Bianca de Divitiis, ‘Plans, elevations and perspective views of Pitzhanger Manor-House’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. XIV, 2004, pp. 55–74 TEXT © THE AUTHORS 2004 PLANS, ELEVATIONS AND PERSPECTIVE VIEWS OF PITZHANGER MANOR-HOUS E BIANCA DE DIVITIIS t the beginning of John Soane published the mock ruins which Soane had built in the garden APlans, Elevations and Perspective Views of between and . Pitzhanger Manor House, and of the Ruins of an Dance’s wing was the only part of the property edifice of Roman Architecture … in a letter to a friend acquired by Soane in which he decided not to . Formed of eight pages of text and twelve demolish or modify, not only because in his judgement illustrations, this was a work on the suburban villa in it deserved to be kept in comparison with the rest of Ealing which he had designed and built for himself the building which lacked ‘symmetry and character’, and his family between and . Thirty years but also because it was a testimonial to the beginning had therefore passed since Soane had designed of his career, as it was the first project on which he Pitzhanger, and over twenty since he had sold the had worked when, as a boy of fifteen, he had first villa in to a General Cameron. His reasons for assisted his master (Fig. ). publishing a work on Pitzhanger and the way in As early as , only two years after the new which he described it are the subject of this article. house had been completed, and possibly encouraged The title of the work would imply that Soane was by the need to carry out some alterations and publishing materials produced in . In reality maintenance works, Soane had designed some both the text and the images were almost entirely changes to Dance’s wing which were never realized, created in for the publication, and on closer at first reducing its length and then transforming the examination both the plates and the descriptive text shortened south side into a bombé front (Figs. on Pitzhanger show significant differences from the and ). In seven years had passed since Dance original project of thirty years earlier. The publication had died, and Soane possibly felt more at liberty to gave Soane an opportunity to re-design some parts make improvements openly to his master’s work. In of his original villa and to update it by applying new his opinion, in order to ‘remove the defects of the ideas. Over sixty preparatory drawings for the twelve exterior, and make it, in some degree, harmonise with final plates were produced during the second half of the character of the interior’, it was necessary to by Charles James Richardson, Soane’s last extend the front of the edifice by adding corner pupil, who subsequently became his assistant. turrets. In his text Soane also suggested that the Richardson’s work was not confined to his usual traditional hospitality of the ‘old Manor-house’ could tasks of drawing the preparatory watercolours for the be evoked by then wainscoting the turrets with lithographic prints and transferring them onto stone; English oak. Although he referred explicitly to the in this case he helped Soane to re-design Pitzhanger, accompanying plates, the drawings in the publication by modifying the two-storey wing built by Soane’s did not in fact correspond completely to Soane’s text. first master, George Dance, in as an extension to As may be seen in the plans of Plate IV and in the two the pre-existing Gurnell family house, together with external views of the house in Plate V and VIII, THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIV PLANS , ELEVATIONS AND PERSPECTIVE VIEWS OF PITZHANGER MANOR - HOUSE Fig. Office of John Soane, Pitzhanger Manor, front elevation, March , showing George Dance’s wing unaltered. Sir John Soane’s Museum, // . Soane added an extra bay at the south end of Dance’s Richardson would become a few years later one wing, where turrets are suggested by the addition of of the leading experts and promoters of sixteenth- attics, imitating a Tudor appearance, and repeated on century English architecture, and it is probable that each of the four corners of the edifice (Figs. and ). he played a major role both in the conception and in But the version selected by Soane was only one of the the execution of these two proposals in which the three possibilities prepared by Richardson on this emphasis on the towers adds a castle-like silhouette theme; the two views and the plans of the various to Dance’s wing, characteristic of the Elizabethan floors contained in vol. in the Soane Museum style seemingly recalled in Soane’s text, but lost in show two further hypotheses which correspond more the published images. Soane’s text had in fact been closely to Soane’s text. In the view of the entrance printed by James Moyes