  ; for the attached to Analecta Eboracensia and published in multangular tower see Royal Society, op. cit.,  , Drake (  ), pp. lxxxiv–lxxxv. ( ), pp.  – .  Drake, op. cit., pp. – .  Levine, op. cit., p.  .  Ibid., p. .  Hussey identified him as one of the most sensitive  Ibid., p. . to architectural history and to place. op. cit., p.  .  Ibid., p.  .  Peter Aram ‘Studley Park’, in Gent [  ], p.  .  Ibid., p.  .  Arthur Young, A Six Months’ Tour through the  Ibid., p.  . North of England (London [  ]), II, p.  .  Ibid., p.  . Graham Parry recovers the early  See details of this Scheduled Ancient Monument at: modern antiquarian ‘conviction that Constantine http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-  - was Britain’s most important contribution to the the-obelisk-approximately-  -metres-west. For destiny of the West’ in his The Trophies of Time: Hawksmoor’s use of Halicarnassus see Hart, op. cit., English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century p.  ;  – . (Oxford,  , this edn  ), p.  .  Young, Tour, p.  – . See http://www.britishlisted  Drake, op. cit., p. . buildings.co.uk/en-  -the-devils-chimney-on-  Ibid., p.  . north-cliff-top-ov The current name, the Devil’s  Ibid., p.  . Chimney, evokes the mausoleum to the Horatii and  Christopher Woodward, In Ruins (London,  ), Curiatii but the National Trust Guidebook pp. – . and Studley Royal (text on Studley  Drake, op. cit., p.  . Royal by Lydia Greeves) suggests that it has lost the  Ibid., p.  . ‘four tall pinnacles’ which originally surmounted it,  C. Bernard L. Barr, ‘Dering, Heneage (  – )’, which is suggestive of the Tomb of Porsenna. For an ODNB online, accessed  September  . image from John Greave’s Pyramidographia: or a  Heneage Dering, Reliquiæ Eboracenses, (York [  ]). description of the pyramids in Egypt ( ) see Hart,  Lord Oxford’s chaplain, cited in Christopher op. cit., p.  ; for Wren’s reconstruction, p.  . Hussey, English Gardens and Landscapes  –

THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIX 