A fantastic painting of the estate has just come to our attention. Kings Weston was once famous for its views, not just northwards across the Severn to Wales, but also to broad panoramas southwards up the Avon and across to Somerset. This newly discovered painting supposedly dates to around 1836, a time of great uncertainty for the house and estate. Edward Southwell, 21st Baron de Clifford (1767-1832), last in his line had died in 1832. His will instructed the sale of house and park, effects and furniture, and all the landed estate, with the proceeds being split between several nieces. His widow was required to give up living at the mansion, but had been well provided for with the splendid town house in Carlton Terrace in the centre of London.
Above: Henry Willis’s painting showing the view across Shirehampton Park, towards the Avon, circa 1836.
The following year the house and estate was marketed by estate agents; they described the park as “forming a most desirable situation for the erection of one or more villas.” Looking at the view depicted you can see the attraction to a potential developer who might be tempted to pepper the landscaped grounds with mansions for well-heeled merchants. By good fortune the estate was instead purchased by the incredibly wealth Philip Miles and preserved intact. By 1836, the suggested date for the painting, Miles was settling in having moved here from Leigh Court with his second wife and their children.
The artist, Henry Willis, has chosen to emphasise the pastoral character of the view from Shirehampton Park, towards the Avon in the distance. A small group of agricultural workers have paused a while to chat as cattle amble through the landscaped ground behind them. Beyond them a steam tug assists a sailing vessel up the Avon towards the city docks. The contrasting of verdant trees with the dying elm and felled trunk in the foreground suggest themes of the passage of time and the circle of life.
The valuation and marketing prospectus for the estate from 1834
Willis was an artist associated with the Bristol School of Artists, and was a member of sketching parties with members of that group until his departure for the United States in 1842 until his health forced his return to England. These artists, part of the Romantic Movement, often celebrated the natural beauty of the Bristol region. The Gorge was a particular favourite location, but paintings around Kings Weston are rarer from this group. It’s interesting to note that in 1829 Lord de Clifford had paid Willis the sum of £8 8s for a painting of Kings Weston, and out paid a further £2 10s on a frame. There’s a remote possibility that it could have been this painting, but possibly there are others out there for us to discover.
It always pays to retrace your steps for something you might have missed before. A recent trip to Bristol Archives and a return to the incredible Kings Weston Book of Drawings led to some small, but interesting discoveries. For those who don’t know of it, it’s a compilation of some of the original architect’s and builder’s drawings for the house, park, and ornamental buildings dating from the first quarter of the Eighteenth Century. It is the source of a lot that underpins our understanding of the work of Sir John Vanbrugh.
First we looked again at a drawing well know to us showing the proposed plan of an octagonal summer house intended for the bottom of Longcoombe in Shirehampton Park, though an option to site it on the top of nearby Conger Hill is also given. This structure may have been that which the second Edward Southwell who owned the estate noted “the seat in Long Combe to be taken away” in 1754.
Plan of an octagonal seat in Longcombe with the feint pencil sketch identified. Kings Weston Book of Drawings. Bristol Archives.
What we hadn’t spotted before was a tiny pencil sketch, almost invisible now on the margins. Enhancing this tiny doodle revealed it to be an elevation of the same building, suggesting an ornate ogee dome with a spherical finial surmounting it. It’s an oddly proportioned and inelegant proposal on the whole, perhaps a reason for its removal, but equally likely it had decayed sufficiently over thirty years or so to be rendered irreparable.
The sketch enhanced, with an interpretation of the building shown on the right.
The book of drawings is full of drawings and sketches unrelated to Kings Weston, so we can be forgiven for having overlooked the significance of an untitled and unannotated elevation of a stone balustrade. Looking again at the drawing we compared it with a painting of the mid 1760s that we discovered some time after our first foray into the book of drawings. Bringing the two together only now did it become clear that the design was for the balustrade that once ran along the north side of the house, protecting people from straying too close to the unprotected edge of the gigantic Great Terrace beyond. It should be noted that this was a separate balustrade from that now protecting the coffee shop terrace; this was only constructed in the mid-Victorian, likely without knowledge of the original arrangement on this side of the house.
