Tag Archives: Architecture

Surveying the State Rooms

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The enfilade looking from the Dining Room through the house

As  has become traditional in the run-up to Heritage Open Days, this month we’ll  look at aspects of the interior of Kings Weston house. Every year the tours  pass from the Saloon, the grand entrance hall of the house, into a series of  chambers known as the State Rooms. These rooms were not intended for regular  family use, but were instead designed accommodate and entertain distinguished  guests and for the conspicuous display of the owner’s wealth and taste. These  were generally modelled on sequences of rooms in royal palaces, designed to  control access to the monarch and provide sequentially more private chambers for audience with increasingly high-ranking and trusted confidants.

Kings Weston was designed with its own version; a series of three state  rooms arranged ‘enfilade’, that is to say,  aligned in such a way as to enjoy an unbroken vista down the length of the  house framed through sequential doorways. This formal arrangement emphasised  the length of the house and  heightened  the expectation of any visitor permitted to pass on to the next more intimate  space.

Diagram showing the layout of the house as built  circa 1716. The chain of State Rooms occupies the sheltered south side of the house, arranged to enjoy views across the formal gardens.

The rooms usually became increasingly opulent from one end of the sequence to the other. The culmination of this would be the State bedroom. Had the sovereign or another high-ranking aristocrat ever visited they would have been accommodated in this room, but at all other times it was purely a showcase for your finest paintings, possessions, textiles, and furniture.

Kings  Weston’s State rooms began off the south side of the Saloon with a large  reception room later known as the Drawing Room. Although we have general  arrangement plans for the principal floor, we have very little to go on in  understanding their original appearance when Edward Southwell first moved in in  1716.

The room we see today retains its original proportions but was subject to major redesign beginning in 1768. This included the replacement of the fireplace in its symmetrical location on its northern wall, the infilling of the two western windows (subsequently re-opened), and the elaborate decoration of the ceiling by famous plasterer Thomas Stocking. All this work was designed by the architect Robert Mylne for his client Edward Southwell (the third).

Diagram suggesting how the Drawing Room would have been decorated when it was recorded in the probate inventory of 1777

We know from an inventory of the house taken in 1777 that the room was lavishly decorated, it’s walls hung with silk crimson damask, picked out with carved gilded edging, and hung with Old Master paintings. Its centrepiece was a pure white marble fire surround commissioned from John Devall, who had supplied similar to a number of Royal Palaces.

The Drawing Room at Corsham Court gives a great impression of how the Drawing Room was decorated after 1768

Sadly, today’s visitor will find no such Rolls-Royce of fireplaces in the room today. When the house was purchased by Bristol Municipal Charities in 1936 with the intention of converting it into a new home for Queen Elizabeth Hospital School, they began stripping out many of the historic fixtures. The State Rooms were intended for use as classrooms, and fireplaces replaced by radiators and wallspace enough for a blackboard required.

The Drawing Room fire surround recorded in 1927before it was dismantled. Note the fraying condition of the original silk wall coverings and the gilded detail around its edges.

The Drawing Room fireplace was dismantled and lost to Kings Weston, but it remains in Bristol to this day. The Charities set the chimney surround up in the Board Room of their new offices in Orchard Street, just off College Green. And there it is still today, though the Charities have moved out and sold the building for residential conversion, so it now rather incongruously augments a one-bed flat. Perhaps, one day, it, or a facsimile, might return to its place at Kings Weston.

The ceiling of the Drawing Room is one of the most remarkable in the house. Swagged with plaster flowers, each individually moulded, it is both beautiful and exquisitely executed. No doubt the design was that of Robert Mylne, but it’s floral theme must have been designed to please Edward Southwell III’s wife, Sophia Campbell. She was fascinated by botany and loved flowers especially. It can be no coincidence that they play such a strong role in decorating the interiors at Kings Weston.

The spectacular and intricate floral ceiling of the Drawing Room from 1768

The next in the sequence of State Rooms  has never gone by any more elaborate title than the Ante-Room. Smaller and more intimate than its neighbour, it takes the place of an Audience Chamber or  Privy Chamber in more ostentatious houses. At Kings Weston it is aligned to the garden axis looking directly up the hill towards The Echo and could have been used as a separate private entrance for anyone fortunate enough to inhabit the State Rooms. Indeed, with access directly into the stair hall on the opposite wall, it’s likely that it provided more direct garden access for the family when the rest of the State Rooms were not  in use.

The Ante-Room is a picture of symmetry and order. Despite it’s grand pretentions, the door on the right of the fireplace only ever accessed a cupboard

Like the Drawing Room, we have little information that can be relied upon to help imagine how the Ante Room appeared as originally completed, and, similarly, it was redecorated in the 1760s. It matched the Drawing Room with Crimson damask, and gilded borders, and Old Masters proliferated, through the fire surround and ceilings were less ambitious, delicate marquetry around the hearth slab being a discrete but expensive hint at the room’s status.

