After the war, the declining condition of house and grounds at Kings Weston was the source of national concern. In fact, the architectural history of Bristol in particular was brought into sharp focus by wartime losses. The author Simon Harcourt-Smith clearly had a spirit inclined towards the romantic lure of the ruin, indeed, his own book “The last of Uptake” is an atmospheric story about the last days of a great mansion in decline, and its ultimate fall. Fortunately, unlike so many country houses, Kings Weston survived the decline many estates suffered in the three decades or so from the 1930s onwards, but only just.
Harcourt-Smith visited Bristol in October 1946 and wrote a lyrical piece for the high-society magazine The Tatler and Bystander that included his great admiration for Kings Weston even in it’s war-worn state. It’s worth recounting here as a
“How strange it is that Vanbrugh, who made his name as a writer of successful comedies, should have created an architecture which thrives in tragic circumstances. We can thank Providence that neither Blenheim nor Kimbolton nor Grimsthorpe have yet fallen into ruin. But ruin seems to be the proper mood of a Vanbrugh palace. I cannot believe Seaton Delavel was ever as moving in the days of its beautiful crazy owners as it is today, with the miners’ cottages creeping up the drive, and doves cooing among the Caesars in their alcoves, and a great purple cloud coming up out of the North Sea. I suspect that Castle Howard may have gained in drama from its fire; certainly Eastbury for Bubb Doddington now a mere fragment of a great house which should stir even a blind heart.”
A jolly sketch, but jolly inaccurate, accompanying Simon Harcourt-Smiths article. One that perhaps evokes rather than records the impression of army huts in the park.
“And now King’s Weston turned into a school, then befouled by the military during the recent war: dormitories in the garden, an outer defilement of Nissen huts round the park, the servants’ quarters pulled down and littered on the terrace, the mantelpieces gone from the great saloons, temples chocked with old litter. Here is but a skeleton of grandeur; but for that very reason it makes one see as never before how great a genius Vanbrugh was. This is an idiom entirely personal and in heroic strains. Gaze at one of his slender, elongated arches. It is unlike anything else in our architecture. Wren may be a perfect artist, but one feels him to be the conventional man raised to the height of the angels. Vanbrugh’s art, never perfect, needs no elevation to the clouds. For it began there. . . . “
A fascinating series of slides has recently come on the market showing Shirehampton in the early years of the 20th Century. Amongst this treasure-trove were a number of interest to Kings Weston and that we’ll detail here. Fortunately, each was recorded by the original owner with the date and location, without which their value might have been lost to posterity.
The first is something of an alternative angle on Shirehampton Park captured in 1904. Rather than the once-famous views over Horseshoe bend the picturesque scene is stolen by a young gentleman in a straw boater poised atop the trunk of an elderly oak tree. The broken fence and pile of branches in the foreground suggest it’s recently succumbed to age and the saw, the young man using the opportunity for a unique and novelty photograph. The dramatic view of Horseshoe Bend and Sea Mills is no longer easily obtained. The location has vanished, possibly impacted by the enlargement of the railway cutting below the view, but certainly lost when the Portway was driven through the estate.
The next three slides are all geographically clustered around what’s now Shirehampton Cricket Club ground, sandwiched between Shirehampton Road and Penpole Lane. Indeed, a “comic cricket match” is the subject of the first. Some research was needed in uncover what this involved and answers were provided from the Western Daily Press on 26th August 1904. It describes:
“ A fancy cricket match took place in Shirehampton Park on Wednesday between the members of the local club and the Tradesmens’ Association. The characters of the various players were unique and highly amusing, A procession started from the George inn, and went to Avonmouth accompanied by the Shirehampton brass band, and collections were taken en-route and in the field, the proceeds going to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Besides the comic cricket match various old English sports were indulged in”.
The slide is somewhat blurred, but the costume efforts of the players are on show, many seemingly sporting top hats. The view looks across the cricket pitch towards Shirehampton Road and the rush pool, though both are out of sight in the view.