Scale drawing of the stone balustrade designed, we believe, for the Great Terrace. Kings Weston Book of Drawings. Bristol Archives A mid 18th Century painting of the Great Terrace on the north of the house and showing the balustrade and piers of similarly distinctive design
Related to the drawing is a memo, also pasted into the book of drawings. This sets out the price for the “rayless and ballisters” at 5 shillings(?) a yard and gives a cost of £15, including bases and pedestals. The note also sends the request that the freemason “desires to know whether hee shall go on with the small potts”; the potts are probably stone urns but their location is not revealed. If you can decipher the accompanying signature, you are a better person than we are!
Quote for stone balustrade and a query about “potts”
A final drawing is an intriguing, if tantalising, glimpse of the input of women in the design of elements of Kings Weston, and begs many questions yet to be answered. Helena Le Grand was the sister of Edward Southwell who began the rebuilding of Kings Weston house in 1712. When the house was complete enough for occupation, Edward relied on his sister to organise his affairs before moving in with his second wife, Anne Blathwayte. In August 1716 he wrote “my sister is fully employed in transposing and setting the furniture, pictures and cheney.” Obviously she was a trusted and capable set of hands in such circumstances, but a drawing of a fire surround suggests that she may have had a more direct input in the appearance of the interiors.
The drawing is dated February 1718, when the house was still being finished internally. It is entitled “Copy of Mrs Le Grand’s draft of a chimney piece to be wrought out of the ash colour marble at Kingsweston”. The implication here is that it was Helena who produced the original drawing. It’s not clear whether she was designer, or whether it was in turn a copy of another fire surround, but it’s interesting that it is a scaled drawing, with defined dimensions, and orthogonally drawn; this suggests the Helena clearly shared the skills of a draftsman, and implies that she was closely involved in the design and commissioning aspects of this feature at least. We are left to wonder how much architectural influence she might have had on her brother and his architect?
Copy of Mrs Le Grand’s draft of a chimney piece. Kings Weston Book of Drawings. Bristol Archives.
This time of year might not be the best to think about camping, but we wanted to share a new artefact that’s recently come our way: a small green flag. Many will know that Penpole Wood and the slopes below, where Lawrence Weston estate now stands, were the home of Bristol’s district Scout camp between 1937 and 1947; It’s a rather sad story that ended with their land being compulsorily purchased by the City Council for new housing. But, in 1937, after their purchase of 70 acres of woods and a couple of fields in the park below they set out with great optimism to create somewhere that Scouts could come to hone their camping skills, pioneering, and woodcraft.
Teams of scouts raise the new camp flagpole in the fields below Penpole Wood. Trees in the distance on the right are still recognisable as those on The Tump. The location of the flag would be around where 19 Mancroft Avenue stands today..
By the end of the first year it was clear that it had been an immediate success. The Scouts chapel, steps through Penpole Woods, and the campfire circle had been set out, with Penpole Lodge and Wood Lodge being used as storage and offices. A campsite in the woods was created in Jubilee Clearing, surrounded by trees of the Victorian arboretum. The second year, 1938, began with great optimism. Early in the year a magnificent new flagpole of about 50ft in height was manhandled into the fields and set up close to the campfire circle.
a flyer handed out to advertise the “Penpoloree”
The highpoint of that year was the Whitsun jamboree camp held over the summer bank holiday weekend, christened the Penpoloree. This was the main annual gathering to which all the district’s scouts were invited, attracting visitors from troops around the country. Events and displays were put on over three consecutive days, the event even forming part of the city’s civic calendar with the distinguished attendance of the Lord Mayor. It was also an opportunity for the Scouts to showcase their campsite to the general public who were invited to the camp sing along, with guests paying 6d for the privilege.
1938 was particularly special for the attendance of the 8th Earl of Buckinghamshire, John Hampden Mercer-Henderson (1906-1963), Commissioner for the Boy Scout movement. He camped with the scouts for the duration of the jamboree and keenly involved himself in the weekend’s events. His presence cemented Penpole on the national scouting stage, resulting in plenty of press coverage both locally and nationally.
The culmination of each day’s event was focussed on the huge campfire hosted in the fields below Penpole Wood. Here, with the camp chief presiding in a chair hollowed from a giant log, dignitaries were hosted and public beheld the massed voices of the campers in song. A special Penpole camp yell was also a highlight of festivities before campers returned to their tents either nearby or in Jubilee Clearing at the top end of the woods.
The Commissioner of the Boy Scout movement, the Earl of Buckinghamshire, conducts proceedings around the jamboree campfire in 1938.
During the camp special pennants were awarded to recognise particular scouts and patrol groups who had excelled in their work, our recently acquired flag no doubt being one of those handed out by the Commissioner on that Whitsun weekend. By coincidence one of the photos published in the Evening Post shows the Earl presenting a similar pennant to the Lord Mayor at the camp. Sadly we know nothing of its history between then and our acquisition.
the pennant, awarded for good camping at the Penpole Whitsun jamboree in 1938. The Lord Mayor is presented with a similar pennant by the Earl of Buckingham.
The camp was a huge success. Over the weekend Penpole attracted 897 campers with another 479 visiting scouts, and over 2000 paying members of Bristol’s public. It was to be a sunny and halcyon time for those who attended, unaware that the onset of war the following year and the council’s desperate need for housing afterwards would overshadow their time there. Today the
If you remember camping at Penpole or have any more memorabilia from the scout’s time at Penpole, we’d love to hear from you. We know that there were films recorded during the 1938 event by W. F. E Gill, so we’d love to know what happened to them. If you’d like to read more about the Scout’s history on the Kings Weston estate, take a look at the detailed journals written at the time by W.G.N Webber who was camp coordinator for their time there. The original is held at Bristol Archives and is free to view on request.
Long ago, when we were first exploring the historic sites around the estate a feature came to our attention on a map of 1772. It was drawn on an estate survey by Isaac Taylor, drawn in 1772 and now part of Bristol Archives collections. A detail showed a rectangular shape, that we knew from later maps was a cattle pond, and a dark square feature shown excavated back into the slope of The Tump nearby. Again, looking at later maps this was marked as a well by the 20th century but its appearance on the Georgian plan raised the question whether it had begun as an ornamental feature in the landscaped grounds.
The location of the arch on The Tump
The arch exposed in the north slope of The Tump
Back in 2011, when we were first aware of it, we searched the whole area in vain. The cattle pond remains broadly traceable alongside the path from modern day Moor Grove, but any remails of the other feature completely eluded us. When we returned to the area as part of research for last month’s newsletter we noticed something in the bank that we’d missed before: a low stone arch. We knew from an entry on the city’s Historic Environment Record that an arch existed close by, it had been reported as roman in origin, though was quickly established to be more recent, described as an “18-19th century spring head”. This corresponded with the feature we now saw on The Tump, and with the date of the Taylor plan. With the location now identified we set out to uncover what the arch was from. We undertook some superficial clearance of some of the undergrowth around the arch and excavated either side to establish how wide it was. The arch is irregular in shape, and roughly built. As found its crown was clear of the ground surface by about 20cm, but using a torch it clearly extended backward under the bank. When surveyed it transpired that it went back 1.7m under ground, ending in a flat rear wall.
The location of the livestock pond and square feature on the 1772 estate survey.
Cutting back either side revealed the arch was shallow, springing from two side walls 1.34m apart. The front sections of these walls, and the arch itself, were rough, indicating that they had been broken away with portions demolished. The mortar holding the arch together contained lumps of ash and was white in colour, indicative of an early-mid 19th century date. The mortar of the walls appeared yellow and of different, earlier date. With the general dimensions of the remains established we sought to find out how far the structure once extended out from the hill, and where it terminated below ground. Digging down on one side the infill was loose rubble, so loose large lumps could be easily lifted out by hand. At a depth of 47cm below the springing of the arch there was a clear pool of water!
