Tag Archives: Georgian

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

Kings Weston as political powerhouse 

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Both notable families of Kings Weston, the Southwell’s in the eighteenth Century  and the Miles’s in the Nineteenth, were heavily involved in politics. As might be expected from any wealthy landholder, they were keen to protect their own interests as much as serve in the country’s interests. It’s not surprising therefore, to find that five owners of the estate would serve in the House of Commons, and two in the House of Lords.

Members of the Southwell family were also involved in court life and as part of Government outside of their constituency responsibilities. What’s perhaps odd to us today is that many communities they were elected to represent were very remote from their home.

Edward Southwell II of Kings Weston (1739-1754), MP for Bristol  1739-1754

Sir Robert Southwell retired to Kings Weston from Court life in London in 1679, relinquishing his Government roles and choosing not to stand again for elected as MP for Penryn in Cornwall where he’d served for six years. After William III took the throne he returned to government and was elected for Lostwithiel in 1685.  

In 1702 his Son, Edward (1671-1730) was put forward as a candidate at Rye. The election went against him, but after a legal hearing in the elections committee the vote was overturned in his favour because of ‘illegal’ interference in the election. Again, Rye was very far from the Southwell’s interests and was probably what we’d consider a safe seat. Similar might be said for later elections as MP for Tregony in 1713, where he served a matter of months before a General Election, before finding favour in Preston.  

As the 18th century progressed, power gradually transferred from the monarch to the House of Commons. Politics came more polarised, voters expected better representation, and political parties were a growing force. The importance of local people representing local interests also increased. Edwad Southwell II (1739-1754) was the first of his family to represent a local constituency.

When Edward was 33, one of the two MPs for Bristol, Thomas Coster, was reported in ill health and subsequently died. Even before the death was announced, Edward had already determined t throw his lot in and seek election to the vacant seat.

We’re fortunate to have a journal he kept, detailing the various machinations in the lead-up to the election in December. This gives a fascinating insight into the process and how Edward built alliances to gain support.

At the start of October, he begins:

“I had private acts and many affairs to settle to my steward Francis Benning at Kingsweston which inclined me to undertake the journey from London, but on the news he sent me of Mr Coster’s (The member of parliament)  desperate state of health, I determined upon the journey after consulting my wife at how I should act in case of being invited to stand at the election, who freely bid me neither regard her nor her condition (she being then 6 months gone with child) nor my son, whereover my honour or credit or the service of my Country required my absence of stay. “

Kings Weston house in 1746, during which time Edward Southwell II was MP for the city. 

On arrival in Bristol 6th October he headed directly to the Tolsey on Corn Street where the magistrates of the city sat and much business where:

“Mr Berkeley stand me and I promised him and Mr Chester my Interest for the County which being so publick was much taken notice of. NB. Mr Coster was buried the night before at the Cathedral abd every bell in the City tolled for him from morning till night.”

He was disappointed to find that there was initially a lukewarm response to his interest, his closeness to Government and court life being held in some suspicion:

“Upon finding the name of a courtier was so obnoxious, I cooled much in my ambition of standing, I considered I was the King’s Servant, I had ever owed and paid him a personal duty and had ever gone to his court, and that I had my own principles and character to maintain as well as my duty to my country, and determined I would never yield up my respect to the King”

A handbill printed for Southwell’s supporters to circulate around the city. 

This might not have been an attractive attitude for the former supporters of Mr Coster, who were clearly looking for a more liberal representative in line with Whig politics. The Whig’s opposed absolute monarchy, championed parliamentary power, and individual liberty. He was forced into a position of defending his independence in order to find favour with them. Edward wrote,

“that if Mr Coster’s friends set up a man in my station, the magistrates could be able to make no opposition and that the party would take a moderate man, and were not as violent as I imagined. I told him I ever had and ever would pay a personal duty and respect to his Magesty and his Royal Family, that my place of Secretary of State for Ireland was for life and worth little more that 200 guineas per annum, and that I had refused applying for my father’s additional sallery of £300 pounds because I never would accept aan pension, but I would live independent.”

