notes & queries john harris, ‘the consequences of an

text © the authors 2009

NOTES & QuERIES

John Harris, ‘The Consequences of an unidentified design for a Palace by an Italian Architect’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xVII, 2009, pp. 157–159

John Harris, ‘A Mystery Palladian Villa at Marlborough’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xVII, 2009, pp. 160

Patrick Pilkington, ‘Extravagance and Ennui: The Earl of Kerry’s London Houses before the French Revolution’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xVII, 2009, pp. 161–164

Oliver Bradbury, ‘Repton at Harrow: a previously undiscovered Humphry Repton landscape within Greater London?’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xVII, 2009, pp. 165–67

NOTES

&

QUER IES

Subsequent to the discovery of the corpus ofdesigns by Colen Campbell and James Smith

re-united in from the Yorkshire seats of NewbyHall, Studley Royal, and Nostell Priory, a few moredrawings were consigned by Henry Vyner of StudleyRoyal to Marlborough Rare Books for sale toMr Paul Mellon. These included the designs byVanbrugh for Kings Weston, and two uncommonlyinteresting Italian designs comprising a half elevation(Fig. ) for a large palace that could be construed aseither of bays with the three-bay, three story

pavilion in the centre, or if presented as only a thirdof an elevation, thus with two pavilions, a palace of bays. The other design (Fig. ) in the same handcould well be part of this larger design, but with acentral domed stair hall and an extension into thegarden with arcaded courts and oval stairs embracinga domed tempietto. In Howard Colvin wrote histelling article, ‘A Scottish Origin for EnglishPalladianism’, discoursing on the architecturaldrawings by James Smith that, by means foul or fair,

Campbell had acquired for his own use. Colvin

THE GEORG I AN GROUP J OURNAL VOLUME XV I I

THE CONSEQUENCES OF AN UNIDENTIFIEDDESIGN FOR A PALACE BY AN ITALIAN ARCHITECT

J O H N H A R R I S

Fig. . Partial elevation of an Italian palace design.

precociousness, that might well have been confusedwith a building by James Gibbs fifteen years later.Smith and Campbell, the lawyer, and still untriedarchitect must surely be involved here.

N O T E S

Yale Center for British Art, B ... Yale Center for British Art, B ... Architectural History, XVII (), pp. –. Most certainly foul, as Smith outlived Campbell,and would hardly have disposed of this huge corpusof his own designs at the height of his practice.

Colvin fig. a, RIBA Drawings Collection. J.G. Dunbar (ed.), Minerva’s Flame: The Great

Houses of James Smith (Dalkeith Palace, ),with essays by Aonghus Mackechnie & MargaretC.H. Stewart.

See John Harris, ‘The Genesis of the PalladianRevival’, in The Palladian Revival: LordBurlington: His Villa and Garden at Chiswick(London, ).

Harris, op.cit., fig. .

observed that Campbell’s ‘Design of my Invention inthe Theatrical Style’ inscribed to Paul Methuen, andpublished as Plate in the second volume ofVitruvius Britannicus, (Fig. ), was based upona design by Smith (Fig ), yet Colvin could not haveknown of the half elevation of the Italian designwhose provenance must also have been with Smith.Surely it was acquired by Smith when in Rome, firststudying at the Scots College between and ,and maybe a few years later when he had determinedto be an architect rather than a priest. Despite therecent commemoration of the th anniversary ofSmith’s birth in , his contribution to the originsof English Palladianism is still unclear. Connectionsbetween Scotland and Oxford have been aired inrecent years, however. They reveal the role playedby a Scotsman, Dr David Gregory, known to Wren,Hawksmoor and Aldrich, in correspondence withAlexander Fletcher of Saltoun Hall, East Lothian,who in had sent Gregory for comment hisdesigns for a cube-shaped house of amazing

THE CON S EQUENCE S O F AN UN I D ENT I F I E D DE S I GN FOR A PA LAC E BY AN I TA L I AN ARCH I T ECT


Fig. . Elevation of garden terraces and section through an Italian palace design.

