Charles Saumarez Smith with a copy of his new book.
Back in June 2024, we were delighted to have been able to share some of our research and time with Sir Charles Saumarez Smith, distinguished British cultural historian and curator known for his leadership of national institutions including the National Gallery and the Royal Academy. We spent an enjoyable time with him on his tour of Kings Weston house as part of his research into its architect Sir John Vanbrugh. Now, after a long wait, his new book on Sir John Vanbrugh to be launched in November!
We hope there will be some good coverage of Kings Weston and its buildings. Charles will be the first author to correctly document the dates and construction of the house in any book. We were pleased to be able to share our own research with him and support his own archival investigations.
The book, titled John Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture, will be launched on 20th November with a lunchtime talk to be held at Wigmore Hall, London. Copies of the book will be available at discounted prices after the event. If you would like to attend, full details are available here.
The cover of John Vanbrugh: The drama of architecture.
Also coinciding with the tercentenary of the death of Sir John Vanbrugh, Charles will be co-curating an exhibition on the famed architect at Sir John Soane’s Museum. Organised along with the V&A, the exhibition will open in February and feature many of Vanbrugh’s drawings, and, we hope, some Kings Weston exhibits.
These events are all part of a national celebration of the work of Sir John Vanbrugh. The Georgian Group have been fortunate to receive a six-figure grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to coordinate a series of events and commemorations across six of the architect’s most famous sites (though sadly not Kings Weston) throughout 2026. Dr Anya Lucas, Director of the Georgian Group, says “The tercentenary of Vanbrugh’s death represents an important opportunity to celebrate and bring to the fore the story of one of our period’s great architects, a bold and theatrical figure who is sure to have broad appeal and who should be better known.VANBRUGH300 will bring the life, stories, and work of Vanbrugh together for a wide range of audiences.”
We hope to share more of the commemorative events when they’re launched, and perhaps will be able to organise our own celebrations at Kings Weston.
July’s working party location coincided with a large pile of rubblestone strewn down the hillside at the foot of the steps through Penpole Wood. It’s an area we’ve explored before, with the knowledge that the stones are some of the last remnants of Sir John Vanbrugh’s Penpole Lodge that once stood immediately above.
Victorian map of Penpole Wood annotated to show the debris field of rubble from Penpole Lodge.
The landmark lodge, built around 1724, survived in good condition until the last private owner of the estate, Philip Napier Miles, died in 1936. It was kept in good condition too by Bristol Scouts who bought the woods as a campsite shortly after, but decay set in during WWII, accelerated through vandalism in the years following, and finally succumbed to demolition teams in 1951.
Penpole Lodge in the 1920s showing the cylindrical altar-like urns.
It’s not known whether all the rubble arrived at its present location hurled from the building by vandals or simply by labourers, but both were probably responsible. It looks as though the stones settled naturally in the location rather than being dumped deliberately, though the area is well defined and localised amongst the trees.
Having hunted through the pile for architectural artefacts before and been disappointed, it was a surprise that working party volunteers began discovering some interesting fragments as they worked. Other pieces have since been recovered.
So far, five individual stones have been salvaged, four of which have since been identified as having been parts of monumental urns from the flanks of the 18th Century building. There were two types of urns on the building, four on the central tower, and four squatter cylindrical ornaments lower down on the supporting piers; in their general form these were designed to evoke ancient roman temple altars. The fragments come from these
A clearer detail of one of the lower urns illustrating the gathered and draped swags
A photograph taken shortly before Penpole Lodge was demolished shows it in a derelict condition and from the angle taken three of the cylindrical urns had already been toppled and lost. The fragments now discovered are most likely to have been from the most northerly corner, out of view from the photographer here. The other urn on the western corner had vanished much earlier, and the location of fragments close to the surface suggest they arrived there at about the time the building was disintegrating by one means or another.
A fragment of hanging drapery carved with delicate folds.
It’s been possible to identify the source of these stones by carved details still preserved and recognisable through comparison with historic photos. Fragments are curved and carry carved swags replicating textiles that are seen decorating four sides of each cylindrical urn. One represents the gathered rosette or knot, another the end of the cloth hanging loose beneath it, whilst two are sections of the intermediate swags.