Today, the last in the chain of State Rooms is the Canaletto Room, earlier the Dining Room. It occupies three window bays and, since the Victorian era, extends through the back of the house with an arched opening that delineates the earlier proportions. Before this though it was the culmination of the visitor’s passage through the State Rooms and the location of the State Bedroom. The bedroom was smaller than the present room, occupying just two bays, with smaller compartments behind it on its east side. 

The Dining Room in 1927 exhibiting the tastes and interests of the last private owner of Kings Weston House, Philip Napier Miles and his wife Sybil. This photo was key in returning the fire surround to its original location.
The same view today, with the marble fire surround restored and returned to its original location.

It was common practice for Kings in the late 17th and early 18th centuries to hold a levée, a ceremony allowing intimate access to the monarch as he rose from bed in the morning. In these ceremonies the bed became a focus for expressions of wealth and often took the form an elaborate architecturally-scaled structures. The State Bedroom at Kings Weston replicated the arrangement found in Royal palaces in microcosm and would have been furnished with the Southwell Family’s most elaborate and expensive furniture and works of art. The State Bed itself was set up against the north wall.

Through the State Bedroom was probably the smallest and most intimate of spaces, a closet. Its importance is implied by its alignment as a continuation of the enfilade. There are many examples of such closets where more precious artefacts and object d’art were housed in a richly panelled interiors, accessible only to the hosts most trusted and honoured guests.

The Dining Room ceiling designed in 1764 by Robert Mylne, architect, for his client Edward Southwell III. It was implemented by Thomas Stocking, one of the foremost plasterers of his era. 

All of this felt distinctly outdated by the middle of the 18th Century. Fashions changed, and a State Bedroom no longer met the need to entertain guests. It was opened-out under the superintendence of Mylne as architect into a much larger single room, intended for holding lavish meals. Two aspects of this redesign are worth focussing on in depth.

Firstly, the design of the ceiling; It was an early example of a Neoclassical design, derived from ancient Greek and Roman architecture. Suitably for a room designed for dining, swags of grape vines are a prominent motif in the plasterwork; Grapes provide both food and wine. But here too is a warning for anyone who might want to take advantage of such abundance. The visitor will have to look carefully to spot them, but intertwined amongst the tendrils, one in each of four quarters of the design, are snakes: a reminder of the reproductions for anyone tempted by the sin of gluttony. 

One of the four snakes hidden in the ceiling, warning the observant not to engage in the sin of gluttony.

More symbolism is at play in the marble fire surround. This was only rediscovered in 2021. We were invited into the cellar by Norman Routledge, then lessee of the house, to look at a collection of broken marble fragments filling a metal crate. We were able to lay them out on the floor and piece them together, ultimately realising that it was near complete, if in a poor condition. Photos originally taken by Country Life aided identification and confirmed it had once graced the Dining Room. It was Norman who undertook to have it restored and returned to centre-stage as the focus of the room.

Sophia Southwell, nee Campbell, around the time she Married into the family in 1765.

Another of the fire surrounds commissioned from John Devall dates from the completion of the room in 1765; This was also the year that Edward Southwell III married Sophia.  Careful study of the carving reveals more about the couple’s relationship. Roses cascade  down the pilasters either side of the hearth. Then, as still today, roses are symbolic of passionate love and desire, but the message is even more personal; Amongst the roses, on just one side, one tiny detail changes. Easily overlooked, two tiny flowers lie almost hidden. These are forget-me-nots, the symbolism asking us to forget-not the love between Southwell and his new bride.

The inclusion of a pair of tiny forget-me-knots in the fire surround design suggests the nature of the couple’s relationship

Home brew: The fall and rise of Vanbrugh’s Brewhouse

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Now a private residence, the contribution of the Brewhouse to the historic estate can easily be overlooked. A Grade I Listed building since 1959, it’s relationship with Kings Weston house, the house it once served, has been confused by a series of changes in landscaping, some which are surprisingly historic.

Sir John Vanbrugh’s Brewhouse seen across the yew hedge a few years ago.

Today, the building sits behind railings and a yew hedge, but would once have been part of a suite of service buildings, stables, carriage houses and stores that lined a formal service court. This layout had been dictated by the earlier Tudor mansion, but was given greater formality when Edward Southwell sought to reinvent himself through new architectural works around his estate.

 The gate to Eastbury Park, Dorset perhaps re-uses plans rejected for Kings Weston.

As we know, it was the Queen’s architect, Sir John Vanbrugh to whom he turned to design a new mansion, and other buildings were added to the original commission in short succession. Many of the original architects and contractors drawings survive, most as part of the  famous Kings Weston Book of Drawings, held in Bristol Archives. However, there are no plans or details that can be related to the Brewhouse.

