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Southwell’s Architectural Odyssey

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Edward Southwell, circa 1705. Downpatrick Museum

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

Sir John Vanbrugh. Painting in the National Portrait Gallery.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The stones of Kings Weston house

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sir John Soane and Kings Weston.

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A drawing has recently come to our attention in the collections of Sir John Soane’s Museum. Soane (1753-1837) is one of the UK’s most important and influential architects and he greatly admired the work of Sir John Vanbrugh. Soane had been appointed Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy in 1806, and had drawings specially produced to support a series of lectures he gave there between 1810 and 1820. The drawing in question, of the main front of Vanbrugh’s Kings Weston, was one of a thousand used to illustrate these Lectures.

Portrait of the architect Sir John Soane aged 76 by Thomas Lawrence. (© Sir John Soane’s Museum, London)

Vanbrugh’s architecture had fallen out of favour as fashions changed over the Eighteenth Century, from the drama of the Baroque to the formality of Palladianism that, in turn, developed into an icily uniform Neoclassical age. His designs, including Kings Weston, were criticised as being heavy and un-academic. Even as late as 1802 Kings Weston was being described in unflattering terms, with the Reverend Richard Warner condemning it in a stinging attack as “disgusting the eye, both within and without, by its weight and clumsiness”. Soane was amongst a new generation of architects who were reappraising Vanbrugh’s work and delighted in its imagination and drama that accorded with the new age of Romanticism. Early in his lecture series he extolled Vanbrugh’s “bold flights of irregular fancy, his powerful mind rises superior to common conceptions, and entitles him to the high distinctive appellation of the Shakespeare of architects”; high praise indeed!

The drawing of Kings Weston was used in Soane’s eleventh lecture, given in 1815. The lecture was varied in its topics, with disparate aspects of design covered, largely concerning decoration and composition. It was illustrated with a wide array of examples, both good and bad. The context for including Kings Weston is curious, and it’s important here to focus on the drawing itself and the others that were used to illustrate the particular point being made. Kings Weston is joined by Cholmondeley Hall, Hampton Court in Herefordshire, and Eaton Hall, Cheshire. All were seemingly taken from volumes of the seminal Vitruvius Britannicus, a monumental series of books produced by Colen Campbell illustrating British architecture at the start of the Eighteenth Century. Curiously all the drawings have been heavily edited from the source material and some in most alarming ways.

The facade of Kings Weston house as drawn by Sir John Soane’s office for use in his XIth lecture. (© Sir John Soane’s Museum, London)
The source for Soane’s lecture drawing is this page from Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus from 1715.

The façade of Kings Weston received perhaps the most slighting amendments: the omission of its characteristic chimney arcade and even its top storey. For the purposes of the lecture these distinctive elements were replaced by a pitched grey roof. Dr Frances Sands, the Curator of Drawings and Books at Sir John Soane’s Museum, notes that Soane was keen on accuracy in his Royal Academy lecture drawings and has expressed surprise to find these obviously deliberate alterations to the drawings. In his lecture Soane even states, somewhat misleadingly, that the drawings are “of buildings actually erected”. It seems particularly odd too that Soane would have altered the Kings Weston drawing to omit such a signature flourish from and architect he so admired.

Eaton Hall in Cheshire as depicted in Vitruvius Britannicus, and as adapted for Soane’s lecture a century later.

To explore the reasons for this we need to go back to the original lecture. On the face of it the four façade drawings, and a fifth of Devonshire House, Piccadilly, are used to illustrate different formulaic arrangements of bay and window rhythms for houses. Soane observes that a simple house will typically have a central door with a window symmetrically arranged one on either side, a larger house with two either side, and Kings Weston forms the next in the series, where a wider façade is divided into a three-aperture central portion with a pediment with outer bays each with two windows. The other illustrated examples show iterations of the same formula carried over ever wider facades with further bays added to the extremities of a pedimented classical centrepiece.

It is this exact formulism that Soane is actually railing against in is lecture. He suggests foreigners complain “Architecture in England is so very deficient in variety, as if all our architects had but one mind and manner” that there is “such a deficiency of variety in the outlines of the exterior”. He complains further of the “neglect of distinctive character” in many houses. These charges against lesser architects could hardly have been reasonably levelled at such idiosyncratic a building as Kings Weston, or of much of Vanbrugh’s output.