THE CON S EQUENCE S O F AN UN I D ENT I F I E D DE S I GN FOR A PA LAC E BY AN I TA L I AN ARCH I T ECT


Fig. . Colen Campbell: design in the Theatrical Style, pre .

Fig. . James Smith: design for a palatial country house.

It is not the purpose of this note to enquire indetail into the Archibald Dickson book ofgardens and houses in the care of the Rare BooksLibrary of the Yale Center for British Art, butmerely to draw attention to one puzzling drawing,among so many. Dickson’s sketches, which can beroughly dated between and , depict housesthat are predominantly in the north of England. Butothers are in the south, and among these latter folio is a preliminary sketch for a finished watercolourinscribed ‘Lord Hartfords Hous at MalborughWiltshier’ (Fig. ). It is not the existing house of thesixth Duke of Somerset, building from andonly partly built by , which house was laterassociated with Lady Hertford. Algernon Seymour,seventh Duke of Somerset, was styled Earl of Hertfordat his birth in . He died in February .

N O T E S

Inscriptions indicate that he was born in ,married at Pontefact, and was ‘taught byPatrick Edgar February MDCCXXXIX/XL.

Sir Howard Colvin had expressed a wish beforehis death to publish Dickson’s drawings; but agreedwith this writer that it would be better consigned toRichard Hewlings.

Now Marlborough School.

A MYSTERY PALLADIAN VILLAAT MARLBOROUGH


J O H N H A R R I S

Fig. . View of theunlocated villa ofLord Hertford, in ornear Marlborough.

In an age when conspicuous spending was commonamong the aristocracy and the wealthy, ThomasFrancis Petty-Fitzmaurice, third Earl of Kerry(–), stands out, and yet hardly anything isknown about him. However, the enormous wealth ofmaterial in the Archives Nationales in Paris – thepapers which the Earl was forced to leave behindduring the French Revolution – have shedconsiderable light on his spending in London andParis.He was effectively forced to leave Irelandbecause of his scandalous marriage in to an IrishCatholic divorcee while the Penal Laws againstCatholics were, at least nominally, in force in thatcountry. He then set about fitting out and furnishing ahouse in Twickenham and two country houses, SouthHill Park, Bagshot (Surrey), and Prior Park, Bath.Between and he also had a town house inthe Circus in Bath and a town house in PortmanSquare, all in an ever grander and more extravagantstyle. He then commissioned the Adam Brothers tobuild him a veritable palace in Portland Place, KerryHouse, which was not built. His cabinet makers andupholders were Mayhew and Ince and his architectRobert Adam. The Archives Nationales contain theEarl’s own copies of the Mayhew and Ince ledgers aswell as correspondence with Robert Adam and hisParis agent, Sir John Lambert, Bt., probably a cousinof his mother, Gertrude Lambert, daughter of the Earlof Cavan. As an absentee Irish landlord (one of thefirst) he had considerable difficulties collecting rentsfrom his estates and he was permanently in debt.

The Archives Nationales contain a very rare two-way correspondence between the Earl and the Adambrothers, beginning in January and ending inNovember . One quotation which illustratestheir difficult financial relationship is to be found in aletter from the Adams of November :

‘The extreme pinch we are now in with respect tosome payments that fall due by us at the end of thisyear makes us again take the liberty to have recourse toyour Lordship to favor us with the amount of the oldbill which has been so long unsettled. I have the honorto be with the greatest respect…’

In an age of deference, this is very direct talking onthe part of the Adam Brothers, but their financialsituation in was dire, following the Scottishbanking collapse in and the commercial failureof the Adelphi in . It led to the destruction of thecorrespondence from most of their clients which, asStephen Astley has pointed out, was a sort ofeighteenth-century forensic accounting.