Having scanned the stones using photogrammetry, it’s been possible to arrange them to suggest how they might have fitted together. But, we’re far from certain whether the fragments were in this actual configuration, as none of them fit together. The two swags are from similar locations from two of the swags.
The four fragments scanned in 3D an arranged to give an impression of the location on the drum of the urn.
What is odd is that the urn has been so comprehensively destroyed, broken into such small pieces. Whether the drums were solid or hollow, a great deal of effort must have been expended in rendering them down to a collection of such similar sized pieces. Surely this was a deliberate reduction to rubble?
A fourth stone is more of a puzzle. It doesn’t correspond with any known detail of Penpole Lodge, either from photos or recorded in survey drawings made in 1947. One side of it has white mortar applied over its carved detailing, suggesting it was re-used from elsewhere. The carving is regular and linear, and has convex and corner mouldings on two of its outer edges. A rough slit runs up most of the ling edge, suggesting it was a rebate for glazing. The mouldings stop close to the bottom, suggesting it connected with something at its lower edge.
Two angles on the fourth fragment showing some of its key features.
It’s likely to have been part of a window surround. It’s location in the debris field suggests it came from the rubble fill of the walls of Penpole Lodge, but this can’t be proven. Neither can the original source of the stone be confirmed. However, there was an earlier ornamental belvedere on the same site, known from engravings, estate plans, and other illustrations. It was a hexagonal structure, perhaps a banqueting house, and would have been demolished to make way for Vanbrugh’s more ostentatious Baroque building. Perhaps this is a fragment of that earlier structure?
One final artefact is worthy of note – referred to as the stone doughnut. This is the last portion of one of the other urns, the larger structures from the very top of the lodge. These urns were formed with great bulbous centres surmounted by tapered pinnacles from which stone flames once emitted. At some point one of these urns fell from the lodge, shed its pinnacle, and rolled like a wheel much further than any of the other debris, finally coming to a rest at the very edge of the woods. There is survives today, too massive an heavy to move, but, hopefully, salvageable someday.
The “stone doughnut”, the major portion of one of the upper urns, now to be found at the foot of Penpole Wood.
In many ways this piece follows on from last months article about the original interior of Vanbrugh’s Kings Weston house. It comes after we discovered another mansion, Gloster House, in Ireland, with some interesting similarities. The architectural history of England and Ireland are rarely studied together, yet national distinctions were less prominent during the Eighteenth Century when the two kingdoms fell under a single ruler.
The distinctive original appearance of the Saloon at Kings Weston reconstructed. Reconfigured, the room is now known as the hall or gallery.
Gloster House, County Offaly, is a long low-lying mansion built from around 1700 onwards. The two later wings rather upset the balance of the original nine-bay façade in the middle, an exterior that perhaps looks a little earlier than what lies within. Entering through the front door there is a spectacular double-height space and immediately in front of the visitor are two tiers of arches, the upper being an open gallery like that which once existed at Kings Weston. The main hall gives onto an inner hall from which a pair of staircases take you up to the gallery level from where views back into the hall can be enjoyed. Alcoves line the side walls in a similar way as drawings suggest was the case at Kings Weston. There are some key differences of course, there are no fireplaces in this space, and the overall impression is more decorative and ornamental than similar spaces designed by Vanbrugh.
Ground floor plan of Gloster House, County Offaly. Later extensions shown in light grey and double-height space in paler blue.
These works at Gloster House, dating probably to the 1720s, have been attributed to perhaps Ireland’s most important architect, Edward Lovett Pearce. He’s a figure we’ve brought into Kings Weston’s story before. Born into an Irish family, Edward was a cousin of Sir John Vanbrugh and, at 16 years old, was apprenticed to him after the death of his own father in 1715. This was a period during which Vanbrugh’s office was still overseeing works at Kings Weston. Whilst other works would have become familiar to the young pupil, it appears as though Kings Weston’s interior made an impact.
The entrance hall at Gloster House, County Offaly. (Gloster House website)The gallery, with arches on the left overlooking the hall. (Gloster House website)
After a brief time in the army in 1717 Lovett Pearce returned to architecture and to his homeland. It is during this early period that the Gloster House work is supposed to have been completed. The similarity between the lost Saloon at Kings Weston what Pearce later achieved in Ireland is most marked. Pearce increasingly moved away from Vanbrugh’s Baroque style to the developing Palladian movement, but at Gloster House he combines Vanbrugh’s dramatic and playful use of space with more modern ornamentation. The tight cage of stone arcades constricting the staircase that was built at kings Weston is transformed in Gloster House into a light open gallery with a single freestanding colonnade and classical-inspired vault.