Mr Coster’s friends came round to the prospect of a gentleman of status representing them, declaring him their candidate albeit cautiously.

By November, election fever had taken over the City and Southwell found himself campaigning against Henry Coombe. Naturally, every opportunity was taken by candidates to influence voters and their supporters. Handbills and pamphlets were common, usually from alleged anonymous advocates of the candidates, particularly if they were more vicious in nature.

The punch bowl made at Brislington pottery  in 1739, probably used to curry favour and influence voters. 

The house at Kings Weston came into its own at these times, offering the perfect showcase of the Southwell’s taste wealth, and influence, where voters could be entertained on a lavish scale. The Gloucester Journal reported “The Honourable Mr Southwell has kept open house at Shirehampton ever since he has declared. There are constantly employed a baker, a butcher, and two brewers to provide for the reception of all comers and goers”

Another testament to the interest the election created is a punch bowl now in Bristol’s Museum and Art Gallery. It was commissioned from the Brislington pottery, famed for their tin-glazed ‘delft’ wares, and would have been recognisable as an expensive item at the time. Decorated in rich colours in the Chinese style of the outside, it’s only when the guests would have drained most of the contents they would discover the slogan “Southwell for ever” and the election date inside the bowl. Perhaps once they’d drunk so much, they might have been more susceptible to the political message held within.

Inside the punch bowl, the political motivation behind its manufacture becomes clear

He was declared winner on 12th December, 2651 votes to Combe’s 2203. His journal, now held in Bristol Archives, then transforms from a record of the campaign to a catalogue of the petitions and constituency work that were the inevitable outcome of political position.

Southwell remained true to his promise of independence, showing no consistency in supporting either Whig or Tory, Administration or Opposition, positions. Although perhaps true to the wishes and interests of Bristol, Southwell’s unreliability attracted few friends in the House. The 2nd Lord Egmont, related to Southwell by marriage, wrote dismissively of his kinsman:

“Southwell is a weak man. Has an affectation of being supposed to act according to his conscience, which directs him to vote one day for a proposition in a committee, and the very reverse the next day and in the House. They think him an honest man at Bristol but they have no opinion of his understanding and I believe if occasion were, he might be easily changed—But if not he will be as often for us as against us!”  

Despite frustrating other politicians, Southwell maintained support from Bristol’s voters, representing the city until 1754, when, due to ill health, he chose not to stand. He died the following year.

It would be the same 2nd Lord Egmont who’d criticised him who would support Edwards son, Edward II (1738-1776) for election to Bridgewater in 1761. Seeing an opportunity to represent his native Gloucestershire, he declared as candidate two years later. He represented the county for thirteen years before being elevated to the House of Lords in April 1776 and vacating the seat.  

Glimpses of Kings Weston’s artistic wealth on display

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A recent visit to Bristol Museum and Art Gallery came with something of a surprise. Hanging on the wall of the British and European Art: The Age of Enlightenment and the Birth of Romanticism gallery is a pair of paintings we recognised immediately as being from Kings Weston!

Venice, the Molo by Canaletto, now at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery 

The paintings are by none other than Canaletto, and it’s after them that the Canaletto Room in Kings Weston house was named. The two paintings were auctioned in 2002 from the collection of Southwell family portraits still in the ownership of the family trust. The sale paid for the expensive restoration of the rest of the collection, but the two Canaletto’s went into private hands. They are now hanging in the museum on a five-year loan from a private collection.

The two paintings were originally bought for Kings Weston by Edward Southwell II. At 21 the young Southwell had been dispatched to the Continent on his grand tour, returning home in August 1726. It appears that it was only in the following year that Southwell  purchased the first two paintings through Owen Mc Sweeney (or Swiny). Mc Sweeny had become resident in the Italian city in 1721, becoming agent for several artists and selling his works to English gentlemen on the Grand Tour. It may be that Southwell placed orders for the paintings when he was in Venice in early summer 1726, for them to be sent to him the following year.  