The Portman Square house (Fig. ) faced ontothe eastern side of the square, on the corner of whatis now Wigmore Street. Probably begun in andfinished in , it was pulled down in , alongwith the whole of the eastern side of the square, tomake way for an eight-storey block of mansion flatsknown as Orchard Court. With a four-bay elevationto the square and and another nine at least to thestreet, it was the largest house on the square. Thedining room alone was ft. long and took up allfour bays of the ground floor shown in the


EXTRAVAGANCE AND ENNUI: THE EARL OF KERRY’S LONDON HOUSES

BEFORE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

PAT R I C K P I L K I N GT O N

Already exiled from his native land, Kerry’sprofligate spending led to a forced exile in France.Writing to his first cousin in Ireland, Dean Crosbie,from Paris on December , he says: ‘I havedetermined to remain in this kingdom until somearrangement of my affairs shall be completed and inthe interim to go to Lyons and perhaps to Montpelier.That my determination is to pay as much by sale as Ipossibly can and a little by mortgage.’ His leavingLondon precipitated the sale of the magnificentcontents of his Portman Square house. The sale wasconducted by Christie’s & Ansell between andMarch , and attracted the most fashionablemembers of society.

Paris very much suited Lord Kerry’s Francophiletastes and, while there, he fitted out no less than fourhôtels particuliers, one after the other. He also leasedthe famous Désert de Retz from Francois Rancine deMonville, and had dealings with Etienne-LouisBoullée, who fell foul of the his penny pinching, as aletter from him to ‘Milord Kerry’ of June

photograph. The Adam brothers’ involvementcannot be proved, but reference to previous unpaidwork in their letters to Kerry makes it a strongpossibility.

As if the Portman Square house were not bigenough, Kerry House in Portland Place (Fig. )would have been ft. wide, including the offices,which were designed as pavilions on either side.

Probably designed in , it would have stood at thesouthern end, with a central block of five bays with athree-bay pedimented middle section slightlyforward, and a projecting Ionic porte-corchère.The carriage ramps up to it, the lower wings and thefive-bay offices to either side all give the impressionof considerable movement in the overall façade.The back of the house is no less interesting, as itcontains the two principal reception rooms, both ft. long and ft. wide and rising through twostoreys. One projected cost of the building wouldhave been £,, excluding any fittings andfurniture: a huge sum of money.

EXTRAVAGANCE AND ENNU I


Fig. . The south-east corner Portman Square, with the former house of the third Earl of Kerry. Courtesy of Brian Girling, Images of London: Marylebone, p. .

correspondence relating to his marriage and to theadministration of his estates by his ever patient andloyal agent, the Reverend Christopher Julian.

The Earl of Kerry’s first cousin was LordShelburne, later first Marquess of Lansdowne. Thetwo did not get on, partly because Kerry squanderedwhat Shelburne considered his inheritance in ‘theidlest ostentation’, and partly because ofShelburne’s very difficult character. What is not indoubt is that Kerry was single minded in what hewanted, regardless of the consequences and that, withthe exception of the Portland Place house, he usuallygot it. In this, as with his fellow Irishman, LordMazareen, he followed a national trait best summedup by Maria Edgeworth in her novel Ennui in :

‘It is too often the case with us here in Ireland; we canproject but we can’t calculate; we must haveeverything upon too large a scale. We mistake a grandbeginning for a good beginning. We begin like Princesand we end like beggars.’

The Earl of Shelbourne bitterly informs us in hismemoirs: ‘[Kerry] sold every acre of land which hadbeen in the hands of the family since Henry II’.

Unlike Shelburne, he did pay the bulk of his bills,sometimes quite promptly, as his meticulous recordsattest, and, contrary to what has hitherto been

reveals: ‘I hear from Monsieur Ligneureux yourintention not to give me beyond livres for thework that you ordered’. His patronage of Boullée,however, reflects his need to be completely up to theminute as far as fashion was concerned.

The French Revolution finally put a stop to hisprodigious spending. He was not a great collector offine art but a considerable patron of the decorativearts, both in England and France. He was extremelymeticulous and fastidious in his record keeping and,with the inventories and ledgers which he managedto take with him on his flight from France, we canget an unusually detailed picture of the interiors hecommissioned. These include contemporarytranscripts of his copies of the marchand mercierDominique Daguerre’s ledgers, as well as those ofLouis XVI’s silversmith, Auguste, and othertradesmen’s accounts.