Gloster House is not the only building that seems to owe Kings Weston its inspiration. Dated 1720, a design for stables survives in the Kings Weston Book of Drawings authored by a Mr Price. Although this is the only known reference to this gentleman it shows he was a competent architect. Though the context in which the drawing was created are not known, Mr Price is likely to have been familiar enough with Kings Weston to be able to supply designs complementary enough to Vanbrugh’s house. It’s likely that Price was “John Price of Richmond” (sometimes “of Wandsworth”). Price has the strongest claim to be architect of Barnsley Park, Gloucestershire, where works were ongoing in 1720.
The entrance front of Barnsley Park, Gloucestershire.
Just a glance at the entrance front of Barnsley Park and one can see similarities. The composition of the temple frontage, bold keystones, arched windows, weighty attic storey and pediment all feel familiar. The other elevations are all entirely different, a feature shared with Kings Weston, but entirely individual in character. We have to go within to see how exposure to the unique Saloon of Kings Weston might have translated into Price’s work. The entrance hall repeats Kings Weston’s double-height space and uses an open arcaded back wall to introduce a dramatic visual connection between it and the inner hall and gallery beyond. Unlike Kings Weston or Gloster House, the inner hall isn’t a showcase for a grand stair, this is set off to one side. Another oddity is that the first floor gallery doesn’t take advantage of the open arcades for a grandstand view, instead allowing the arches to stand as little more than a room divider. Instead, the gallery bridges the inner hall along its back wall.
The ceilings to the two halls at Barnsley Park are the reverse of the arrangement at Kings Weston; the heavily coved front Hall is like the one formerly in the stair hall at Kings Weston, and the flat ceiling with a central oval compartment more like the surviving Saloon ceiling. Could the coved ceiling existing at Barnsley Park show us what might have been lost to the Victorian refurbishment of the stair hall?
The hall at Barnsley Park, Gloucestershire, with its own version of the arcaded end wall.
Like Gloster House, much of the effect at Barnsley Park arises from thickly applied decorative embellishments rather than simple architectural form, and, in that, they likely differ from Vanbrugh’s intentions at Kings Weston. This was a building Vanbrugh referred to as a “chateau” and clearly hoped it would assert a masculine, martial, presence on landscape and occupants alike. This perhaps proved to be the undoing of the Saloon and stair hall. No longer in line with the developing direction in architecture, lacking in domestic comforts, and otherwise inhospitable, it’s unsurprising that they were remodelled by later generations. However, these two surviving interiors, one by Pearce and the other by Price, might allow us a glimpse of what was lost.
Ground floor plan of Barnsley Park, the paler blue denoting the double-height spaces.
Ahead of Heritage Open Days, and to accompany our history of the stair hall last year, here’s a short history of the mighty room variously known as the Picture Gallery or Hall, but perhaps more properly called the Saloon. It’s always been intended as the most impressive of the rooms in the house, where important guests could enter and find themselves in a space designed to impose itself on the visitor through its great scale. Despite many changes in appearance from the original design by Sir John Vanbrugh, even today the hall has that power.
An original plan for Kings Weston house with annotations.
Today, what we see on entering by way of the front door is a comprehensive redecoration of the 1760s. As designed in 1712 for owner Edward Southwell, the walls were bare Penpole stone, with arches, alcoves, arcades, and other classical architectural detailing echoing that of the main facade. Visitors entering through the front door would have been greeted with two fireplaces before them, an expression of both hospitality and, in being able to afford fuel to keep both burning, wealth. Between them was a single arched door leading into the stair hall beyond, attention to which would have been drawn through glimpsed views through open arcades and a gallery at first floor level. Around the rest of the room were arched doorways and semi-circular alcoves, perhaps for the display of statues.
A Computer generated view of the Saloon at Kings Weston as originally designed in 1712.
