Eileen Harris, ‘Jacobites and Horses at Nuthall Temple’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. XX, 2012, pp. 77–86 TEXT © THE AUTHORS 2012 JACOBITES AND HORSES AT NUTHALL TEMPLE EILEEN HARRIS uried under the M motorway lie the charred Thomas Wright of Durham, philomath and teacher Bremains of Nuthall Temple (Fig. ), the last and of mathematics, astronomy, drawing and surveying to largest of the four Palladian Rotunda villas built in a close-knit circle of aristocrats who, having him on England in the eighteenth century: Mereworth the spot for months at a time as a resident tutor and Castle in Kent (Fig. ), designed by Colen Campbell friend, took the opportunity to consult him on around – for The Hon. John Fane, later improving, embellishing and modernising their seventh Earl of Westmorland; Lord Burlington’s houses, parks and gardens. Chiswick House, circa – (Figs. & ); and It was entirely by chance, by accident not by Foot’s Cray Place, also in Kent (Fig. ), designed by intention, that Wright became an architect. He was a Daniel Garrett around – for Bourchier Cleeve competent and exceptionally inventive amateur with and demolished in . an innate ability as a draughtsman. But he was not a Whereas the first three villas were within easy professional designer of buildings. Nor, in fact, was reach of London, Nuthall was in the Midlands, on he an orthodox Palladian, as can be seen from the the outskirts of Nottingham. It was begun in for Six Original Designs of Arbours and Six Original Sir Charles Sedley, second Baronet, to designs by Designs of Grottos which he published in and Fig. Nuthall Temple, Notts, entrance front. THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XX JACOBITES AND HORSES AT NUTHALL TEMPLE Fig. Mereworth Castle, Kent, entrance front. respectively, and from the garden front and which the fourth Duke of Beaufort was president interior of Nuthall Temple (Figs. & ). How did from until his death in . Sedley come to commission an amateur like Wright Beaufort, whom the Tories regarded as ‘the head to design him a new house at Nuthall, and why did it of their party’, was a prominent supporter of have to be so manifestly Italianate? Frederick, Prince of Wales; a ‘most determined and The link between Sedley and Wright was unwavering Jacobite’; and one of the chief ‘Remitters’ probably forged around or by Charles Noel who collected money for the Pretender. He and Somerset, fourth Duke of Beaufort, who at the time John Fane, seventh Earl of Westmorland, were was Wright’s principal patron at Badminton. Sedley’s foremost among the English Jacobites who met with association with Beaufort was mainly political, Prince Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, during following close upon his election as Tory MP for his clandestine visit to London in September . Nottingham in May and his leading role in the The Earl (who succeeded in ) – a member of the Jacobite demonstration at the Lichfield races in August leading Whig family of Kent and one of Cobham’s of that year. In Sedley was made a member of ‘cubs’ – turned vehemently against the Government the Honourable Board of the Loyal Brotherhood, a in and became a zealous Tory and Jacobite in high-Tory drinking club with Jacobite leanings of retaliation for his dismissal from the army without THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XX JACOBITES AND HORSES AT NUTHALL TEMPLE compensation for voting in favour of an increase of Thomas Wright is not part of the political the Prince of Wales’s allowance. equation spelled out above. Unfortunately, however, The Palladian villa built for John Fane at his mumbo jumbo fans are bound to add Jacobitism Mereworth was about eleven miles from Scadbury to freemasonry which they have beaten to death to Manor, near Southfleet, which was the ancient seat of little or no avail. Having identified the fourth Duke the Sedley family from the fourteenth century until of Beaufort as the person who introduced Sedley to when Sir Charles Sedley’s mother (Elizabeth Thomas Wright, and the seventh Earl of Westmorland Frith) inherited Nuthall. It was in a house at Oxton, and his villa at Mereworth as the source of the idea – some ten miles from Nuthall, that Sir Charles was just the idea , nothing more – of building a Palladian born in and where he lived – not at Scadbury in Rotunda villa, I now want to look in some detail at the Kent. It was probably to commemorate the Sedley architecture of Nuthall Temple, the only complete family’s ancient Kent origins in their comparatively and substantial house designed by Wright. new Nottingham estate and, at the same time, to Unlike the conventional ‘Rotunda’ villas of proclaim his own Tory-Jacobite allegiance that Sir Mereworth and Foot’s Cray, Nuthall was based on Charles decided to build a distinctive Palladian villa Scamozzi rather than Palladio: in particular on like that of his senior cohort, the Earl of Westmorland, Scamozzi’s Villa Rocca Pisana in Lonigo near Vicenza at Mereworth (Fig. ). How Foot’s Cray Place (Fig. ), (Fig. ) and Villa Molini near Padua (Fig. ). From