The cricket ground appears to have hosted other sports, with it being described as an athletics ground on some later ordnance survey maps. A small shed on the far west of the field looks to have been a store for other club’s use and is the backdrop to a slide taken in 1906. This is titled Bristol Athletic Club, Easter, Shirehampton. Newspaper’s don’t record the meet, but one from June the same year describes the club at Shirehampton and hosting a series of events, mainly running races, but also tug-o-war. Sadly, none of the names from the Easter meet are recorded. One hopes that the gun brandished by one chap with a tobacco pipe is in fact a starting pistol!
Bounding the cricket pitch along Shirehampton Road was once the Rush Pool. A natural pond, it was an attractive local landmark once used by cattle and horses. Rather than its usual visitors we have here Jack the dog posing for the camera in 1905. Jack, identifiable from other slides in the series, looks quite unimpressed with situation he’s found himself in. Behind him Shirehampton Road winds through the park passing the site of today’s war memorial in the centre of the view. Beyond it, too distant to be made out clearly, would be Kings Weston house itself. Today, this scene has changed entirely through road widening, infilling of the pond, and the growth of many trees.
KWAG brings volunteers up to speed on the tasks for the day.
The estate and KWAG was fortunate to host a team-building event by officers of Bristol City Council Development Management team on Wednesday 25th October. We’d managed to arrange with Kingsweston School for a group of 25 volunteers to access the area of the Georgian walled gardens around the lily pond on Napier Miles Road as the latest in our campaign to stem the tide of neglect and restore the much-loved and historic site.
The work overseen by KWAG focussed on the three strips of garden surrounding the pond, the removal of the dead box hedging, digging-up of brambles, and the felling of self-seeded saplings and shrubs. The formal box hedges succumbed last year to an onslaught of box moth caterpillar that ravaged Bristol. Here it left just a single bush alive, and that just barely. The brambles and saplings have taken advantage of the lack of maintenance since the school returned the pond area to Council Property department.
The south walk along the pond before and after the day’s events.
We were lucky enough to take advantage of the west lodge at the pond for bag storage as the team were briefed on the tasks for the day and health and safety. It was impressive, the way that the volunteers engaged with the work and threw themselves into it. Despite an unpromising weather forecast, the rain held off until the dying minutes of the event before 4pm and we even enjoyed some sun.
Tired Council volunteers pose at the end of the day outside the lodge.
We were lucky to have one of the city ecologists and tree officers as part of the team who were able to advise us on the work. The ecologist was particularly in demand when digging disturbed dozens of Common Newts and other amphibians settling down amongst the roots. These were relocated to safe areas around the pond.
Huge inroads were made on clearance, massive progress in restoring the area. Whilst the job wasn’t completed in its entirely, the magnitude of the job was enormous and what was achieved was epic in scale. We are extremely grateful to all the Council officers who turned out for the event and made such an impact. Despite the wet finish everyone enjoyed the event and stuck with it until the very end. The space that’s been revealed is now a blank canvas to re-plan the gardens, and buys precious time for KWAG to plan a viable new future. Thanks too to Kingsweston School for hosting us, and parks and other departments of the Council for enabling the event.
Similar views of the west side of the lilypond in 1898, and before and after recent volunteer work. The pond edge is again discernible and brambles threatening the lodge have been cut.
…As a postscript, KWAG returned to make some investigations of the pond and have managed to clear some of the saplings alongside the road so visitors can glimpse progress on the garden areas beyond.
Some clearance at the lilypond has allowed us to find the waterline and judge the extent of the tree growth.
the dining room with crowds enjoying the day. (Photo, Bob Pitchford)
This year’s September open day must rank amongst one of the best in recent years. With fine weather and a sense of occasion the day attracted just shy of 600 visitors between opening at 10am and half-four. Five busy tours were hosted by KWAG throughout the day taking visitors through each of the state rooms on the ground floor including the former Drawing Room where our usual exhibition was held. Noticeably, the sun encouraged may people to explore more of the estate, with a constant stream of people seen walking up the path to The Echo and back.