A dramatic interplay of spaces was a familiar feature in Vanbrugh’s repertoire. The Hall at Blenheim Palace is the most ambitious of these theatrical spaces, but similar arrangements at Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire (design circa 1715), and Seaton Deleval, Northumberland (1718) repeated themes developed at Kings Weston. Even in its fire-damaged state, the entrance hall at Seaton Deleval gives the strongest idea of how Kings Weston’s Saloon might have looked when it was first occupied in 1716. The open arcades and high level galleries allow the visitor to experience the spaces from a variety of angles, passing from grand volumes into more intimate passages, from light airy spaces to dark and back again. Vanbrugh intentionally excited visitors by sculpting these contrasting and multi-layered spaces. He was ahead of his time in creating an experiential architecture, designed to provoke an emotional response from just air and stone.
The hall at Seaton Deleval with similar features to Kings Weston. (Jon Dalrymple)
Although architecturally impressive and grand in scale, the Saloon can hardly have been a practical or comfortable room to use. The stone walls would have been cold, and the open arcades would have promoted drafts to draw through the house. In 1769, by the time the Saloon was described in “A six week tour thru the southern counties of England and Wales” as “the only tolerable room, and that rendered totally useless, by a vast echo” its shortcomings had been addressed with new designs.
Cut-away of Sir John Vanbrugh’s original design for the Saloon and Stair Hall.
Edward Southwell’s Grandson, the third Edward Southwell, returned from his Grand Tour of Europe in 1762, a 24-year old with grand plans for his inheritance. Employing the architect Robert Mylne who, it is thought, he met in Rome, he set about modernising Kings Weston. Mylne was engaged in April the following year, but it wasn’t until four years into the project that work on the Saloon began. In November 1767 Mylne started sending Southwell a series of drawings for the room. General elevations of the walls, cornice details, fireplace, and “frames of the pictures at large”. Unlike a tradditional gallery the paintings were all integrated into their architectural setting rather than hanging in tradditional gilt frames; It’s this that ensured their survival in the house to today.
the Saloon with its decorative plasterwork framing the Southwell family portraits.
The carved stone architectural details were chiselled away and the room lined with timber studs and lath and plaster to improve both sound and warmth. The work in the Saloon was intended not just to improve its performance, but to display the large collection of family portraits as the lineage of a great family. The intention was to use each of the three blank walls to display the portraits of a particularly auspicious branch of the family. The Southwell’s themselves took the north wall, Edward’s mother’s side, the Watsons, took the wall opposite, but the wall confronting the arriving visitor was reserved for the most notable family: the Cromwells.
The ceiling appears to have been retained, only slightly altered from the original but receiving extravagant swags of flowers in plasterwork, all wrought by the famous Bristol workshop of Thomas Stocking. Mylne’s “drawing for a flower and urn in ceiling of saloon” apparently didn’t find favour. The redesigned Saloon was finished in 1768, with Mylne’s last correspondence on it being “patterns of water straw colours for the saloon”, presumably a yellow/stone colour paint for the walls.
Detail of the ornate plasterwork flowers and rose executed by Thomas Stocking in 1767-8
Kings Weston has been something of a focus for academic research just recently. A team from Trinity College Dublin recently visited Bristol with a research project looking at stone in historic buildings. Whilst their main area of interest was the Exchange in the city centre, they also visited Kings Weston as part of their enquiries. We were able to help in directing them to various written sources that pinpointed where the masonry for the house was being obtained from, either the park itself or further afield. They were also helpful in providing information on the sourcing of various stones from Ireland that were used ornamentally in the building.
The National Trust have also been in contact and found our research into the rooftop chimney arcades helpful in understanding how the rooftop areas of Seaton Delaval Hall were designed and used. This Northumberland mansion was also the product of architect Sir John Vanbrugh’s imagination, and the Trust are keen to find ways for visitors to best appreciate them. Our help included providing evidence that the arcade at Kings Weston was designed as a viewing platform, and directing them to Vanbrugh’s original letters in which he “would fain to have that part rightly hit off” and answer to what he hoped to achieve architecturally.
The chimneys of Kings Weston house appearing above the landscape in 1789.
Another exciting development has been the announcement that the Sir John Soane museum in London will be holding an exhibition on Vanbrugh in February 2026 to coincide with the tercentenary of his death. Author and curator Charles Saumarez Smith visited the estate last year and is engaged in researching Vanbrugh and his involvement in the rebuilding with the hope to publish a new biography to coincide with this commemorative year. We were glad to been able to accompany him on his visit and share a lot of our research to support this endeavour. Some time to wait yet, but this is definitely something to look forward to!