In attributing the brewhouse to Vanbrugh we are left, instead, to make assumptions based on its design. Vanbrugh was a very individual architect, creating a palette of unique and idiosyncratic architectural details that might be considered his signature. Fortunately the Brewhouse is one of the buildings that follow precedents set by some of his other buildings.     

The Pyramid gate at Castle Howard, designed in 1716. It inspired the gate planned for Kings Weston in the following year.

Though a relatively simple and robust building, its most characteristic feature is probably the cornice or repeated arches held aloft on little coved brackets. This is a particular  leitmotif of Vanbrugh’s work, being repeated on numerous of his buildings, including the Pyramid Gate at Castle Howard and the entrance gate to the now-lost Eastbury Park in Dorset. He used it to imbue his architecture with his “castle air”, providing romantic allusions to medieval architecture that suggested ancient pedigrees to buildings he used it upon.

It was also present on other buildings at Kings Weston, though ones now lost or never realised. Vanbrugh’s abandoned idea for a miniature version of the Pyramid Gate followed it a year later, but was not progressed beyond paper. The kitchen wing that once stretched out from the back of the mansion had a tall chimney that was also given this treatment.

The proposed gate to the Great Court in front of Kings Weston house, a design not implemented.

A plan for an Ale House (not to be confused with the Brewhouse) had a cylindrical turret with witches-hat spire and similar motifs, but as-built, as the Kingsweston inn, it adopted a different disposition. Arched ground floor windows and doorways on part of the Brewhouse might also be related back to the unexecuted 1717 proposal for Kingsweston Inn.

Of course, the arched window,  part of the centrepiece of the main front of the Brewhouse, has parallel with the prominently placed arch window in the pediment of the main front of Kings Weston house.

Vanbrugh designs for Kingsweston Inn, the Ale House, with features intended to evoke medieval architecture.

Even without direct evidence, the authorship of the Brewhouse as a Vanbrugh building is almost certain. Dating is more difficult. Most of the motifs were used throughout Vanbrugh’s architectural career. We know that Edward Southwell invited his architect back in about 1720 after completion of the main house, to undertake work on various buildings in the park. An estate plan of that year suggests the formal stable courtyard that was once prelude to  formal entrance courtyard was already in place, but can’t be relied on for detail, and it’s unclear whether the exact building we know today had already been built.

What is certain is that the buildings functions were essential for the operation of a mansion and estate. Beer was an essential component in satisfying household consumption by servants and labourers, and may also have made it to the table of the Southwell’s themselves. Small beer, a weaker brew, was an everyday alternative to drinking water, one that could often be more reliably safe than that drawn from wells or collected off lead roofs.

Niall Philip’s drawings of the exiting building are an important record of features before the Brewhouse’s restoration as a family home in 1991. The plan and section drawings are carefully annotated with revealing details.

The central portion of the present building was designed for the purpose of brewing. The northern wing was dedicated to baking bread: another basic essential. Both processes involved fire, and it was common practice to ensure they were kept at a comfortable distance in case any accidents might get out of hand.  A look at the rear of the building reveals the stout chimney that exhausted the fire used to boil water for the brewing process. A smaller chimney served the bakehouse.

Before conversion to a house in 1991 there were many features internally that also evidenced its historic use; most of these were retained. A photo survey undertaken in 1987 is revealing, helping to understand how the building operated.

 The decaying Brewhouse in the late 1960s, when threatened by demolition. The original panel doors are still in place, as is the diagonal beam that held a platform accessed from the room beyond.
The north-east wall recorded after the clearance of debris in about 1987. The brickwork of  the fireplace and brew kettle is the main feature, with the circular pit beside it.

A tall cylindrical brick structure is likely to have housed the brew kettle . A circular recess at floor level beside it may have accommodated the mash tun, requiring less hot water and without direct heating. A lower section of floor, accessed down several steps, is perhaps where the fermentation tanks were housed. The whole was floored in stone slabs.

Adjacent, much of the oven remained against the back wall in the old bakehouse. Between the two rooms there was a passage that once accessed a stair up to a first floor level above the bakehouse; perhaps this was used for the storage of flour? It also opened through to the brewhouse at high level and a timber beam supporting a platform in just one corner. Would the grain for brewing also have been stored here? Water for brewing could be conveniently drawn from a wall at the rear of the building.

looking southwards across the bakehouse towards the party wall this the Brewhouse. The ruined wall of the passage stand between the two.

The southern wing of the building is entirely modern, a reconstruction introduced in 1991 to replicate the original wing to the north. It’s an odd affair, but we have little evidence that this is authentic or not. It’s been suggested that no evidence for this wing was found during the formation of foundations for the replacement wing. Though there was a good deal of keyed stonework on the end elevation there was no sign of a roof or floors ever having been present.

