Tag Archives: Vanbrugh

Surveying the State Rooms

Leave a reply
The enfilade looking from the Dining Room through the house

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leave a reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The oven chimney in the bakehouse survives in about 1987

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elevations of the Brewhouse as-restored in 1991.

Vanbrugh 300 launches with new book  

Leave a reply
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.

Fallen fragments of Penpole Lodge 

Leave a reply

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. 


Inspired by Kings Weston

Leave a reply

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.


The History of Kings Weston’s grandest room. 

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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 historic wall paintings: Another fragment of evidence   

Leave a reply

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?    

Baroque pieces of “pott”

Leave a reply

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.

Retracing our steps at Bristol Archives

Leave a reply

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.