This year the exhibition was augmented by a new display cabinet where we were able to show some of the smaller artefacts we’ve not previously been able to. As with the last couple of years, we were selling the KWAG Christmas cards to help support our work around the estate. Perhaps because of the fine weather or new postal costs these weren’t as popular as previous occasions. However, the day attracted around £500 in cash and digital donations; this will help go towards offsetting the cost of the Big Bulb plant to be held this month.
The Drawing Room, now the Oak Room, hosts KWAG’s exhibition in the middle of a house tour. (Photo Bob Pitchford)
As usual, huge thanks must go to KWAG volunteers who gifted their time staffing the event, greeting visitors, and manning the exhibition. Our thanks also go the team at Kings Weston house for hosting the event and allowing KWAG to play such a large part in showcasing it.
In many ways this piece follows on from last months article about the original interior of Vanbrugh’s Kings Weston house. It comes after we discovered another mansion, Gloster House, in Ireland, with some interesting similarities. The architectural history of England and Ireland are rarely studied together, yet national distinctions were less prominent during the Eighteenth Century when the two kingdoms fell under a single ruler.
The distinctive original appearance of the Saloon at Kings Weston reconstructed. Reconfigured, the room is now known as the hall or gallery.
Gloster House, County Offaly, is a long low-lying mansion built from around 1700 onwards. The two later wings rather upset the balance of the original nine-bay façade in the middle, an exterior that perhaps looks a little earlier than what lies within. Entering through the front door there is a spectacular double-height space and immediately in front of the visitor are two tiers of arches, the upper being an open gallery like that which once existed at Kings Weston. The main hall gives onto an inner hall from which a pair of staircases take you up to the gallery level from where views back into the hall can be enjoyed. Alcoves line the side walls in a similar way as drawings suggest was the case at Kings Weston. There are some key differences of course, there are no fireplaces in this space, and the overall impression is more decorative and ornamental than similar spaces designed by Vanbrugh.
Ground floor plan of Gloster House, County Offaly. Later extensions shown in light grey and double-height space in paler blue.
These works at Gloster House, dating probably to the 1720s, have been attributed to perhaps Ireland’s most important architect, Edward Lovett Pearce. He’s a figure we’ve brought into Kings Weston’s story before. Born into an Irish family, Edward was a cousin of Sir John Vanbrugh and, at 16 years old, was apprenticed to him after the death of his own father in 1715. This was a period during which Vanbrugh’s office was still overseeing works at Kings Weston. Whilst other works would have become familiar to the young pupil, it appears as though Kings Weston’s interior made an impact.
The entrance hall at Gloster House, County Offaly. (Gloster House website)The gallery, with arches on the left overlooking the hall. (Gloster House website)
After a brief time in the army in 1717 Lovett Pearce returned to architecture and to his homeland. It is during this early period that the Gloster House work is supposed to have been completed. The similarity between the lost Saloon at Kings Weston what Pearce later achieved in Ireland is most marked. Pearce increasingly moved away from Vanbrugh’s Baroque style to the developing Palladian movement, but at Gloster House he combines Vanbrugh’s dramatic and playful use of space with more modern ornamentation. The tight cage of stone arcades constricting the staircase that was built at kings Weston is transformed in Gloster House into a light open gallery with a single freestanding colonnade and classical-inspired vault.
Gloster House is not the only building that seems to owe Kings Weston its inspiration. Dated 1720, a design for stables survives in the Kings Weston Book of Drawings authored by a Mr Price. Although this is the only known reference to this gentleman it shows he was a competent architect. Though the context in which the drawing was created are not known, Mr Price is likely to have been familiar enough with Kings Weston to be able to supply designs complementary enough to Vanbrugh’s house. It’s likely that Price was “John Price of Richmond” (sometimes “of Wandsworth”). Price has the strongest claim to be architect of Barnsley Park, Gloucestershire, where works were ongoing in 1720.
The entrance front of Barnsley Park, Gloucestershire.