The oven chimney in the bakehouse survives in about 1987

This presents something of a conundrum. There’s no firm evidence for the condition of the building between its original construction and the 1840s, over 120 years later. The central block appears fleetingly, recognisable through that signature cornice, above the high walls of the Great Court in 1746. The building is entirely absent from the estate survey made in 1772. This, however, provides context for the potential demolition of surrounding structures of the outer courtyard.

On his return from the Grade Tour of Europe in 1761, Edward Southwell III undertook a major design overhaul of the park and Kings Weston house itself. Part of this redesign was the removal of the formal garden structure and the small village of service buildings at the back of the mansion. This was intended to open out the gardens into a naturalistic landscaped parkland.

The stables, coach houses, walled garden, and other services were transferred to the other side of Kings Weston Lane and installed in brand new, modern, integrated new complex on what is now Napier Miles Road.

Work gets underway on converting the Brewhouse to a home in 1991. Note the lack of features in the end wall beyond the rough buttresses

Exactly why the brewhouse escaped demolition is unclear. Its omission from the 1772 survey implies that removal was a foregone conclusion, but the plan was never implemented. Perhaps the building functions were too important to be moved so far away from the main house. Perhaps no alternative water source was available to replace the dedicated well. Without further evidence we’ll probably never be certain.

The building’s last use might have been as a generator house after the bake and brew houses became obsolete. A concrete base with upstands and bolt fixings was still visible in the building until conversion. This might have supported a generator supplying electricity to the house before it was connected to a direct supply in the 20th Century.

Detail of a drawing of the main front of Kings Weston house with the unmistakable presence of the Brewhouse showing above the courtyard wall.

By the 1960s the building was already in a derelict condition, being slated for demolition again in 1970 when the technical college sought to make the site safe before its departure. It survived again, but without a plan for restoration until 1988. In this year, Bristol Building Preservation Trust appointed trusted Conservation Architect Niall Philips to convert the building as a new house. The salvation plan was slow to materialise, eventually being commenced in 1991.

The successful conversion of the building has now secured this important building. The sensitivity taken in the conversion should be applauded. Regardless of the unanswered questions about the original form, the symmetry of the building we see today is a clear ornament to the historic park.

Elevations of the Brewhouse as-restored in 1991.

Kings Weston and the Irish Influence

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The staircase at Kings Weston showing the “S” curves taking the handrail up to the landings. 

There were strong connections between Kings Weston and Ireland, ever since the estate was bought by Robert Southwell in 1679. Southwell was from a wealth Irish family and was appointed Secretary of State for Ireland by the King. His descendants maintained and strengthened their Irish roots, adding extensive landholdings, marrying into illustrious Irish families, and maintaining the role of Secretary of State through several generations. The Southwell’s’ built extensively on their estates, introducing the latest styles, and during the Georgian era Kings Weston became a frequent staging post for many travellers between the two kingdoms. Perhaps it’s not surprising that Kings Weston might have influenced the direction of architecture in Ireland.

Edward Lovett Pearce is, perhaps, Ireland’s most important 18th Century architect. He was from an Irish family and cousin of Sir John Vanbrugh. Recent research suggests that he worked closely as apprentice to the great architect at Kings Weston. Robert Lynch has identified a striking and idiosyncratic detail of the great stair at Kings Weston repeated in many of Lovett Pearce’s later works: the unusual continuous swan-neck curve of the balustrade handrail, passing continuously up the stair to the landings.

Left: Edward Lovett Pearce’s staircase at the former Archbishop’s Palace, Cashel, County Tipperary, 1732. 
Right: Another of Pearce’s stair designs at Desart Court, County Kilkenny of 1733, since destroyed. 
The rear of Penpole lodge  in around 1900

Pearce had become a pupil of Vanbrugh in 1715, following the death of his father, and undoubtedly would have dealt with work at Kings Weston, then in construction. Work on the great staircase is known to have been continuing in 1719, three years after the Southwell’s’ moved into their new mansion, but designs are likely to have been fixed before 1717 when Pearce chose a short-lived career in the dragoons. He may have returned to architecture in around 1722 when Vanbrugh and Southwell had already turned their attention to the Kings Weston parkland, ornamenting it with new ornamental garden buildings.

The Temple at Emo Court, County Laois, Ireland,  in a ruined state. 

By chance the “temple” at Emo Court in County Laois caught our attention. It’s not really a temple, but a gateway and gloriette. There’s little evidence dating it. But there’s something familiar about its shape; it bears some resemblance to Penpole Lodge at Kings Weston. A rusticated podium, a central arch with arch and circle recesses either side, a single small room sat crowning the arch, and each accessed by a cramped staircase threaded up through one of the side piers are some of the features shared between the two buildings. Like Kings Weston the Emo Court building was strategically located for picturesque effect from the house it once belonged to. Exploiting a highpoint in its parkland, like Penpole, it would have been silhouetted as a landmark on the horizon, with the arch framing views of open sky from the mansion house, since rebuilt.