The stair hall in Kings Weston house possesses some lush gilded trompe-l’oeil painted into its alcoves. These, we discovered some time ago, were inspired in about 1716 by printed images by the French architect Jean Lepautre. Edward Southwell who commissioned the house had copies of several volumes of his work, so appears to have set the painter the task of replicating them to decorate his new home. Until now, the origin of one of the paintings has remained a mystery, but one we think we’ve now solved.
The painting is small, occupying the arched head of a door on the first floor of the stair hall and looks less accomplished than those elsewhere. In incorporates weapons, canon, arrows, spears, a shield, banners and the paraphernalia of warfare. One of Lepautre’s designs came to our attention recently but looks rather different. The theme is similar but on a more extravagant scale. However, looking closely you can start to pick out the same various elements as the Kings Weston painting.
It appears that the painter has used the same image as the basis for his work, simplifying and adapting it to fit in the architectural setting he had to work with. Curiously, he seems not to have quite understood some of the things he was painting leading to some odd interpretation. The top of the shield, for example, has some strange bendy detail, and what on earth is the strange sun-shaped thing at the back? Is it supposed to be one of the epaulettes, feathers, or that oddity in Lepautre’s own engraving at the back-left side?
Recent visitors will have seen that the daffodils across the estate are braced for a good show this year, including those freshly planted on the Echo path in October last year. As part of the work preparing the ground for that planting we had to deal with a large block of masonry, dumped there when the gardens were refurbished a few years ago. The block had been used as a base for one of the large stone balls, but had since been discarded and forgotten, however it has an interesting history.
A 3D scan of the block. An interactive version of the model can be found here.
One of the contract drawings for an urn for the parapet of Kings Weston house with similar gadroon decoration to the base
During the clearance work in October the block needed moving. It clearly had part of an historic carved stone element incorporated within it, but much was actually brick and concrete added when it was utilised for the stone balls. We broke away the modern accretions and we were left with a roughly circular stone slab with deeply defined gadrooning around the edge. Some of this had been badly damaged over the years, but enough is left to aid understanding of where it might have come from. The form of the stone tells us that it was once part of an ornamental urn, or “potts” as they are referred to in contemporary documents. Similar urns are set up across the roofline of Kings Weston house, but this one would have been significantly smaller than those. The stone measures exactly 2 feet in diameter at its widest point, but is missing both the base or pedestal, and the main drum of whatever stood above. There is a staining on the upper surface of the stone showing that whatever sat upon it had a diameter of about 14 inches, set back from the ornamental edge by some distance. In the base there remains part of whatever fixing attached it to the base, and in the top surface there is a rectilinear hole that would have received the fastening for the top section. We’ve recorded the stone using a 3D scanning app and made it available here. The stone is likely to be Dundry stone, or possible a limestone from the Bath area, easily carved unlike the hard local Penpole Stone. The facades of the house use both local and imported types according to their ease of working.
Another of the complete urns with markedly similar features to the fragment, albeit at a larger scale.
Another of the complete urns with markedly similar features to the fragment, a From its distinctive design we can be certain the fragment dates to the Baroque era of English architecture, perhaps between 1700 and the 1720s; this period obviously covers the time when the house was rebuilt and many of the garden buildings erected, but there’s a possibility that it might pre-date this work that began in 1712. The well-known engraving of Kings Weston published by Johannes Kip in about 1711 is peppered with urns and finials on gate piers and ornamental buildings. Of these structures the most densely forested with potts was the long-lost orangery. We believe this was built in around 1705, demolished probably in the 1760s, and is one contender for having been the source of the stone in question.
The orangery located on a detail of the 1711 engraving of the house
Another possible source is the house itself. We know that the Garden Front of the house once had another pair of urns mounted on the central pediment of that frontage. The design of those urns is unclear, but the most accurate depiction of them comes from 1724 and shows them as smaller than the other potts that ornament the parapets. If the detail is correct, then the stone could have made one of the top sections maybe, with the gadrooning being the widest section. However, the engraving is a measured scale drawing, and even these smaller urns would be 3 feet across, larger than the recovered stone.