Just a glance at the entrance front of Barnsley Park and one can see similarities. The composition of the temple frontage, bold keystones, arched windows, weighty attic storey and pediment all feel familiar. The other elevations are all entirely different, a feature shared with Kings Weston, but entirely individual in character. We have to go within to see how exposure to the unique Saloon of Kings Weston might have translated into Price’s work. The entrance hall repeats Kings Weston’s double-height space and uses an open arcaded back wall to introduce a dramatic visual connection between it and the inner hall and gallery beyond. Unlike Kings Weston or Gloster House, the inner hall isn’t a showcase for a grand stair, this is set off to one side. Another oddity is that the first floor gallery doesn’t take advantage of the open arcades for a grandstand view, instead allowing the arches to stand as little more than a room divider. Instead, the gallery bridges the inner hall along its back wall.
The ceilings to the two halls at Barnsley Park are the reverse of the arrangement at Kings Weston; the heavily coved front Hall is like the one formerly in the stair hall at Kings Weston, and the flat ceiling with a central oval compartment more like the surviving Saloon ceiling. Could the coved ceiling existing at Barnsley Park show us what might have been lost to the Victorian refurbishment of the stair hall?
The hall at Barnsley Park, Gloucestershire, with its own version of the arcaded end wall.
Like Gloster House, much of the effect at Barnsley Park arises from thickly applied decorative embellishments rather than simple architectural form, and, in that, they likely differ from Vanbrugh’s intentions at Kings Weston. This was a building Vanbrugh referred to as a “chateau” and clearly hoped it would assert a masculine, martial, presence on landscape and occupants alike. This perhaps proved to be the undoing of the Saloon and stair hall. No longer in line with the developing direction in architecture, lacking in domestic comforts, and otherwise inhospitable, it’s unsurprising that they were remodelled by later generations. However, these two surviving interiors, one by Pearce and the other by Price, might allow us a glimpse of what was lost.
Ground floor plan of Barnsley Park, the paler blue denoting the double-height spaces.
Ahead of Heritage Open Days, and to accompany our history of the stair hall last year, here’s a short history of the mighty room variously known as the Picture Gallery or Hall, but perhaps more properly called the Saloon. It’s always been intended as the most impressive of the rooms in the house, where important guests could enter and find themselves in a space designed to impose itself on the visitor through its great scale. Despite many changes in appearance from the original design by Sir John Vanbrugh, even today the hall has that power.
An original plan for Kings Weston house with annotations.
Today, what we see on entering by way of the front door is a comprehensive redecoration of the 1760s. As designed in 1712 for owner Edward Southwell, the walls were bare Penpole stone, with arches, alcoves, arcades, and other classical architectural detailing echoing that of the main facade. Visitors entering through the front door would have been greeted with two fireplaces before them, an expression of both hospitality and, in being able to afford fuel to keep both burning, wealth. Between them was a single arched door leading into the stair hall beyond, attention to which would have been drawn through glimpsed views through open arcades and a gallery at first floor level. Around the rest of the room were arched doorways and semi-circular alcoves, perhaps for the display of statues.
A Computer generated view of the Saloon at Kings Weston as originally designed in 1712.
A dramatic interplay of spaces was a familiar feature in Vanbrugh’s repertoire. The Hall at Blenheim Palace is the most ambitious of these theatrical spaces, but similar arrangements at Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire (design circa 1715), and Seaton Deleval, Northumberland (1718) repeated themes developed at Kings Weston. Even in its fire-damaged state, the entrance hall at Seaton Deleval gives the strongest idea of how Kings Weston’s Saloon might have looked when it was first occupied in 1716. The open arcades and high level galleries allow the visitor to experience the spaces from a variety of angles, passing from grand volumes into more intimate passages, from light airy spaces to dark and back again. Vanbrugh intentionally excited visitors by sculpting these contrasting and multi-layered spaces. He was ahead of his time in creating an experiential architecture, designed to provoke an emotional response from just air and stone.
The hall at Seaton Deleval with similar features to Kings Weston. (Jon Dalrymple)
Although architecturally impressive and grand in scale, the Saloon can hardly have been a practical or comfortable room to use. The stone walls would have been cold, and the open arcades would have promoted drafts to draw through the house. In 1769, by the time the Saloon was described in “A six week tour thru the southern counties of England and Wales” as “the only tolerable room, and that rendered totally useless, by a vast echo” its shortcomings had been addressed with new designs.