With the kind assistance of the Ministry of Works in Ireland we’ve got access to measured drawings of the now ruined Emo Court arch, and have drawn up a simple 3D model to compare with our one of the original Penpole Lodge. Marginally smaller, it’s still not too dissimilar in character from Penpole to be able to suggest some sort of kinship.

3D computer models of Emo Court temple and Penpole Lodge at the same scale.

The designs of Penpole Lodge are dated 1724. It was in this year that Edward Lovett Pearce is believed to have returned to Ireland to begin his own practice and meteoric rise in Irish society. The Irish Georgian Society has tentatively connected Pearce’s name with the Emo Court building, and architectural historian James Horley has made stylistic comparisons between it and other of his works. Regardless of its authorship there are stylistic, political, and logistical reasons to believe that Penpole Lodge might have been the inspiration for Emo Court. Circumstantial evidence for this is strengthened where Pearce’s involvement at Kings Weston is brought into consideration, and a possible direct route for the importation of architectural ideas into Ireland. 

Top: “Sketch at Emo Park” 1790, by J.Brown (National Gallery of Scotland) 
Bottom: Penpole Point and Lodge, detail of a painting circa 1760. (Sir John Soane’s museum)  

  

Southwell’s Architectural Odyssey

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Edward Southwell, circa 1705. Downpatrick Museum

Anyone committing to build themselves a house no doubt puts a good deal of thought and research into the design beforehand, and it was no different for Edward Southwell when he was planning his new home at Kings Weston. Although he had appointed the Queen’s architect, Comptroller of the Royal Works, Sir John Vanbrugh to design the building Southwell would have been keen to make sure the designs, and the cost of the project, suited his needs. In appointing Vanbrugh he had already committed himself to the most modern and innovative architecture of the day. It is difficult now to picture quite how revolutionary the architecture was. For comparison, most of the grand houses around Bristol were still largely Tudor structures. At the time, nationally there were relatively few houses that adopted the newly fashionable Classical style we might now associate with grand stately homes. The revolution in style had only really taken hold in the decades after the Restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, and took time to establish after the privations of the Civil War and Commonwealth era. If Southwell was to get inspiration for his new house he had a shallow pool from which to drink.

Sir John Vanbrugh. Painting in the National Portrait Gallery.

Seemingly with little plan for what to replace it with Southwell began demolition of his old family home in Spring 1711. By December the same year his sister, Helena le Grand, lamented to family friend John Perceval 

“we expect my brother in town the end of the week after filling his belly with the ruins of Kingsweston for I can call it no otherwise.” 

Still, in March the following year, Southwell himself confessed to Perceval “Kings Weston house is almost down though I don’t know what to build in the room” – an extraordinary lack of foresight! In the same letter he notes that he is making his gardens there “very fine” though the pressing priority of the house designs continued to elude him.
 
On April 25th Southwell set off from his London house, Spring Gardens, for ten days at Kings Weston, with an intention to set out the new foundations for the house. Rather than hurry to the building site an itinerary had been devised that would take in many of the most modern house architecture between the Capital and Bristol. Southwell’s own travel journals record the visits made on the four day trip and each short entry is accompanied by very basic notes on the incidence of garden features, architecture and stables. This was a study trip to get inspiration, and perhaps some housebuilding advice. 

Beginning on the 25th April
Duke Schomberg’s – Uxbridge (Hillingdon House)
Sr Roger Hill’s – Denham Place, Buckinghamshire
Sr Richard Temple – Stowe, Buckinghamshire
Mr Boyle’s – Middleton Stoney, Oxfordshire
D. of Shrewsbury – Heythrop Park, Oxfordshire
Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire  
Dodington, (Gloucestershire)
This map shows all the stops on the route.

Today many of these buildings are fairly obscure, if not forgotten. Some have been entirely rebuilt or altered, but at the time they represented a good selection of the modern architectural or landscaping works, utilising the most current styles, construction techniques, and building technology.

Painting of Denham Place, its gardens, and estate buildings, circa 1700. Yale Centre for British Art. cropped to image
The grand staircase at Denham Place, circa 1701

Hillingdon House is not supposed to have been commenced until 1717, so what Southwell saw there is unknown. Denham Place had been completed in 1701 and was surrounded by fine formal garden compartments, including a long ornamental canal, that set the house in the centre of a lavish pleasure ground. The ornamental garden buildings, gates,  and statues added opulence to the house itself, which was built of brick. Well-mannered with good proportions it was in a fairly staid style, perhaps even out of date for its time. Inside, a grand central staircase was one of the finest features along with other finely fitted out rooms; perhaps these were inspiration for what Kings Weston could offer.

