For a few brief years in the prelude to the First World War Penpole Point became a popular place to offer praise over the Easter weekend. In 1910 the then vicar of the parish of Shirehampton, Rev Hector Powell, began the practice of holding open-air services on the grassy slopes of the point. Powell was an enthusiastic evangelical figure who stood in contrast to some of the more traditional clergy of the time, but were welcomed and attracted followers from the city beyond the village.  

 Evangelical gatherings at Penpole Point were held on Easter Monday and were less formal than the Sunday church services. They were very popular locally and attracted great crowds. There was singing by a special choir and Powell noted “the natural formation of this valley-like spot lent itself to the sound of many voices”. The spot this 1913 photo records hosting the services does indeed offer a well-appointed amphitheatre for crowds to gather on, with the service taking place on Penpole Lane on the left. Just visible on the horizon is the tower of Penpole Lodge.  

After Reverend Powel moved to a new parish in 1912 he continued the tradition of Easter Monday services at Penpole, but there was increasing conflict between him and the new incumbent at the local church over the events. Eventually, after 1914, these open air services ceased, at least in part due to the First World War.

After the war services resumed, but took place on Rogationtide, the fifth weekend after Easter, when a good harvest was prayed for and the parish boundary was often walked. The Tower of Penpole Lodge often acted as the pulpit for these open-air services, before its demolition in 1950. After that year the parish gathered in front of its ruins. In her book Shirehampton Story Ethel Thomas records that the BBC came to Penpole to film the Rogationtide ceremony which was broadcast across the UK. We wonder does anyone remember this event, or whether the BBC might have recorded it? It would be fascinating to see it again.

Another interesting artefact that’s appeared in auction recently is this Seventeenth Century document; it’s the warrant appointing Sir Robert Southwell to be ambassador to the Elector of Brandenburg in modern day Germany. The warrant was issued in 1679, the same year as Sir Robert had bought Kings Weston and was in the process of moving his family there. He’d been keen to retire from life in King Charles II’s court following his wrongful implication in a Catholic plot. Court life had become fraught with intrigue and Sir Robert  was eager to step away from it. He’d had a distinguished career, but ahead of his permanent move to Kings Weston resigned all his court positions, but the King maintained his trust in a faithful servant and entrusted him with an important diplomatic mission “for the purpose of promoting our friendship and diplomatic relations in accordance with our mutual wishes”.

Sir Robert regretfully accepted the instruction from the king, but it’s interesting that the warrant describes him as “our faithful and diligent servant”, indicating the regard and trust placed in him by the monarch.  The mission was connected with a scheme to construct an alliance against France, and it took Southwell to the prince of Orange, the future King William III, and the court of Brunswick–Lüneburg. His onward progress to the Brandenburg Court at Potsdam was curtailed due to plague in the city and Sir Robert gladly returned home to Kings Weston where his family waited.

It was his contact with William of Orange that no doubt put him in good stead when William came to the English throne in 1689. Abandoning his retirement he re-entered court life and was quickly appointed Secretary of State to the Kingdom of Ireland; a position that was to prove important for subsequent generations of the Southwell family. The friendship between the men was affirmed when the King was entertained overnight at Kings Weston when the pair returned from Ireland and the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.  

The document  is on velum with an engraved border, but the text is hand written, and at the foot it’s signed “Carolus R” by the king. Possession of the document conferred  protection and total freedom as the King’s agent and ordered that he “shall not be dealt with in any way violently or unkindly”.

Sir Robert was amongst the best travelled courtiers of the age and his travels can be tracked on this map . The warrant is an important document that tells us not only of his importance to the government, but also something of his relationship with King Charles. It’s also significant in being his final commission before his planned retirement to his new estate at Kings Weston.

Should anyone be in interested in acquiring the document it’s for sale very soon, 11th March at Bonham’s auction house. The estimate is £800-£1200. 

Below: KWAG’s map showing all of Sir Robert’s know travels. 