Cut-away of Sir John Vanbrugh’s original design for the Saloon and Stair Hall.
Edward Southwell’s Grandson, the third Edward Southwell, returned from his Grand Tour of Europe in 1762, a 24-year old with grand plans for his inheritance. Employing the architect Robert Mylne who, it is thought, he met in Rome, he set about modernising Kings Weston. Mylne was engaged in April the following year, but it wasn’t until four years into the project that work on the Saloon began. In November 1767 Mylne started sending Southwell a series of drawings for the room. General elevations of the walls, cornice details, fireplace, and “frames of the pictures at large”. Unlike a tradditional gallery the paintings were all integrated into their architectural setting rather than hanging in tradditional gilt frames; It’s this that ensured their survival in the house to today.
the Saloon with its decorative plasterwork framing the Southwell family portraits.
The carved stone architectural details were chiselled away and the room lined with timber studs and lath and plaster to improve both sound and warmth. The work in the Saloon was intended not just to improve its performance, but to display the large collection of family portraits as the lineage of a great family. The intention was to use each of the three blank walls to display the portraits of a particularly auspicious branch of the family. The Southwell’s themselves took the north wall, Edward’s mother’s side, the Watsons, took the wall opposite, but the wall confronting the arriving visitor was reserved for the most notable family: the Cromwells.
The ceiling appears to have been retained, only slightly altered from the original but receiving extravagant swags of flowers in plasterwork, all wrought by the famous Bristol workshop of Thomas Stocking. Mylne’s “drawing for a flower and urn in ceiling of saloon” apparently didn’t find favour. The redesigned Saloon was finished in 1768, with Mylne’s last correspondence on it being “patterns of water straw colours for the saloon”, presumably a yellow/stone colour paint for the walls.
Detail of the ornate plasterwork flowers and rose executed by Thomas Stocking in 1767-8
Kings Weston has been something of a focus for academic research just recently. A team from Trinity College Dublin recently visited Bristol with a research project looking at stone in historic buildings. Whilst their main area of interest was the Exchange in the city centre, they also visited Kings Weston as part of their enquiries. We were able to help in directing them to various written sources that pinpointed where the masonry for the house was being obtained from, either the park itself or further afield. They were also helpful in providing information on the sourcing of various stones from Ireland that were used ornamentally in the building.
The National Trust have also been in contact and found our research into the rooftop chimney arcades helpful in understanding how the rooftop areas of Seaton Delaval Hall were designed and used. This Northumberland mansion was also the product of architect Sir John Vanbrugh’s imagination, and the Trust are keen to find ways for visitors to best appreciate them. Our help included providing evidence that the arcade at Kings Weston was designed as a viewing platform, and directing them to Vanbrugh’s original letters in which he “would fain to have that part rightly hit off” and answer to what he hoped to achieve architecturally.
The chimneys of Kings Weston house appearing above the landscape in 1789.
Another exciting development has been the announcement that the Sir John Soane museum in London will be holding an exhibition on Vanbrugh in February 2026 to coincide with the tercentenary of his death. Author and curator Charles Saumarez Smith visited the estate last year and is engaged in researching Vanbrugh and his involvement in the rebuilding with the hope to publish a new biography to coincide with this commemorative year. We were glad to been able to accompany him on his visit and share a lot of our research to support this endeavour. Some time to wait yet, but this is definitely something to look forward to!
Last month we reported on the ‘official’ opening of the Kings Weston Iron Bridge, but on Sunday 14th July the community celebration very much in the earlier event to shade! The event enjoyed a lovely sunny afternoon and attracted around 200 guests who were serenaded by the Bristol Ukulele Band as they gathered at the Kings Weston end of the bridge. Proceedings began with the 126th Scouts (Sea Mills) parading over the newly open bridge with their troop banners arriving in the informal arena at the west side.
Janet Poole receives flowers in thanks on behalf of KWAG. (Bob Pitchford)
Sea Mills Scouts parade their banners over the bridge.