I intend to publish for the first time, in aforthcoming article, all the Adam and Lambertcorrespondence as well as the drawings for thePortland Place house and images of furniture boughtat the sale. The article is intended to bepublished alongside an article for the Journal ofthe Irish Georgian Society, Irish Architectural andDecorative Studies, when the Earl’s French interiorsare to be discussed as well as the fascinating



Fig. . Kerry House, Portland Place. Drawing by Robert Adam. Courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

perceived, Shelburne (later Lord Lansdowne) leftconsiderable unpaid debts on his death in ,with the result that the contents of Bowood andLansdowne House had to be sold.

A fascinating first hand account of the thirdEarl’s extravagance might well have come from thelips of Lord Shelburne himself. Maria Edgeworthand her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, were bothfrequent visitors to Bowood, where Lord Shelburnehad set up a laboratory for Joseph Priestley, thepioneering chemist. Edgeworth and Priestley wereboth members of the Lunar Society, which broughttogether many of the leading scientists andinnovators of the day. The principal character inEnnui is a young Irish Peer, Lord Glenthorn, whohad lived almost all his life in England and wasignorant of his Irish estates. Unlike Lord Kerry hedoes eventually return to his Irish estate, which issituated in a rugged part of the south-west of thecountry, probably Co. Kerry. It can be nocoincidence that his English estate is calledSouthwell Park, instead of South Hill Park. LordShelburne may well have recounted his cousin’sextravagance to the Edgeworths and thus inspiredthe following passage:

‘The London Winter season commenced and the youngEarl of Glenthorn and his entertainments, and hisequipages, and his extravagance, were the talk of thetown and the joy of the newspapers. The immense costof the fruit at my deserts was recorded; the annualexpense of the vast nosegays of hothouse flowers worndaily by the footmen who clung to my coach wascalculated. The hundreds of wax lights which burnednightly in my house were numbered by the idle admirersof folly and it was known by the servants of every genteelfamily that Lord Glenthorn suffered nothing but wax tobe burned in his stables … that his liveries, surpassingthe imagination of Ambassadors, vied with regalmagnificence, whilst the golden trappings could havestood even the test of Chinese curiosity.’

All of this extravagance is demonstrated in the wealthof material in Paris, Bowood and the NationalArchives at Kew

N O T E S

Archives Nationales, Paris: Fonds T /–. Ibid., Fonds T /–. Ibid., Fonds T /–. Ibid. Personal communication. The earliest Mayhew & Ince entry in the ledgers isfor carpentry work in July , which suggests thatthe fabric of the building had been completed in theprevious year: T /-.

Unless one counts Montagu House on the north-west corner, which was, strictly speaking, inGloucester Place.

David King: Unbuilt Adam (London, ), pp. & and Figs. –.

Robert Adam to the Earl of Kerry, January .Archives Nationales Paris, T /–.

I am indebted to Christian Baulez, formerlyConservateur-en-Chef of the Château de Versailles,for this information.

Now at Bowood. Last Journals of Horace Walpole during the Reign of

George III from –, ed. Steuart (London,), p. .

Maria Edgeworth, Tales of Fashionable Life: Ennui,I (London, ), pp. –.

Edmond George Petty Fitzmaurice, first BaronFitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne,afterwards st Marquess of Lansdowne, I (London,), p. .

Maria Edgeworth, op.cit. p. .



architects of the day, John Nash. Northwick carriedout further building work, adding a bas-relief of hiscoat of arms incorporating a prominent lion over theentrance porch. The Regency house has since beenrebuilt, but the Northwick lion survives on theopposite side of the house, originally having beensituated within a super-arch in the middle of thefaçade, between two canted bays. Northwick ceasedto live at Harrow Park by and the freeholdproperty was put on the market on October .The sale particulars glowingly describe a‘Freehold Mansion and Estate so long the Residenceof Lord Northwick on Harrow Hill, environed byFinely Timbered Park of near Sixty Acres andextended Pleasure Grounds, with Ornamental Water,and […] Two Modern Gothic Villas [by DecimusBurton]’.