The arch during excavation. the hole dug down on the right reached the water table around 40cm below the arch spring
Unfortunately, further excavations weren’t possible, but the exercise established a lot about the feature, its function and fate. It was clear that it wasn’t a garden feature, but a practical one. As suggested by the Historic Environment Record, it looks to be a natural spring that had a cistern built around it to collect water; this waster was used to feed the livestock pond just a short way downhill to the west. The 1772 estate plan may show an open cistern dug into the side of the hill. It appears that this had a vaulted roof constructed over it at a slightly later date, and from its location it would otherwise have risked filling up with silt washing off the hill. The irregular shape of the exposed edge of the arch represents a square aperture, an inspection hole or hatch, that would account for it being described as a well on later maps, despite having a very shallow water level and not being dug down in the traditional manner.
Scale diagram indicating the form and size of the cistern or springhead.Image from a 3D photogrammetry model of the arch. Click on it to view the model in 3D
The animal pond survived the construction of Lawrence Weston estate around it, and is shown on aerial photos from 1950, glinting behind the houses of Moor Grove. No doubt this posed a health and safety risk to the new residents of the area, and it is reputed to have flooded downhill in wet weather, into the gardens of new houses. It would have been a practical necessity to infill the pond, and it’s likely that the spring or well head was dealt with at the same time, with the arch partially destroyed to enable its infilling with rubble. Whilst it wasn’t the imagined grotto or ornamental feature that it might have been the cistern is interesting, nevertheless. Its importance to the agricultural estates justifies its marking on the 1772 plan, and the relationship with the livestock pond shows how the opportunities were harnessed.
We were recently sent this fascinating photo of Kings Weston house when it was in use as a WWI Auxiliary Hospital. It’s also unusual in that it is conveniently dated, to November 1918, towards the end of the conflict.
The photo was sent to us by Hazel Rowcliffe who shares that her grandfather is the gentleman playing chess on the right and he would have been 18 years old at the time of the photo. She says she doesn’t think he ever really spoke about his time in the war, but the interest he shows in chess saw him play competitively when he was older.
The scene is set in the library, now the Vanbrugh Room in the house. The tall library shelves have been stripped as part of the conversion of the room to a ward, along with all the family furniture and belongings. Only a remarkably tall mirror over the fireplace remains to ornament the walls, perhaps to large and fragile to consider moving. Temporary light fittings are rigged-up hanging from the shelves for the beds, each of which displays a red cross on its linen.
The nurse on the far right looks to be Sybil Napier Miles, the wife of the ‘squire’ Philip Napier Miles. She wears three bars on her left arm denoting three years of service as a volunteer nurse, which would correspond with the time that Kings Weston had been operating as a hospital. She took on management of the auxiliary hospital when it opened in 1915, and received the OBE for her efforts.
A recent new acquisition is this watercolour painting of Kings Weston house framed by the trees and lodge at Penpole Point. The gates separating the common land on the Point from the private woodland walls is firmly shut and the top of the lodge is almost enveloped in ivy. The sun makes the golden stone of both buildings glow in the early autumn light. This was once a well-known view of the house, being the subject of several other known paintings, but inclusion of the lodge in the view as well is unusual. The view to the house must have been obscured by trees not long after this painting was created as we have no later image from this perspective.
It’s an important find for a couple of reasons; first it was painted by a well-known local artist, Thomas Leeson Rowbotham (1782–1853), whose paintings form a major component of the city museum’s Braikenridge collection. Most of these date to the 1820s and were commissioned to record historic buildings and monuments in the city, though the Kings Weston painting falls outside of that collection. It’s also significant for its very precise date – September 21st 1848 – just a year short of 175 years, almost to the week. It’s a late work by Rowbotham, then aged 66, the artist surviving just five years longer after its completion.
Kings Weston house and Penpole Lodge from the point, Thomas Leeson Rowbotham, 21st September 1848.
Looking north from the house today it’s difficult to reconcile the Lawrence Weston housing estate with the Kings Weston historic parkland. The Lower Park on which it was developed was once a key component in the designed landscaped grounds, dropping away to reveal the spectacular views across countryside towards the Severn, and acting as an artificially picturesque setting for the house in the opposite direction. It’s harder still to conceive that the designers of the post-war estate acted with sympathy to the historic setting they were provided with.