A recent auction’s turned up a new painting of Kings Weston. Showing the celebrated view south from the Shirehapton Park portion of the estate it dates from 1880; before the Portway spoiled the scene. The watercolour is by Alfred Edward Parkman (1852-1930) who was a prolific local artist specialising in views of historic Bristol, but here he strays out of the city and records the panoramic landscape view above the Avon.

The area where Sea Mills now stands is open fields, but the railway, opened in 1865, already makes its mark through the scene before winding unseen in a cutting immediately below the artist. The pines on the left were the remnants of a plantation first planted in the early 1700s and were a popular local landmark until they were felled in about 1919 for the Portway. The whole of the area of grassland seen here in the foreground would be entirely quarried away with the coming of the road, and the extensive civil engineering contributed heavily to the road remaining one of the most expensive per-mile ever attempted in the UK.  The image has already been added to the Know Your Place website at the location it was painted.   

This year sees and important centenary for Kings Weston; in 1920 the house hosted composer Ralph Vaughan Williams at the invite of his friend Philip Napier Miles, and together with a gifted violinist Marie Hall, completed work on William’s most famous work The Lark Ascending. Philip Napier Miles was a gifted composer, one might hesitate in calling him an amateur as he’d both published scores and had choral and operatic work performed on the London Stage, but his principal occupation remained focused on being an active member of the landed gentry. It’s not known when Napier Miles and Vaughan Williams first became friends, but it may have been when the latter was studying under Hubert Parry in London. However it might have been its known that Vaughn Williams was a frequent visitor to Kings Weston as a focus for musical life in Bristol.

Napier Miles’s passion for music saw him found several choral societies, and a concert season in the City in the decades before the turn of the Twentieth Century. He keenly promoted classical music and opera and, at one point, was one of the promoters of a plan to develop a festival opera house in Glastonbury to celebrate native English opera and rival Germany’s Bayreuth. In 1902 Miles supported a planned public hall for Shirehampton. Donating land along Station Road, and the sum of £100, he also ensured that the design of the building was adapted for the sort of theatrical and musical performances he loved; this resulted in the addition of a gallery at the back of the hall as one of the more unusual features. He ensured that his estate architect Frederick Bligh Bond was secured for the project to ensure his brief was met for both performance and architectural display. The hall opened in 1904.

Napier Miles had also given musical and financial support to a struggling musician 16-year old Marie Hall at about the same time. He and some likeminded musical friends in Bristol had discovered her and her remarkable talent with the violin when she was virtually destitute and had ensured she’d acquired a full musical education in London and on the Continent. Their dedication paid off and she grew to become an internationally renowned artist, though continued a friendship with Napier Miles and was a frequent performer in Bristol’s concert programme. The stage was then set for these three people, Hall, Napier Miles, and Vaughan Williams, to come together at Kings Weston house and complete work on what would become one of Britain’s best-loved pieces of classical music.

The room used by Napier Miles as his music room is today the Kneller Room on the far northern corner of the main floor. It’s one of the smaller rooms in the house, but with once-spectacular views across the Severn. It was here, late in the year in 1920, that the trio would have sat around a grand piano and worked on a planned concert performance in Shirehampton Hall. For it Vaughan Williams had revived an earlier piece of music he’d begin in 1914 but had either never completed, or resolved to his satisfaction. This, The Lark Ascending, would showcase Marie Hall’s skills accompanied only by piano.The premiere was an unremarkable event. The concert was held on 15th December and went without notice in the local press. Marie Hall was accompanied by well-known pianist Geoffrey Mendham. Sadly we are left to imagine how it was received by the gathered audience that evening.