One of the lost smaller urns on a 1724 engraving of the house’s Garden Front
1718 design for the Loggia with sketched ornaments on the pediment
However, the strongest candidate for the source is the Loggia, built in 1718 to the north of the house, and thankfully still with us. This little Vanbrugh-designed frontage was grafted onto an existing banqueting house and several original drawings of it exist. A couple of these drawings have urns and a statue applied to the plinths mounted on top of the pediment, both are inexpertly drawn, added in a different ink and with a lack of realism betraying them as not being in Vanbrugh’s hand. We do know that the building was eventually finished with three urns on these plinths, as illustrated in the background of a 1746 drawing by James Stewart, where they project above the walls of the Great Court amongst other ornaments.
Three urns on the roof of the Loggia shown on James Stewart’s 1746 drawing of the house.
The smaller scale of the Loggia frontage would befit a smaller pott of the sort the recovered stone came from. Little is known about the appearance of the loggia between 1746 and an 1898 photograph taken for Country Life; By that time all trace of rooftop features had gone, and other photos from the same occasion show the stone balls already sited on the Echo Path, presumably with bases made out of the old urns. Although we can’t be certain, it seems that the fragment recovered last year is part of the early Eighteenth Century decoration of Vanbrugh’s Loggia, removed perhaps for safety, before being reused, then forgotten, until we salvaged it.
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.
We’ve often mentioned the incredible Kings Weston Book of Drawings (KWBoD), a unique collection of architectural drawings documenting the house and its construction and all dated to the first quarter of the 18th Century. The book is in the collections of the Bristol Archives and we’re reproduced drawings from it in many of our newsletters and on our website. One aspect we’ve never looked into is the internal decoration of the house as built. Many will know that the rooms of Kings Weston were all remodelled in the 1760s and later, and scant remains of the original character remain. However, inspecting the drawings gives us an insight into this lost world.
Undated draft of the chimney and mirror in the Kinsale Chamber (KWBoD)
The drawings also give us a puzzle. Whilst we can be certain about the layout and room names and uses after the 1760s, we are less certain over the earlier arrangement. There are rooms named, the Throwley Chamber, Kinsale Chamber, and Eating Parlour, that can’t be precisely located. We can assume that the Eating Parlour would have been on the principal ground floor, but wouldn’t have been in the same location as the later room that bore that name which was formed from the State Bedchamber. The description of several rooms as chambers implies they are, essentially, bedrooms, and most likely on the first floor.
Both Kinsale and Throwley chambers are named after the Southwell Family estates. Kinsale in southern Ireland was where the Southwell’s’ heralded from before Kings Weston, and Throwley Old Hall in Staffordshire came into the family through the marriage of Edward Southwell, rebuilder of the house, to Lady Elizabeth Cromwell. A further chamber is referred to in a letter from Edward Southwell in Dec 1713 when he writes ” I have almost forgot what I wrote about the two chimney pieces, but if I remember right I desired one according to the wooden model I sent, which being large was to go into the great parlour. The other I desired for a bedchamber of the common chamber size, and of the Italian moulding if you fit, to put it in the room I call Burton”; Burton was the estate of his cousin John Percival to whom the letter was written. The room names then follow a pattern of representing places of importance to the family.
Cornice of the Throwley Chamber, dated Feb 1717
The drawing for the Throwley chamber illustrates a profile of a ceiling cornice. Comparing it with a similar example at Dyrham Park house, a building with close family bonds with kings Weston, we can assume this was intended to be of timberwork. The Kinsale Chamber drawing contains more of interest. It’s a design for a fire surround and chimney breast that would have been the focal point for this bed chamber. The fireplace is 5ft 2in wide and 4ft 1in high and probably wrought in polished stone or marble. Above it are mouldings, again of timber, framing a wide mirror with cushioned edges. By the level of detail it can be assumed that the mirror was already in existence and the designs were drawn with the intention of incorporating it into the new room. Above the mirror were further cornice mouldings and panel work taking things as far as the ceiling. Again, the arrangement isn’t dissimilar from some of the interiors at Dyrham.
One of the anterooms to first floor apartments at Dyrham Park house give a good impression of how Kings Weston’s rooms may have looked.
Two drawings can be more firmly located within the house; these are fireplaces for Mr Southwell’s closet and chamber. Aside from the State Bedchamber on the ground floor this would have been the finest furnished rooms. The principal chamber in later eras was in the southern corner of the house, with an outlook over the garden to the Echo. Reviewing the plan of the house published shortly after completion this is most likely to have been intended as Southwell’s bed chamber and private rooms.