two months before the front and in the corresponding plans (Figs. and ) images were drawn on the lithographic stone by two turrets as tall as the building are shown at the Richardson (and subsequently printed by Charles corners: their distinctiveness is emphasized by pairs Ingrey): therefore Soane had had plenty of time to of continuous strip pilasters at the edges and by change his mind, and he chose a version for the crowning colonettes and pinnacles, which seem to illustrations closer to his style. evoke those of Longleat. A variation on this theme is While it is possible to interpret these alterations represented in the view of the rear of the building as an attempt on Soane’s part to modify Pitzhanger (Fig. ) where, almost like gatehouse towers, the two in line with contemporary trends in English turrets on the north side flank a large entrance arch. architecture, they are very different from the changes THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIV PLANS , ELEVATIONS AND PERSPECTIVE VIEWS OF PITZHANGER MANOR - HOUSE Fig. Office of John Soane, Pitzhanger Manor, view from the south-east, showing George Dance’s wing shortened, with a bombé front. Sir John Soane’s Museum . Fig. Office of John Soane, Pitzhanger Manor, basement plan, October ( ?), showing George Dance’s wing shortened, with a bombé front. Sir John Soane’s Museum, // . THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIV PLANS , ELEVATIONS AND PERSPECTIVE VIEWS OF PITZHANGER MANOR - HOUSE Fig. John Soane, Plans, Elevations and perspective Views of Pitzhanger Manor- house , London, , plate IV, plans showing George Dance’s wing with the addition of one bay. Fig. John Soane, Plans, Elevations and perspective Views of Pitzhanger Manor-house , London, , plate VIII, view of the rear of the house, showing George Dance’s wing with the addition of one bay. THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XIV PLANS , ELEVATIONS AND PERSPECTIVE VIEWS OF PITZHANGER MANOR - HOUSE which he proposed in . Then he had wanted the suburban villa of Pitzhanger to speak of him more clearly than any book could do; he himself had described the façade as his self-portrait. He had furthermore designed his new house as the centre of a symmetrical design – between the actual surviving building to the south, Dance’s wing, and the artificial ancient remains to the north, the ruins. In such a plan for the building, which saw it as a vehicle for Soane’s desire for social and professional legitimation, no longer had the same meaning. By trying to give Dance’s wing the appearance of a Tudor fortress-dwelling, Soane seems to have wanted not only to invent a further episode in the history of Pitzhanger, but also to widen its narrative value by absorbing its original autobiographical significance into a reflection and summary of changes in architecture over time. With the same synthetic approach to architectural history which he showed in the construction of the Pasticcio in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where the capital from the Fig. Charles James Richardson, Pitzhanger Manor, Round Temple in Tivoli is placed on top of a Hindu basement, ground and first-floor plans, showing the one, or in the different names he gave to the various first proposed alterations to George Dance’s wing. spaces in the house-museum (Champs Elysées, Sir John Soane’s Museum, Vol. /. Tivoli Corner, Monk’s Parlour), in these images of Pitzhanger Soane assembled in sequence latter under Henry VIII and his redistribution of the different episodes, both real and invented, in the their lands, thanks to which Pitzhanger became the history of the house and thus transformed it into the private property of a lord. This difference between expression not only of the classical architectural the written accounts, separated by over thirty years, tradition but also of the national one. which Soane gives of the ruins can also be found in This approach is also seen in the description of their design, for, if Dance’s wing was partially the ruins which Soane prepared for the publication modified, the artificial ruins and their hypothetical and which makes no reference to the various reconstructions were totally redesigned for the manuscripts he produced between and for publication. the entertainment of his guests. As part of his Soane had built the ruins to the north of his new attempt to invent a tradition for Pitzhanger he relates villa, at the opposite end to Dance’s wing, in an area the long history lying behind the artificial ruins in which he had succeeded in clearing by demolishing the garden. In they were the vestiges of Roman part of the original service wing and by extending the magnificence; in they tell the story of all the boundary wall by means of an enclosure.