The Lark Ascending received more recognition when it was performed in London the following year with full orchestral accompaniment, but its true premiere is now commemorated at Shirehampton with a brass plaque mounted on the doors. With its romantic violin evocation of lark song strung through the score it’s become recognised as Vaughn William’s master work and is regularly voted as the nation’s most popular piece of classical music. It will be performed again to mark the centenary on the 15

^th December by the Bristol Ensemble and we’ll publicise the event closer to the time.  

https://www.bristolensemble.com/production/the-lark-ascending-centenary/

Since the closure of the iron bridge four years ago we’ve somewhat neglected the eastern part of the historic kings Weston estate incorporating Kingsweston Hill. The boundary identified by Historic England between the Kings Weston and Blaise Castle estates runs across the middle of the hill along the line of the reputed Roman Road that zig-zags between Sea mills and Lawrence Weston. However the eastern end of the Hill, including the Bronze Age encampment really falls within the historic bounds of Kings Weston. Until the 1800s the hill remained open grazed downland and the prehistoric monuments that stood there stood out in high relief on the horizon.   

The hill has been treated as common land for centuries, but it’s never known to have actually held that status officially. In the 1840s there were alarmed newspaper reports that the Miles family, who’d recently taken up residence in Kings Weston house, had set up gates and fences and were preventing the public from accessing that which they considered their own. The situation was rapidly resolved, but the privacy-loving miles family can’t have been comfortable with the constant traffic across the hill to take in the views.

It was these views, particularly the ones looking northward across the Severn towards Wales, that were a popular attraction for Bristol residents keen to escape the city for a few hours recreation. The hill was famed for much of the Nineteenth Century for its panoramic aspect, but today these have been replaced by dense woodland plantations established by the Miles family and the Southwells’ before them.

Already by the 1830s Limekiln Wood on the north side of the hill was well established, replacing the historic grassland, and Evergreens Wood and Southside Wood on the opposite side of the hill, followed. The lime kiln that gave the northern wood its name was established already in the Seventeenth Century and its setting-up is mentioned in documents written by Sir Robert Southwell. Limestone quarried from the slopes was ideal for burning to extract lime used in the building trade and agriculture. The kiln has long vanished, but formed an atmospheric landmark until the 1840s.

We recently discovered an auction lot of Kings Weston interest was coming up for sale shortly. It was a shock to find that Athelhampton House in Dorset was selling its entire contents, amongst which is a brass chandelier which formed the centrepiece to the main hall of Kings Weston until recent times.

The chandelier was part of the redecoration of the house in the mid-Eighteenth Century and forms part of its original interior design scheme. It disappeared from the house sometime in the 1960s or 1970s, sold-off by Bristol Technical College during their occupation of the building; it was replaced by a rather depressing and incongruous light fitting until this was replaced with a more suitable modern chandelier in about 2000.

We have known for some time that the original ended up at Athelhampton, though we’re also aware that there was never any Listed building consent for its removal. This has always led to the paradox that it was in another Listed building where it might contribute to the special interest, whilst it should still be in Kings Weston house. We assume that, as it is now being sold, that Historic England are satisfied that it’s not integral to Athelhampton’s importance as an historic property.

With the chandelier coming up for sale there are questions whether it should be returned to Kings Weston, having been removed without consent and against Listed Building legislation. For the moment the chandelier is up for sale by Duke’s auctioneers with a guide price of £2000-£4000. For anyone who might be interested in bidding on the lot and returning it to Kings Weston the auction is to be held on the 9^th of this month, and it’s Lot 11 in the auction which will be held inside Athelhampton House. It’s worth noting that the lucky buyer is required to dismantle and remove the chandelier at their own cost.   

The Echo at the end of the gardens from the house, was an important addition to the Kings Weston landscape in about 1724. Edward Southwell had finished work on the house itself and moved in in 1716 with his new wife Anne Blathwayt. Sadly Anne died the year after and it was a little while before Edward returned to his architect, Sir John Vanbrugh, to turn his mind to further elaborating the estate.Plans began in about 1720 when Edward began buying up land to extend the parkland, and had a map drawn up to further this expansion. We know from this that the long axial path from the house terminated at nothing more than a wall dividing the grounds from a public lane behind; parts of this was can still be traced in the rear structure of the present Echo building.