The Lower Park seen from Kings Weston house in 1789, by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm. Penpole Point is recognisable in the distance, with the lodge tower and stone dial. Cast concrete Easyform houses are erected on Mancroft Avenue. The angle of the photograph is not too dissimilar from the above painting.
Immediately after WWII there was a housing crisis that dwarfs the scale of todays. Swathes of Bristol homes lay in rubble, others were unsanitary and decaying slums, and an influx of servicemen returning from war exasperated an already difficult problem. Just a year after the end of hostilities squatters were already taking up residence on some of the abandoned army huts elsewhere on the Kings Weston landscape. Recognising the urgency of the problem the city Corporation took the decision to lay out a large new estate to the north of the city, across the Lower Park of Kings Weston. The Scouts camping fields were acquired by compulsory purchase in 1947 and the rest of the land below the house secured for development.
Although it never hosted any ornamental parkland buildings the land added to the picturesque effect of the estate. By the 1770s it had been laid out in the picturesque Landscaped Parkland fashion, with clumps of trees artfully positioned in the naturally undulating land to frame views or catch the eye. The Tump, a natural hillock immediately to the north of the House, was planted with specimen trees, and some of a much older avenue trees retained and interspersed with these new specimens. Most of these trees remained after the war, and the Capability Brown-style landscaping remained intact.
1947 aerial view of the parkland with north orientated downwards. The open fields, scattered specimen trees, and clustered groups ac all be picked out.One of the early planning drawings for the estate with north approximately downwards. Sites for a youth centre, pub, nursery school and new schools are indicated.
Looking at the Lawrence Weston estate today you might think that it was imposed on the landscape without much thought beyond utility, but look closer and you can see its designers were sensitive to the task set of them. The City Architect of the time, Nelson Meredith, was particularly alert to the city’s historic buildings and unique character, and often worked with an ambition to reveal and respond to historic buildings, albeit in a way we might think insensitive today.
In this 1949 photo the flat roofs of the concrete Easyform houses on Mancroft Avenue reveal the historic mansion above the growing housing estate.
Meredith’s team of architects and planners set out the road of the estate in a way that maintained unobstructed views up to the mansion from Mancroft and Barrowmead Avenues, and from Long Cross. To ensure that new building had as minimal an impact as possible a flat-roof house type was developed and located where a traditional pitched roof would otherwise have interfered with these protected views.
The designers recognised the importance of the many mature parkland trees on the estate and sought to incorporate them within the overall design. Where possible they were retained as part of main road frontages, with clumps being given greater emphasis as the focus of new park spaces. Broxholm Walk was aligned to respond to the line of the early Georgian avenue, “Wilcox Avenue” that once linked the house to the Tump, and some of whose trees still survived. The Tump was initially retained as an enclaved vestige of the open parkland, complete with trees an open grassland, though this was, in part, due to the impractical nature of the hilly ground. Today it is part of the Grade II Registered Historic Parkland along with the rest of the estate.
Sadly, over time the mature trees have gradually died and been replaced with more municipal style tree planting. Later houses like those on Sadlier Close have been less sympathetic to views of the house and tree-lined horizons of Penpole Wood. Even those built a short time after the original phases lacked the same understanding of the historic landscape.
Looking west across the Lawrence Weston estate circa 1952, showing the many mature trees and open spaces integrated into its design. Penpole Wood is in the background. 1948 Roman villa excavations with Mancroft Avenue being built in the background.
The construction of Lawrence Weston did reveal something about the Kings Weston estate, hidden for many centuries: the Roman villa. When in 1947 Long Cross was constructed as the main arterial route through the new housing estate it sliced through part of an important villa dating to the 3rd century BC. Between 1948 and 1950 it was excavated, and the designs of the housing estate adjusted to protect it.