Venice, Piazza San Marco by Canaletto, now at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery 

The latter wrote to the Duke of Richmond in 1727: “The pieces which Mr. Southwell has, (of Canals painting) were done for me, and they cost me 70 sequeens. The fellow is whimsical and vary’s his prices every day: and he that has a  mind to have any of his work, must not seem to be too fond of it, for he’ll be ye worse treated for it, both in the price and in the painting too. He has more work than he can doe, in any reasonable time, and well: but by the assistance of a particular friend of his, I get once in two months a piece sketch’d out and a little time after finished, by force of bribery. l send yr Grace by Captain Robinson [ … ] who sails from hence tomorrow, Two of the Finest pieces, I think he ever painted and of the same size with Mr. Southwell’ s little ones (which is a size he excels in)”.

It’s worth noting that Mc Sweeney was an Irishman and Southwell maintained strong links with his ancestral homeland, shortly to become Secretary of State to that Kingdom in succession after his father. The pair may have connected in Venice over a patriotic bond.

Edward Southwell II, 1705-1755, who commissioned Canaletto’s paintings. 

Edward Southwell became one of the earliest gentlemen to boast Canaletto’s amongst their collections, at the forefront of a trend that would eventually see the artist coming to England to satisfy demand for his paintings.
 
By 1777 there were four paintings by Canaletto hanging at Kings Weston. Is it possible that Southwell had returned from Venice with a pair in 1726, the two commissioned through Mc Sweeney adding to the collection?
 
The four views of Venice were hung together in the Dressing Room of Lady de Clifford, a large first floor reception room with a bay window overlooking the Severn. Here, most of the family’s best and most intimate paintings were to be found, those intended to be seen by the family’s closest friends and most important guests. They were clearly held in high regard.
 
When the last in the line of Southwells, the 21st Baron de Clifford, died and his property was sold in a series of London Auctions, the paintings were described and “St Mark’s Quay” and “St Mark’s Place – the companion”. The original attribution to Canaletto was later amended in the catalogue to name Guardi, another Venetian artist, as their creator. They sold for £31 and £25 respectively, possibly bought back by family members. But what of the other two recorded in the house a generation before?
 
In a year when a number of other paintings that once hung at Kings Weston have gone to auction, it’s gratifying to find two such important paintings being shared with the public so generously.

The lily pond in past times 

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Following our focus on the Lily Pond, we were delighted to have some terrific photographs of it in happier times shared with us. Ken Osborne kindly directed us to these photos in his collection that show the pond in the 1950s.

In one, children take advantage of the open access at the west end to go pond dipping under the care of a couple of adults resting on the parapet wall; it certainly seems to have been a popular activity for a sunny afternoon. A notice attached to the lodge warns “action will be taken against any person found fishing or throwing litter in the pond”. We imagine the children will have got permission for their little ‘fishing’ even

A panorama of photos stitched together to show the lilypond in the 1950s. 
One of the surviving fruit trees, still with it’s fan-shaped branches, but now less formally trained. 

We’ve managed to splice a few of these into a long panorama showing the view from Napier Miles Road, and the fruit trees still trained across the back walls in glorious fan patterns. Some of these trees still grow today, a delicious couple of pear trees have become unruly, but still fruit in abundance.

The gardens around the pond were noted for the abundance of their crop, and the excellent conditions they offered for even delicate fruit. An article in The Garden magazine in July 1900 remarks on the hardiness of fig trees here. Again, some of these survive in the grounds, and were noted then for “individual fruits attaining to a very large size and ripening perfectly”. The author writes that “there are few gardens in which figs thrive and continue productive over so many years” and that they were “enviable to visitors whose ambition in fig culture cannot be satisfied to anything like the extent which obtain here under the most simple rules of culture”.