Stowe house and gardens are now internationally known, and Vanbrugh later worked to embellish its gardens with ornamental buildings, but Southwell will have seen an earlier, less extravagant, house. Built in 1676 it was similar to Denham in its general plan and style with ‘H’ plan and hipped roofs. Both these houses had balustrade rooftop terraces and architecturally prominent chimneys. Architecturally they were fairly derivative, following almost standardised patterns after Burlington house, London, a building, amongst other fashionable examples, that set the mould for house design at the start to the Restoration era. 

Stowe House in about 1715, before it was redeveloped  on a colossal scale. 

Middleton Stoney was built around 1710. Unfortunately it was completely rebuilt in the 1750s and no earlier depiction has been located to know what he saw there. 
 
Heythrop Park was the most architecturally ambitious building visited. Begun in 1706 it was nearing completion when Southwell visited. Not only would it have given him an insight into the modern Baroque style, but he could have sought direct advice from builders and other people involved with the construction. Applied columns in the Corinthian style and ‘Giant Order’, robust window keystones, and an emphasis on the main entrance with its portico have some parallels with what happened at Kings Weston. The unique interiors of this house were lost in a fire in the 1830s.

South east front of Heythrop Park, Oxfordshire, by Thomas Archer, 1706- circa 1718.

Cornbury, though much earlier, shared similar features to Heythrop, but is more restrained in its exuberance. Here, on the south east wing, the Portico is engaged with the façade, with bold projections at the cornice. Imagining the frontage without the two end bays, and a silhouette enriched by a rooftop arcade, this building has stronger parallels with Kings Weston than Heythrop. The south-east wing was designed in 1666 by Hugh May, and architect who Vanbrugh admired for the work he’d done at Windsor Castle. The interiors here have been heavily altered, but there was once a double height hall here whose over-scaled fireplace with a Vanbrughn boldness survives. 

South east wing of Heythrop house, Oxfordshire, by Hugh May, 1666. 

Most curiously the diversion to Heythrop diverted right around Blenheim Palace, Vanbrugh’s most famous work, that was then in the process of construction. Considering Southwell had hired him as architect an inspection of the works might be expected it to have been an essential highlight. It’s assumed therefore that Southwell had visited at least once before and was already familiar with the project. How Heythrop, or for that matter any of the buildings on the itinerary, were selected can only be speculated upon.  

Like Middleton Stoney, Dodington Park was entirely rebuilt in the late 18th century, and little can be ascertained on why it was included on the itinerary. Dyrham Park nearby,  finished in around 1711, would already have been very familiar to Southwell, who was close to the Blathwayt family and would marry into it in 1716.  
 
Further research is required to know whether Vanbrugh accompanied his patron on this journey. Was he there directing Southwell to features he thought fitting for Kings Weston, or did he have some influence on the selection of properties to visit? Was Vanbrugh present when Kings Weston was set out and begun?   
 
You might expect that by the time Southwell reached Kings Weston, on the 29th April, and after so much inspiration, he might have at last decided on a new design. Indeed he writes that already “upwards of 60 men preparing stones and digging the foundation of the new house”; but still, in the closing days of May he wrote “I am full of a great anxiety and trouble as to mine (house improvements) which arises from the uncertainty of setting out right, and to this hour my model, I cannot say, is fixed; though it may be and will be by the next week.” Clearly April’s ambition to set out the new building had failed, the study trip perhaps even adding confusion to the process.    

 Architectural drawing of the main front of Kings Weston House, from the office of Sir John Vanbrugh. (Victoria & Albert Museum) 

 This indecision appears to be Southwell’s own, and Vanbrugh is not mentioned at all. The architect must have been working closely with his client on proposals, so whether his designs were rejected and revised, or whether the fault was his, and he’d been slow in furnishing his client with drawings is not known. There are no significant variations in the general design of the new mansion in existing drawings. Eventually plans for the house were agreed, and on 16th of June work on Vanbrugh’s designs for Kings Weston house was begun. In the context of most of the grand houses of its day, particularly in the Bristol Region, it was still a pretty revolutionary piece of architecture. Where Vanbrugh deviates from the rigours of classical architecture with the main front, and experiments with robust modelling of the other three fronts, Kings Weston is particularly unique.  

The stones of Kings Weston house

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One of the most distinctive aspects of Kings Weston house is the unique honey coloured stone from which it’s built. Looking closely at the blockwork you’ll notice a world of variation in its colour and composition, but also the way the original masons finished each stone. This short report hopes to focus attention on this overlooked architectural aspect.