situated between Scadbury and Mereworth, fits into La Rocca Pisana Wright took the octagonal dome, but the picture remains a tantalizing mystery which I hope unusually set it within a balustraded viewing platform to solve in future by pursuing its elusive builder, and fenestrated it with eight tripartite openings (Fig. ). Bourchier Cleeve. Although La Rocca Pisana also gave him the authority Fig. Foot’s Cray Place, Kent. Engraving after Samuel Wale in Dodsley’s London & its environs described , . THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XX JACOBITES AND HORSES AT NUTHALL TEMPLE Fig. Vincenzo Scamozzi, Villa Rocca Pisana, plan and Fig. Vincenzo Scamozzi,Villa Molini, plan and elevation, L’idea della architettura universal , . elevation, L’idea della architettura universal , . for the portico in antis, his broad, hexastyle portico is Edward Lovett Pearce, a cousin and protégé of Sir closer to Molini’s hexastyle loggia, as were the flanking John Vanbrugh (Fig. ). This sketch is part of a pedimented windows. The rusticated basement and collection of Pearce and Vanbrugh drawings (now at the attic storey were also inspired by Molini. the V&A) which was once at Stillorgan House near Lord Burlington’s Scamozzian villa at Chiswick Dublin where it was quite likely to have been seen by was bound to come into the picture. Its octagonal Thomas Wright when he was in Ireland from to Lower Tribune with eight free-standing Tuscan , its owner, Joshua, second Viscount Allen of columns (Fig. ) evidently appealed to Wright and Stillorgan, being one of his patrons. Sedley more than the circular halls of the Italian The balustraded walkway surrounding the dome villas. The small vestibule preceding the hall at was one of five vantage points from which the hunt Nuthall, though wider than the `Rotunda’ – like and the exercising of Sedley’s seventy-two race passage at Chiswick, would nonetheless have greatly horses could be watched (Figs. & ): the portico enhanced the experience of entering the tall, top-lit, in antis was one, another was the balustraded roof of richly decorated central space with its eight free- the semicircular bow on the garden front, and there standing Composite columns (Figs. & ). were also two fairly large, single-storey extensions A similar configuration of spaces – portico-in- (containing kitchens and offices) on either side of the antis, small vestibule and octagonal hall – appears in villa whose flat, balustraded roofs were accessible a sketch-plan of a villa by the Irish architect Sir from the first-floor reception rooms through French THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XX JACOBITES AND HORSES AT NUTHALL TEMPLE Fig. (above). Chiswick, elevation of the entrance front. Drawing by Henry Flitcroft, probably for William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones , , vol. I, pl. Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement (Boy [ ] ). Fig. (right). Chiswick, plan of the basement floor. Drawing by Henry Flitcroft probably for William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones , , vol. I, pl. Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement (Boy [] ). THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XX JACOBITES AND HORSES AT NUTHALL TEMPLE Fig. Nuthall Temple, plan of the principal floor. Engraving in Woolfe & Gandon’s Vitruvius Britannicus , IV, pl. . Fig. (above). Sir Edward Lovett Pearce, Sketch-plan of a villa (detail). Victoria and Albert Museum . THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XX JACOBITES AND HORSES AT NUTHALL TEMPLE Fig. (right). Andrea Palladio, Villa Almerico ‘La Rotunda’, plan, half elevation and half section. Woodcut in I Quattro libri dell’architettura , bk II, . windows. What the source of these unusual lateral villa comparable to Mereworth with maximum viewing platforms was, I do not know. The profile provision for viewing his favourite equestrian sports. of the perrons on Palladio’s Villa Rotunda might However, the Italianate-Scamozzian display was only have suggested the idea (Fig. ); so too might the wanted on the principal front. Elsewhere, on the single-storey platforms flanking the north front of garden front and in the interior, Wright had much Badminton House which were used for viewing the more freedom of choice and it was to English rather stag hunts across the park. They were, of course, than Italian precedents that he looked. well known to Wright and would have been of The most distinctive feature of the west-facing interest to Sedley. garden front (Fig. ) was its central, open-base Whatever its sources, Wright’s executed designs pediment framing a two-storey semicircular bow with for Nuthall Temple – published by Woolfe and a Venetian window above, which gave access to the Gandon in Vitruvius Britannicus IV in – were a flat roof as a viewing point. The Venetian windows on perfect solution to Sedley’s demands for an Italianate the piano nobile on either side of the bow were inserted THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XX JACOBITES AND HORSES AT NUTHALL TEMPLE Fig.