Janet Poole, who has been so instrumental in promoting and championing the repair of the bridge took a stand on the newly finished steps and addressed the crowd. She undertook to thank everyone involved with the project including the construction workers and support from KWAG during the lengthy process getting it reinstated. In gratitude for her tireless work, KWAG’s chair presented a bouquet of flowers on behalf of everyone who’d missed the bridge over the last nine years. Finally a ribbon was strung between the railings and ceremonially cut to re-inaugurate the historic structure.
A collection held during the event raised £121 towards KWAG’s Big Bulb Plant this October, for planting of daffodils either side of the bridge. The bridge was in very active use during event, with many guests taking their first opportunity to cross the bridge in its new raised location. Louis, a twelve year old drummer, closed proceedings with a rousing session in the sun. At the generous invitation of John Barbey of Kings Weston house, many people sauntered back to the vaulted coffee shop where complementary drinks and cake rounded off a beautiful and memorable celebration, a fit conclusion to a long-running saga.
We’ve noted before that the summer months make working parties much harder, and last month was no exception. Despite a good turnout and a couple of welcome new faces we didn’t manage to finish off the area as planned. This was more to do with the amount of work left being more than we first judged. Nevertheless, the last few months have seen a significant erosion of the cherry laurel’s dominance in this area.
The change in the view east, back towards the house, between May and this month.
It’s clear from historic maps of Penpole Wood where the problem stems. The area we’ve been tackling is just outside, to the east, of the historic boundary of Penpole Wood. Here the Southwell family sought to blend the landscaped parkland into the natural ancient woodland by planting specimen trees and between them fashionable laurel bushes. They were, it is believed, intended to create a continuous blanket of evergreens below the picturesquely scattered specimen trees. Some of those trees are likely to be those that still surround the area, but the cherry laurel has since grown wild, suffocating anything else in the area and even obscuring historic paths.
Diagram showing the 1772 estate survey with current features of the felling area annotated.
The slope now looks bare and barren where we’ve passed through, a legacy of around 250 years of laurel suffocating the area. We intend to replant trees in this area this autumn, to better integrate it back into the native woodland. So, back again this month to try and finish this tricky area! Thank you to everyone who came out to help last month and we hope to see you all again this weekend. Perhaps we will finally get it finished…
A big oak at the top of the slope remains as laurels retract over the last four months. The view up-slope from the middle path thorough Penpole Woods.
Oddly, views of the main front of Kings Weston house looking up the avenue from The Circle are rare, so, we’re celebrating on hunting down this copy of an early 20th Century postcard. The familiar lime avenue on the left is today accompanied by replacement trees we planted in 2014, but here the house is framed by some of the originals. In the 1760s the rigid formality of the linear avenues had become old fashioned, and the third Edward Southwell who owned the estate took to deformalizing it, creating a more natural landscaped parkland setting for the mansion. Rather than getting rid of all the trees he kept one side of the avenue and thinned-out the south side leaving just a handful scattered in the open grassland. The postcard shows that these survivors were still growing in the 1900s, but must have succumbed soon after.
The recently acquired early 1900s postcard showing the view of the house from The Circle.
It’s also worth noting the grassy carpet leading the eye towards the house is absolutely crammed with flowers, perhaps buttercups or ox-eye daisies. Sadly, a black and white photo does no justice to what the photographer enjoyed on this sunny summer day in the Edwardian era.
The approach to the house from Shirehampton was once dominated by views towards the house, something that the architect Sir John Vanbrugh was keen to emphasise in its design. The arcade of chimneys on the roof were once the first thing seen across the brow of the hill as the rest of the façade gradually revealed itself. By the time the visitor was stood on The Circle the house was perfectly framed by trees, the open circle providing a theatrical open space from which to admire it from.
Drawn by Samuel Loxton in 1920, this view shows on the right the cedar tree on The Circle that’s just been lost. In the foreground the ha-ha with its sunken fence that once surrounded the Circle is seen before being infilled after WWII.
Sadly, since WWII and the growth of self-seeded ash and sycamore, these once inspiring views have been lost, the result being a sense of disconnection between the house, its grounds, and Shirehampton.
Today views from the Circle are impacted by post-war tree growth.