The echo at Kings Weston Was already a well knows acoustic feature. The gradually rising ground allowed sound to reflect back off the front of the house and echo back down the garden in a remarkable way. The termination of the axis from the house with a suitable celebration of this effect, and an eye-catcher from the house, would have seemed an ideal opportunity to provide an ornamental monument.

The Echo, as the pavilion was to become known, is one of the few buildings at Kings Weston where there are no original drawings known. In Bristol archives there is a design by Sir John Vanbrugh for another structure, an ornamental gateway that was to stand at the end of the terrace on the north side of the house; with its boldly handled rusticated piers and arches this has more than a passing resemblance to some of the features of The Echo. The drawing is dated 1724 and it is reasonable to assume that it echoed architectural developments at the other end of the garden at this time. This coming weekend we will try and compare the measurements of this drawing with those of the Echo and see what conclusions we might draw. The dramatic urns on the parapet of the finished building are also strongly redolent of Vanbrugh’s work, with a series of similar features in the gardens at Blenheim Palace.

In the tradition of gardens at the time the Echo would have terminated the long axis through the landscape with a series of formal gardens either side of it. There never seems to have been a viewing terrace on the roof of the building, which might have capitalised on views back to the house and across the landscape towards Bristol. Another drawing in Bristol archives does show the plan of a garden pavilion that would have afforded this; it had a single ornamental frontage with odd carved rear walls and a stair tower at its rear, but, other than its inclusion with other known  Kings Weston drawings, there is insufficient evidence to suggest it was even considered for Kings Weston.

The little building served no more elaborate purpose than a place to sit, admire the view back towards the house, enjoy the echo, and perhaps enjoy a summer meal. The arches were never glazed in, but the roof, that once sheltered visitors, disintegrated and collapsed in the 1950s; the scars of this can still be seen in the structure today. Efforts to demolish the garden buildings in the 1970s were fortunately resisted, and eventually the Echo was patched-up and restored.   The Echo remains an important landmark in the park, a focal point on the main walking circuit, and a Grade I Listed building. The gardens that once swept down the slope to the house have been overtaken by woodland, and views between the two buildings lost or diminished. Sadly the echo from which the building got its name has also been diffused. But this weekend we will be celebrating the building again by holding our Doors Open day event within it. Come along and find out more about the building and its history on one of our short tours to be running throughout the day.        

Ahead of August’s Working party, when we’ll be returning to Penpole Point, KWAG have produced a model of the long-lost Penpole Lodge, a building that remains with us only in ruin today. As with the reproduction statue described last month the model is intended to broaden understanding of the lost feature, and show what an imposing architectural statement it once was. In 2012 KWAG fully revealed and recorded the ruins with the assistance of South Gloucestershire’s county archaeologist, but the area is beginning to succumb to undergrowth once more.  

The building was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh as a belvedere and monumental landmark for Edward Southwell, and was designed to dominate the horizon in views from Kings Weston house. The building was a return commission for Vanbrugh who’d been responsible for the rebuilding of the house between 1712 and 1719. After its completion the pair looked to expand the parkland setting around the mansion and ornament it with fashionable garden structures, including Penpole Lodge.

Below: One of Sir John Vanbrugh’s proposals for penpole lodge showing the unexecuted colonnades on the shoulders of the gate

Below: one of Vanbrugh’s more robust designs for the building, circa 1724

Several drawings for the lodge exists showing variations on the design, one with a colonnaded veranda overlooking the Severn, but in the end a symmetrical tower built over an arched gate at the boundary of the private grounds was decided upon. It is dated to about 1724. Our reconstruction shows the building as-completed and recorded prior to demolition in the 1950s. We’re fortunate that students from Bristol University architecture school created a measured survey of the whole building in 1947, showing plans, sections, and key details, for it was to succumb to the wreckers in 1951 following decades of neglect, and the deprivations of wartime use by the Home Guard.

Whilst the Lodge appeared frequently in picture postcards of Penpole Point at the start of the Twentieth century these only captured the less ornamental side facing public common land. The façade facing Kings Weston house across the park was more refined and ornamental and only known to us through the 1947 drawings.