A couple of young ladies pause on the parapet wall of the pond for a chat, some time in the 1950s.  


Working Party update – Urgent work at the lily pond

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There were some herculean efforts put in last month from a crowd of volunteers, over a dozen, and we managed to make serious restoration progress on the historic lily pond on Napier Miles Road. There were two objectives the work; firstly, the cutting-down or rooting-up of trees and vegetation that has grown to suffocate the pond, and to enable a clearer survey of the condition of the pond walls and bottom.
 
Even after a long dry Summer, it was a surprise to find no open water at all in the pond tank! The vegetation has acted to soak up much more water than would be usual, and the ground was relatively firm across the whole area.

Volunteers rake-up the cut rubbish in an effort to clear the historic lily pond. 

The target to cut and remove the vegetation was only just met by the end of the day, the hot conditions meaning volunteers tired quickly despite the great turnout. The waste was lifted to the pond edges and stacked in existing piles of debris up and away from the water line. Sadly, there was little sign of any of the 49 individual native pond species recorded here in 2012 as part of our Bioblitz. There were two types of reeds, sporadic water lily plants, some froglets, and an invasion of sallow trees, but nothing that indicates a thriving environment.

Before and after work focussed on reversing the decline of the Georgian pond.
A volunteer inspects the trial hole dug through the decaying vegetation to find the pond base. 

Initial review showed the original hydraulic lining applied to the pond walls has dried and begun disintegrating, allowing water to leak away around the edges. We dug a small trial hole to establish the depth and condition of the lining of the pond. Digging down through an astonishing 18 inches of black sloppy rotting organic material, we encountered the original clay bottom of the pond.

In the area inspected, this looked to be in a decent wet condition, but where areas dry out in the summer, any cracked clay base or root damage will also be letting the water leak away. The hole we dug filled with water during the afternoon, showing that even though it looks like a field right now, the water is still close to the surface.

A quick calculation suggests there are around 350 cubic metres of mud needing clearing out to start restoration of the pond lining. This could equate to about 340 tons of black gunk that need removing from the pond!

We’re grateful too for the incredible positive reaction to this work, and the kind words of support we’ve received; more than for any other project we’ve undertaken on the estate!

The view from the road before and after restoration work
The dense monoculture of reeds is cut out to slow the decline in the pond’s condition. 





 

Bristol Planners volunteer at the lilypond   

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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. 

Another Successful heritage open day

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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.

The History of Kings Weston’s grandest room. 

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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

Research updates

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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!  

Iron Bridge Returns!

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Finally!! A major milestone in the iron bridge restoration was reached at the end of last month, with the return of the historic structure, albeit 1.1 metres higher. Contractors started work early in the morning of the 30th May, bringing in a crane, the bridge strapped to a flat-loader, and closing the footpaths nearby for safety. A group of campaigners and visitors gathered at the west abutment to watch proceedings.

With spectators beyond, contractors watch as the first half of the freshly restored and painted bridge is craned back into place.
The east half of the bridge returns to meet its partner half way. 

The bridge looks resplendent in its new livery of dark green paint, a colour picked to match the original colouring found beneath old paint layers. Contractors from Dorothea Restoration and Griffiths were on hand to make sure that the components would fit back together in their new position; not an easy task with the bearing stones having to be raised and reset at their new level.

The first section, the west end, was gradually lowered into place, and proved the more troublesome of the parts. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and cutting of the stonework it was eventually seated in position. The east end then followed, then the central plate that fastened the two ends of the bridge together. After some careful adjustment the whole structure was back in place and true.

Work will carry on now, touching up the new paintwork, erecting the steps either end, and fitting the handrails and railings to them. The road closure has been extended until the 15th to allow some of this work to be done, and the final completion is supposed to be the first week in July. Everyone is looking forward to being able to celebrate the reopening!   

T
he two halves back in place, awaiting the central joining connection.