The whole of the Kings Weston ridge is peppered with former quarries. Some are obvious, like the one fenced off below the TV transmitter, or to the north of Penpole Point; these are from the 19th and 20th Centuries and their scale is a giveaway. Others are more ancient, possibly as early as the Roman era when the nearby villa and town were built. Having been planted out with trees and landscaped in the Georgian ere these are less visible. The extent of the quarrying is most obvious using Lidar data, that shows the land without the distractions of trees and buildings.

Map with Lidar date, showing excavations of old quarries and their era.

Dig anywhere along the south side of the park and you’ll soon hit greyish limestone, like that in the Avon Gorge. Once quarried it’s best used in rubble walls. But the stone Kings Weston’s built of is the more distinctive Penpole Stone. As its name suggests, Penpole Stone is found exclusively along the north side of Penpole Wood. It’s a hard and resistant ochre coloured stone with pink and red marbling, a mixture of compressed grit, clay, and glittering quartz occlusions, called Dolomitic Conglomerate. At over 200 million years old it’s certainly the most ancient thing you’ll find on the estate!

Detailed high resolution scan of Penpole Stone, sowing the huge variety of colour and material.

When the builders of the house were looking for materials they needn’t have looked far for a strong and durable material. The proximity of the Penpole source to the house must also have been a bonus. Other mansions in the 18th Century had to pay large sums to source and transport suitable stone, particularly if they sought the harmonious smooth ashlar finish then desirable for classical buildings. Others, for example Stoke Park, accepted cheaper rubble stone, but rendered and painted it to cover up its aesthetic shortfalls. Kings Weston benefitted not just from good stone nearby, but also one that gave its house such an attractive colour.

The site of the quarry was defined by the most appropriate stone for the job. At Penpole that location remains as an obvious woodland landmark, a long deep cut into the side of the wood that follows the line of the ridge. It was later planted as a rustic garden to reincorporate it into the landscaped parkland.

The former quarry in Penpole Wood, looking westwards, towards Penpole Point. It was later landscaped as a rustic woodland garden in the 1760s.

Whether the stone was the suggestion of Kings Weston’s owner, Edward Southwell, or advised by the masons he employed it would have needed to be approved of by the architect, Sir John Vanbrugh, as fit for his work. In a 1716 letter to the Duchess of Marlborough Vanbrugh names a “Mr Townsend (who did Mr Southwells’ masonry)” as the man responsible. This was probably George Townsend, master mason of Bristol, and capable architect in his own right.

In April 1712 Southwell arrived at the building site being prepared for his new house and noted “Upwards of 60 men preparing stones and digging the foundation of the new house”. One can imagine the activity at the Penpole Quarry in this work, the cutting of the stone from the quarry face, its shaping, and transportation the short distance along the ridge to where it was needed. The quantity of stone required for the construction is indicated, in part, by the scale of the excavation, though it should be noted that much of the irregular nature of the material would have been inappropriate for fine cutting, used as infill, or discarded.

This 17th Century engraving of a quarry could almost have been intended to depict that at Penpole. Quarrymen split and roughly shape stone blocks for lifting onto the waiting wagon.

If you look at the outer walls of the house today you can see how large some of the blocks were. Some are colossal and must weigh more than a ton each. Particularly large are the single stacked blocks needed to give each of the front columns a regular appearance all the way up, and the vast shelving window cills Vanbrugh must have enjoyed drawing an exaggerated effect from. Each of these were cut and finished by hand; with such a hard stone it must have been particularly laborious.

Some of the stone blocks in the portico columns are massive.

If you look closer again you’ll spot something else; each stone is treated individually with regular ridged patterning, and a narrow grooved border in the same finish. Preparing a stone requires several stages. A roughhewn block needs to be dressed several times to get a perfectly smooth block, using different tools for each successive dressing. Here at Kings Weston the blocks have not been given the perfect smooth finish, and instead a clawed bolster, a type of wide headed chisel with teeth, used to give an intentionally grooved texture. Rather than being evidence of cutting corners the finish is deliberate and controlled, the surface of each individual block carefully articulated. This was perhaps to give a veneer of antiquity to the finished monument, or exaggerate the massiveness of the architecture so its character contributed to the “Castle air” that Vanbrugh desired of his buildings.

The subtle but clear chiseled patterns are visible on blocks around the front door of the house.

By September 1713 Southwell the house was so advanced that Southwell wrote that “by the end of next month I may have discharged my regiment of outside people”. However, masons work continued until 1716 Later the same stone went into building other buildings around the estate. In line with their status large blocks went into the ornamental garden buildings like the Echo and Penpole Lodge, whilst and the looser rubble went into other estate buildings like Kingsweston Inn and the cottages on Kings Weston Lane.