It would once have been the home of a prominent local family who likely depended on a sizable agricultural estate around it for their wealth. The villa faced uphill, southwards, towards what is now Penpole Wood, with an ornamental symmetrical façade. It was furnished with ornate mosaics, its own bathhouse, and later under-floor heating. It’s impossible to know the extent of the Roman estate, but it’s not impossible that ancient land boundaries persisted long after the abandonment of the site in the 4th or 5th Centuries AD, morphed into the Saxon manor, and that Kings Weston house is the direct descendant of the same Roman villa.
We reported last month on the parch parks that had become visible in the lawns around the house in the hot weather. We’re really grateful to Matt Ford, a drone enthusiast, who remembered us asking about this a couple of years ago, and captured a couple of great images looking down on the area. These have revealed much more about what we could see on the ground, and have also helped correct some of the archaeological survey work we’d undertaken in previous years.
An enhanced version of the drone photo, kindly provided by Matt Ford. The house is visible top-left. North is approximately in the same corner.
The first thing that probably stands out are the parallel green lines running diagonal to the house. These were also picked up with geophysics surveys and represent low-density, moisture-retaining features that have allowed the grass to remain green for longer. We now think the most likely explanation for these is that they are part of the underlying geology, running roughly aligned to Penpole ridge.
The irregular parallel features retaining moisture, and showing as green grass on the aerial photo. Enhanced photos showing the feint traces corresponding with the corner of the Great Court and the path aligned with the restored avenue.
You have to look a little closer to start picking out some of the lost historic features. We knew the outline of the Great Court in front of the main front of the house remained as a shadow in the geophysics data, but the hot weather revealed it physically on the ground once more. The court was created as the grand formal setting that helped frame the grand main facade of the house when it was rebuilt to the designs of Sir John Vanbrugh from 1712. The aerial photo includes a clear demarcation of the side and front walls, with a pronounced corner being the most defining feature (feature B). Also visible are wide strips of green heading away from the house and the Great Court. These are part of the parallel avenues of lime trees that once connected to The Circle as part of a grand axial arrangement, and alignment of out 2014 trees corresponding with that line.
Halett’s 172 map of the estate overlain, with features showing as parch marks identified. The Great Court illustrated in 1746 by James Stewart. the statue is visible in the centre of the walled area.
Diagram showing why the Great Court may be showing as a moisture-retaining greener area.
One thing that’s puzzling is why the Great Court shows as more green than the dry grass to the south. The visitor can still see the very shallow depression where the court must have been cut down directly into the rock to create a perfectly flat yard, so why would this not be harder ground with shallower soil that would dry out more quickly? It may be that, when the surrounding walls were taken down and the court deformalized in the 1760s, the ground had to be made back up again to form an unbroken smooth lawn. This would see looser fill material offering a better harbour for moisture, and explain why it read as low-density on the geophys. This also suggests the strips were also cut in, and later infilled.
The Great Court might explain another feature further to the north, a thin but defined line, that relates to the alignment of the front wall (Feature E). This was in the area covered by geophys, but there was no corresponding high-resistance feature that would otherwise indicate a wall. The jury’s out on this particular mark.
A pronounced feature (feature A) that does appear on the ground and the geophys is a hard lump or two nearly symmetrical with the front of the house. With its prominent location in the centre of the court it’s tempting to interpret this as being the foundation for the statue base for a statue of Hercules dating from the building of the house from 1712-1716; perhaps future excavation will reveal this and confirm whether the base of the statue of Hercules at Goldney House, Clifton, matches the one lost from Kings Weston.
Enhanced photos showing the corner of the Great Court showing up as a distinct green patch which continues towards the house.
Our second geophys survey in 2017 we supposed to be geo-referenced to make sure it overlaid with our earlier 2014 results, however, the parch marks now indicate that it was a bit off. We have now been able to correct the overlap between the two by matching the physical marks on the ground. Comparing both parch parks and the survey shows that there is a return wall (feature C) stretching southwards, away from the Great Court that adds to our understanding of the garden layout. It’s not a feature shown on any early maps, but probably dates to the same period as the mansion. It bisects the Great Court midway along its south wall suggesting that it was aligned to the centre and the statue location.
