If it wasn’t for a couple of Bristol architecture students, J.B. Ackland and J.W. Tanner we’d know so little about Penpole Lodge, one of the lost garden buildings of Kings Weston. Surviving now just as a ruin, the building was once the culmination of views and walks through the landscaped grounds, but eventually succumbed to damage, decay, and cold Council pragmatism. Fortunately, before it was pulled down in 1950, these two students studiously recorded every detail.
It was commonplace for architecture students to be given basic tasks of surveying historic buildings to learn surveying, drawing conventions, building construction and technology, scale and proportion, and architectural history. A number of survey drawings of historic Bristol buildings survive from this period, each measured and drawn as part of these university exercises. In the late years of the war Ackland and Tanner either chose, or were allotted Sir John Vanbrugh’s Penpole Lodge to carry out their study.
By the time of their survey in 1943, the building was already badly damaged through neglect and the ill-treatment of the Home Guard when they commandeered it for a look-out. The Scouts, owners at the time, lamented the condition in which it was handed back to them. Sadly, the diary in which they recorded the decline didn’t note the attention of the Bristol students, but they must have had full and thorough access to be able to complete their set of drawings.
In all there are four drawings, split evenly between the two men. Tanner diligently tackled the plans, side elevation, and sections through the building, whilst Ackland took the more glamourous job of the main elevations and the tricky task of measuring and drawing all the profiles of ornamental details. Crisply drawn in pencil, they’re picked out in sepia coloured ink. They are an incredible and irreplaceable record of a building now lost, though it’s fate can hardly have been guessed by Tanner and Ackland at the time; It must have seemed unimaginable that demolition of a building by one of Britain’s most important architects could be contemplated, particularly at a time when so much had been lost in the war.
The drawings remain the only illustration of the original facade that faced Kings Weston house across the estate. Unsurprisingly, this façade was the more ornamental, being viewed by the Southwell family and their guests, and later the Miles family. The many paintings, photos and postcards of the lodge are consistently taken from the common land on Penpole Point, never from the private grounds within. The interior too would be entirely unknown without the drawings, being the only record of the vaulted upper room and the layout of the tiny one-up-one-down cottage crammed into one side of the arch. KWAG based their 3D reconstruction and model of the building entirely on this precious record.
Thank heavens that, unlike most student exercises, the drawings didn’t end up in a bin or forgotten in someone’s attic. Fortunate too, they were kept together as a set, at least, for a long time. Long after the loss of Penpole Lodge three of the drawings were lodged with Historic England’s National Monuments Record in Swindon where they can still be inspected today. We’ve recently returned to re-record them for our records. The fourth, the building elevations, was apparently loaned by Ackland to Bristol Architect and author Mike Jenner, possibly at the time he was writing the seminal Bristol: an Architectural History, but never returned. We were fortunate enough to be provided with a copy by Mr Jenner, but since his death in 2017 the location of the original is unknown. If you can help track it down, we’d be pleased to hear from you.
You can find a copy of the elevation drawing on our website here.