The first floor of the house was laid out as a series of apartments which could be allocated to family members or used by guests. There are three apartments on the first floor connected by common anterooms. In the later 18th Century the central anteroom overlooking the Echo Walk was called the Tapestry Room, and it’s possible this interior, with its old fashioned wall hangings, survived the 1760s refurbishments. A smaller bed chamber occupied the western corner of the house directly off the servants stair, but separate and not identifiable as a part of a suite of rooms; Aside from Mr Southwell’s chamber this is the only room shown where there is a pronounced chimney breast, so might be tentatively identified as the Kinsale chamber. The other two bedchambers on this floor had fireplaces flush with the interior wall.
The first floor layout of apartments at Kings Weston when first complete, with the KWBoD drawings located.
Each apartment consisted of a bedchamber, and two further rooms. The principal of these smaller rooms was equipped with a fireplace, whilst the lesser room was unheated; this was possibly a dressing room. The design for Mr Southwell’s closet is the most decorative of the interior drawings, and this illustrates the status the room enjoyed. The panelling here doesn’t reach the whole height of the room, instead a more intimate character is created by a lower cornice level. The fireplace is shown with ornate decoration, probably carved in wood. The drawing suggests that this incorporates wreathes of foliage framing a central panel, possibly a painting, and a crowning section of more indistinguishable decoration. Either side of this centrepiece candle sconces are fixed. The wall space above the ornamental panelling is reserved for a painting.
Undated drawing of Mr Southwell’s closet fireplace (KWBoD)
The function of the closet was to offer a private retreat for the apartment’s occupant; somewhere they could display their most important treasures and intimate effects. It was a room for display, but only to the most limited of audiences. A good example of this sort of room exists in the Cedar Closet at Tredegar house, Newport, though from about a generation earlier that Edward Southwell’s new house.
The Closet drawing has curious pricked lines on one side of the chimney breast which are not easily explained. They may be an alternative decorative scheme with carved stacked quoins mimicking an architectural detail in stone, or they could intimate shelving concealed behind the panelling.
The Cedar Closet, Tredegar House, Newport dates to around 1670, but gives an impression of the scale and appearance of Mr Southwell’s closet room
Mr Southwell’s Chamber also has its chimneypiece drawn. This Is a fairly straightforward design with timber panelling up the chimney breast and terminating against the ceiling with a boldly projecting cornice. The focus of this feature was likely to be a painting hung over the narrow mantelpiece. Between this and the stone fire surround there’s a wide panel picked out in grey ink, and with four quite substantial fixings; was this for another painting, or could it have been for a carved stone plaque? The vast scale of the proposed chimney breast is only revealed when a figure is added to the same scale, as we’ve illustrated here.
Chimney intended for Mr Southwell’s Chamber with figure added for scale.
The last drawing, or drawings, we’ll look at here are of another fire surround, to be “wrought out of the ash colour marble”. A surround in similar grey marble still exists on the second floor. The two drawings clearly show the same fire surround and one is dated 13th Feb 1718. This shows us that, although Southwell moved in with his new wife in 1716, that there were still significant fitting out works being undertaken on rooms. The same dated drawing describes the drawing as a “coppy of Mrs le Grand’s draught of a chimney piece”.
Mrs Helena Le Grand was Edward Southwell’s older sister. He had delegated the setting up of the house to her before he moved in when she was “fully employed in transposing and setting the furniture, pictures and cheney”. The second drawing showing the fireplace may then be her own drawing from which a second version was taken and annotated. Was she more involved in the design of the house, or its interiors than we’ve previously been aware?
The two drawings for a chimneypiece of ash colored marble, the original on the left with the copy on the right dated Feb 1718.
One thing that this short series of drawings show is that the first floor interiors were very traditional, not having the same architectural drama of Sir John Vanbrugh’s exteriors, Saloon or stair hall. The layout and appearance would not have been unusual in a house from thirty years previous like Tredegar. It’s unlikely we’ll ever know how the State rooms on the ground floor were decorated, but the first floor chambers were not ostentatious and would have relied largely on their furnishings for any display of wealth or status.
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)