The archaeological geophysics results reconfigured over the parch parks, and showing correlating features.Enhanced photo showing alignments of a linear feature and the outer wall of the wilderness garden.
Another new discovery has been the locating of the garden wall of the second of the earlier large garden courts that spread out between the house and the Echo (feature D). We have this in early engravings and plans, but the parch marks now locate it physically. Marks show that the existing formal garden was designed to be slightly shorter, with the lost ‘wilderness’ garden beginning closer to the house than the current hedge. The marks also show that the wilderness garden was much wider than previously thought, and with this knowledge it’s now easy to see variations in the topography of the field that likely relate to it. This area may be worth looking at for archaeological excavation to explore what features might remain from this important 17th Century feature.
At this point it’s worth bringing in another survey technique: LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). This uses laser measuring to create a hyper-detailed topographical survey that can be adjusted to highlight lumps and bumps on the surface of the land. We know from this that there are a series of regular parallel ridges across the whole of the lawn, and that these don’t relate to the natural bedrock below. We don’t know what they are, or why they’re here, but we can tell is that they pre-date the 17th and 18th Century garden features as they’re truncated by them.
LiDAR survey showing how the earlier ridges were truncated by later garden features.
One final detail brought out by the dry weather has at least photographic evidence supporting it; Moving attention to the garden front of the house there are marks in the recently laid lawn that correspond to alternating circular and rectangular rose and flower beds of the Victorian era (feature F). Perhaps a focus on this area in future years might reveal more of earlier garden layouts?
Key features identified on the enhanced aerial photo .
One building on the Kings Weston estate has had little attention focussed upon it over the years, but this article hopes to rectify that. Fives Court is now the home belonging to some of our volunteers who have kindly provided us with some photographs. It’s located on Kings Weston Lane, just at the junction of Napier Miles Road, and almost opposite the back entrance to the mansion. It presently sports a façade to the street inspired by the lodge opposite, but this obscures more work-a-day origins.
Fives Court from the junction with Napier Miles Road. Note the change in roof ridge-line.
Our first knowledge of it comes from one of two plans produced in 1772 by Isaac Taylor. The plans were drawn up after the laying out of a complex of walled gardens to the east and a long building matching the present Fives Court is included. It’s odd that it only appears on one of the two sheets covering this part of the estate and that it’s not shown coloured as the other buildings around it are, so perhaps this marks the construction date?
In 1772, a long building shown at right angles to Kings Weston Lane is likely to be the present Fives Court.
By 1849 it’s described as a Wood House, with a walled wood yard immediately to the south, and an open grass area occupying the corner of the road. It’s depicted as having a symmetrical plan with doors centrally positioned on the north and south sides, so very different from the rambling and picturesque outline of today’s house.
The building identified as a ‘wood house’ on a sketch survey of 1849.
Its use as a woodshed seems to have been short-lived, and the modern name, Fives Court, is an insight to the building’s later Victorian History. Fives is a traditional game played like badminton, against a blank wall, but using the hand rather than a racket. It’s still a game associated with and played in public schools, with Clifton College still retaining a court in their Victorian buildings. The first mention of the building in use as a sports hall of sorts is in 1886 when one of the regular Shirehampton horticultural shows was held in the park and the following description was published in the Bristol Mercury:
“In the racquet court stalls were arranged and were laden with many beautiful objects of art, and at one end of the court was a collection of paintings, the work of the late Mrs R. Miles and Mr Frank Miles.”
Reconstruction of an 1840s Racquets court built at Eglinton Castle, Scotland.
Indeed, by this point the shed appears to have been converted as a court for the game of racquets, similar but not identical for Fives. It may have been for the young Philip Napier Miles that the conversion was undertaken. Born in 1865, his time in public school may have seen him bring the sport home and the building refurbished to cater for a new passion. The original shed needed some work to accommodate the new use. Strictly speaking a Racquet court should be 30-by-60-foot, and the present building falls short of that a little. A more critical dimension was the playing wall, which also needed to be at least 30ft high. It appears that the original roof was too low to accommodate a court, and to get over this the east side was removed and reconstructed at a higher level, creating the pronounced step up in the roofline that remains obvious today. The twin doors would have had to be infilled to create a flush finish to the interior of the court, and new glazing was introduced into the raised gable end that now overlooked the walled garden.