Including the ‘Out Offices’ the property wasvalued at an estimated £,, and the Park itselfwas described with Regency vendor’s purple prose:‘[The] extended Ornamental Water Winding inSerpentine form through the admirably disposedGrounds, adds greatly to the effect; there is beside aRomantic Bridge, and an Aquatic Pavilion, withvenerable Willows overhanging its Banks, and bymeans of a noble Vista, the Majestic Castle atWindsor, with London in the opposite direction, aredistinctively seen. It will probably be quite sufficientto add, that the Genius of Repton presided over thedisposition of the Pleasure Grounds. There is aConservatory and Ice-House judiciously placed.

Estate agents, rightly or wrongly, have long beenaccused of misleading representation, and there

is only one source that states that Humphry Reptonworked at Harrow Park, London, this being the

sale particulars for the property. There is no recordof Repton working there in the now extensiveRepton bibliography, and there is no ‘Red Book’.The following account gives my findings on HarrowPark to date.

In John Rushout, the second LordNorthwick (–), returned to England afterfifteen years abroad, ten years of which were spenton the Grand Tour. On his father’s death in ,Rushout inherited the title. However, it was not until, when his mother died, that he inherited thefamily seat, Northwick Park, Gloucestershire(formerly Worcestershire), best known for LordBurlington’s – Palladian frontispiece.Although a peer of the realm, he never held publicoffice nor ever made a speech in the House of Lords,but instead was a prolific picture collector and patronof the arts, general benefactor, patron of localinstitutions and schools. As a peer, he is included inSir George Hayter’s painting ‘The Trial of QueenCaroline, ’ (–).

In Lord Northwick purchased Harrow Park,Harrow-on-the Hill, Middlesex, with its ninety acres.The family had had connections with the area sinceRushout’s grandfather had got married at HarrowChurch in . Harrow Park had recently, in–c., been built by one of the leading


REPTON AT HARROW: A PREVIOUSLYUNDISCOVERED HUMPHRY REPTON

LANDSCAPE WITHIN GREATER LONDON?

O L I V E R B R A D B U RY

be an otherwise well-preserved Repton landscape –now rare within Greater London. (Fig. ) It is nowquite easy to forget that the Picturesque, with Nashand Repton at the helm, was a nationwide aestheticrevolution, and for the landed classes a change ofmind-set that swept early nineteenth-century Britain.

The house and landscape were painted by LordNorthwick’s sister, Lady Anne Rushout, an amateurartist, in and , and to a professionalstandard by John Glover (–) in a paintingentitled View from Lord Northwick’s Villa at Harrow,now in the possession of Harrow School. RenamedThe Park (and now Harrow Park) in , when theproperty was subsumed into the surroundingHarrow School, it became a boarding-house, whichit is to this day. The most visible reminder of Lord

Two extensive Gardens, with Three Hot andSuccession Houses, and Pinery. Gardeners’ Houseand Three Lodge Entrances, […].’

Not mentioned in the ever-growing literature onHumphry Repton (–), this would, if the saleparticulars are correct, appear to be a previouslyunrecorded commission by Repton, who oftenworked in collaboration with John Nash, marryingarchitecture and landscape at country houses acrossthe land. Repton and Nash were in a short-livedprofessional partnership, and could well have workedtogether at Harrow Park before their businesscoupling was dissolved in , ‘in circumstancesnot very creditable to Nash’, in the words of the lateSir Howard Colvin. Although the Reptonian cowbyre (Fig. ) has long perished, this would appear to



Fig. . ‘Harrow Park’, , lithograph by L. Haghe. Guildhall Library, City of London.

N O T E S

Other than the two other endnote sources, theinformation in this Note is taken from OliverBradbury, ‘The Architectural Patronage of LordNorthwick, –’ (unpublished M.Litt.dissertation, University of Bristol, ), vol.,especially p. .

Guildhall Library (London), sale particulars forHarrow Park (), ST .

Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary ofBritish Architects – (New Haven andLondon, ), p. .

Northwick’s presence in the Harrow area is thedistinguished s Art Deco underground station,Northwick Park, by Charles Clark, and of courseNorthwick Park Hospital. Though the name mustremain arbitrary to the average commuter, it is in facta permanent reminder of Northwick’s presence inthe area.



Fig. . Photograph taken by the author of Harrow Park in .

notes & queries john harris, ‘the consequences of an

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