The facades of the house will reveal that Penpole stone, whilst predominating, was not the only material used architecturally. Being hard and unyielding it was not suitable for the finer ornamental work. The column capitals, pediment and cornices, urns and other intricate details were executed in softer, finer-grained, buff limestone, possibly from Dundry, south of Bristol. The difference in stone colour and texture is obvious once you notice it. Rather than being a poor match the subtle difference appears to have been used architecturally to emphasise the most civilising classical elements of the Enlightenment design, a deliberate contrast to the background rustic aesthetic.

 The difference between Penpole Stone and the paler limestone used for detailed work is clearly apparent on the main portico front 

The use of specific stone finishes for aesthetic effect is seen again in the “Back Front”, at the rear of the house. This is intentionally the  most ruggedly handled of the four great facades. Here, with its massive forms, turreted corner towers, arched windows, and oversized keystones, Vanbrugh’s castle keep medievalism is at its most developed. To add to the effect the use of stone changes. The massive single blocks of the other facades makes way for smaller blocks, with greater variety in size, and with irregular courses. Abandoned too is the regularity and order of the neatly tooled stonework; Instead the blocks are deliberately rough faced. The Penpole Wood quarry would produce plenty of other large blocks for later buildings on the estate, so the effect here is intentional, rather than the result of a dwindling supply of good stone.

The deliberately formidable Back Front of Kings Weston house exhibits the deliberate use of rough texturing and stone coursing.

Other stone was also required to serve particular purposes. Marble was imported from Ireland for fireplaces designed to impress. Hardwearing pennant stone was brought in for steps and flagstones. This was sailed across the Severn from the Forest of Dean with surprising ease, prompting Vanbrugh to write, in a letter to the Duchess of Marlborough, who was then scrutinising her architect’s work at Blenheim Palace:

”I writ to him (Southwell) and his steward both to get an exact amount of the charge of his steps, both stone carriage and work; and the account they send me is this. The steps he has are not from Ross, where my Lord Dukes came from, but out of the Forrest from whence the carriage is so easy  to Mr Southwells’ that he says they must needs cost much more to Gloucester from Ross”

Kings Weston had, by this time, become a showcase of the sort of work Vanbrugh was keen for his clients to inspect. The economy with which it had been achieved and the architectural effect would both have been features he was eager to promote. From some of Vanbrugh’s letters the Duchess had clearly been impressed when she’d visited.

A mason employs a bolster to smooth the face of a stone block in the 1700s engraving.

“I am very glad that your Grace is pleased with Mr Southwell’s House; it being the sort of building I endeavour to bring people to who are disposed to ask my advice: Tis certain his work has been cheap and a great deal of it tolerably well”

Though, not all the mason’s work met Vanbrugh’s standards, and he pointed out to the Duchess: 

“The steps in Mr Southwell’s garden are of the same stone that is us’d at Blenheim, but it cannot be had anything so cheap” “they must be better wrought and set both than Mr Southwell’s are; some of his steps being abominable.”

Perhaps we should not be surprised that these steps were replaced when the house was remodelled a generation later!

New archive acquisition: Wood Lodge drawing adds to the records

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A new image has just been acquired of one of the Kings Weston Estate’s 23 individual Listed Buildings. Seen above, this is a pencil drawing of Wood Lodge dates to 1956 and was sketched by  local artist, and Bristol Savage, George Holloway. This view looks towards the Grade II Listed building from the east and shows a number of features that have since been lost including the blocked windows and the stone drip-mouldings above others.

The lodge owes much of its ornamental appearance to Philip Skinner Miles during the Victorian era. It was in the 1860s that Miles undertook the refurbishment of a number of the estate’s buildings, including Wood Lodge, and added rustic wood work, decorative barge-boards and a clay pantile roof; Kingsweston Inn Sea Mills Farm, and Henbury Lodge also received similar alterations at this time. However, Wood Lodge has a much earlier origin.

The lodge has always had an important role on the estate; guarding the private parkland to the east from the publicly accessible common land on Penpole Point in the west. It is first depicted on an estate plan of 1772 and is seen in the smaller accompanying image here, by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, in 1788 (Copyright of the British Library). This earlier view shows the front of the building as it would have appeared from the west. What is obvious is that the present building has very different proportions when viewed from the side, and appears to have shrunk from its original width. The projecting bay on the Penpole Lane side is likely to be the same one as seen today.

From the general appearance of the building, and some of the features shown in these two illustrations, it is possible to attribute this lodge to the architect, garden designer, and mathematician Thomas Wright. We know that Wright was working on designs with Edward Southwell III of Kings Weston House from 1761 and there are strong stylistic similarities between Wood Lodge and some of his other work on the Badminton Estate, Gloucestershire and Tollymore Park in Ireland. At what time the building was so drastically altered it’s not known, and although the thatch has a far more picturesque effect, its present tiled roof must be far easier to maintain!