The glazed gable end of the racquets court rising above the top of the walled garden, seen from the east. Circa 1898.
‘Frank’ Miles, society portraitist and cousin of Philip Napier Miles of Kings Weston house.
Diverging a little, one of the artists mentioned as exhibiting in the 1886 Horticultural show was a family member, Napier Miles’s cousin, Frank Miles. He was far from being a humble amateur, with a reputation as one of the leading society portraitists of his day. Between 1875 and 1881 he maintained a close relationship with Oscar Wilde, living together in a house in Tite Street in London, before Frank’s father threatened to cut his son off if he didn’t cut his ties with Wilde. The year of the racquet court exhibition was the same as his engagement to a miss Lucy Huges was announced, and he was at the height of his fame. How strange then that his works should appear in such modest circumstances at Kings Weston! Frank’s story took a dark turn the following year, with the engagement called off and his entry into the Brislington mental asylum after a breakdown. He died there four years later from “exhaustion and pneumonia”. Napier Miles did not attend the funeral, a private affair only for Franks three brothers. Frank must have visited Kings Weston, his father’s former family home, and it’s interesting to speculate whether Oscar Wilde ever accompanied him there.
The court continued to provide occasional use for fetes and bazaars held at the house into the 20th Century. In 1916 it was again the venue for artworks sold in aid of the Kingsweston Auxiliary Hospital as part of a grand Military Tournament held in the grounds. It may be that the building was converted for garage use for the Miles family at about this time with the addition of a big vehicle doorway directly onto Kings Weston Road, but documentary evidence is slim for this period.
The racquets court in the 1980s, before residential conversion as the Fives Court. Courtesy of the Reid family
The racquet court was briefly requisitioned at the start of WWII, before being declared surplus and returned to the estate. It spent much of the war as the temporary home of some historic carriages that had been bombed out of their home in Bristol Museum. There are still locals to the area who remember seeing these through the doors of the building. One of the photographs shown to us by the Reid family shows the removal of some of these carriages in the 1980s, the building appearing in its earlier state before final conversion into a family home after 1985.
A dilapidated Victorian carriage is towed away from a shabby looking racquets court in the background. Circa 1980s.
We’ve retold the story of the First World War Auxiliary hospital at Kings Weston before, but a new facet of hospital life has just come into our hands: A smartly designed front cover for the Kings Weston Hospital Magazine.
The front cover of the Kings Weston Hospital Magazine. June 1917
The advert for Lennards Boots and shoes on the inside of the magazine cover.
The magazine would have been published for hospital patients, probably written by the patients as part of their recuperation, and to fend off boredom. There were newspapers published by servicemen in the trenches, camps, and troopships, and others are known from other military hospitals, but this is the first known from Kings Weston. Most were replicated using simple methods, whatever was to hand, and could involve carbon paper, basic duplicating machines, or even written by hand. At Kings Weston it appears that some significant resources were available, with a coloured card cover, embossed and with a professionally produced photograph of the house pasted-on as an eye-catching centrepiece. On the inside cover an advert for Lennards Boot & Shoe Co suggests that they were one of the sponsors of the magazine.
Marked by hand, a date of June 1917 appears on the cover. The house had been turned over for hospital use by Philip Napier Miles and his wife Sybil in 1915 so would have been familiar to recovering servicemen for a couple of years. Was the magazine a one-off, or was it a regular publication? The date suggests it could have been monthly journal, or was it one-off?
There’s one more major puzzle; where is the rest of the magazine, and what did it contain? Frustratingly everything but the front cover is missing, the cover sliced off, perhaps as a souvenir. It would have been fascinating to read the contents, but no other copy is known to exist. If you know different please get in touch!
Injured troops recuperate in the care of Red Cross nurses on the garden front of Kings Weston.