Top from left to right: Kings Weston presented alongside Eaton Hall, Cheshire, Cholmondeley Hall, and (Lower line) Shobden Court (mistitled as Hampton Court, Heredfordshire) as they were in Soane’s 1815 lecture. The final image is of Devonshire House that Soane marked out as being “inferior in magnificence” for its variation on the same themes. (© Sir John Soane’s Museum, London)

Soane required the drawings omit the more distinctive architectural elements that would otherwise have contradicted the point being made in his lecture; certainly the arcade of Kings Weston house would not have fitted comfortably into a talk on sameness and monotony. Striped of their uniqueness the four drawings are given a false consistency, emphasising points in the lecture about the use of a central pediment and bay rhythms that Soane considered generic, repetitious, and without imagination. Perhaps his source books, particularly Vitruvius Britannicus, failed to provide him adequately mundane examples to use, and he was forced to adapt what was available.

Sir John Soane’s designs for his own house on Lincoln’s Inn Fields, london, now the home of his museum. Stacked arcades were once a feature of the stair hall at Kings Weston. (British Museum)

Within just a few paragraphs of his lecture Soane is again celebrating Vanbrugh’s work “who, for invention, has no equal in this country. Boldness of fancy, unlimited variety, and discrimination of character mark all his productions”. By association this must have included Kings Weston that had been visually maligned only shortly before. Had anyone in the lecture recognised the house, noticed the distortion, and known it to have been Vanbrugh’s design they might have been left particularly puzzled.

It’s not known whether Soane ever came to Bristol to see the house for himself. His closest commission was at Piercefield Park near Chepstow. In 1785, when he was working up drawings for Piercefield, Kings Weston would have been on a well-trodden tourist path between the spa towns of Bristol and Bath and the Wye Valley. Excursions across the Severn were well published. In fact, on a clear day, one can look south-west from Piercefield and the Kings Weston escarpment is clearly visible in the distance; It’s quite possible that Soane could have crossed to Gloucestershire to see it. If he visited it would be impossible to say what impact Kings Weston could have had on the 32 year-old architect. On Vanbrugh Soane said “the young architect, by studying the picturesque effects of his works, will learn to avoid the dull monotony of minor artists and learn to think for himself, and acquire a taste of his own”. One might hope that Kings Weston has helped to inspire successive generations of architects in his wake.

Today Sir John Soane’s Piercefield Park house is in ruins

Historic letter by Sir John Vanbrugh returns to Bristol

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Archivist Mark Small of Bristol Archives holds the newly delivered letter

We’ve had confirmation this month that the missing Sir John Vanbrugh letter has arrived at Bristol Archives! We remain hugely grateful to everyone who donated to our short campaign to bring the document back from the USA, and to the Friends of Bristol Museums, Art Galleries, and Archives for their partnership in securing it. The letter has now been accessioned and is available for anyone to study, though is not yet included on the public catalogue.


Architect Sir John Vanbrugh’s signature from the letter. 

Historic Vanbrugh Letter saved for the nation!

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There has been some incredible generosity from KWAG members over the last couple of weeks in their support of our campaign to repatriate a letter written by Sir John Vanbrugh regarding the construction of Kings Weston House. We are delighted to announce that we’ve met our fundraising target of £500 to bring the letter back to Bristol in partnership with the Friends of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. Our contribution will now be added to the £900 the Friends have granted towards the purchase, and the letter added to the collections of the Bristol Archives at B-Bond in Bristol. Once it arrives, and is appropriately conserved, the letter will be available to study by anyone, and we hope that an exhibition celebrating its acquisition might be a good way of thanking the donors.

Reconstruction of the Saloon as originally designed. 

The letter now in the process of acquisition dates from December 1713, a time when Edward Southwell was able to walk around the rough floors of the house. From a letter the same September, also in the Archive, we know that it had taken just fifteen months to build the walls of the house up to roof level and have begun leading the roof. In the December letter Vanbrugh discusses Edward Southwell’s hopes to cut costs by leaving out the stone vaults of the basement level which, apparently, were only constructed after the shell of the house was already complete. We also discover that the original plan was to have a stone floor in the great stair hall. Whilst the change to a timber floor appears to have been undertaken against Vanbrugh’s advice Southwell’s idea to extend the stair itself into the cellar was, fortunately, abandoned in favour of the “Little Stair” that was still in construction.

Vanbrugh also discusses the plans to build his intended Kitchen wing at the rear of the building; this structure was built, but later demolished and replaced a few decades later. The letter confirms Vanbrugh’s authorship of the Great Terrace and, from what he writes, he is clearly pleased with Southwell’s decision to execute his designs for it.

Whether Vanbrugh ever returned to Kings Weston in the Spring of 1714 as he promised is not known, but certainly he was keen to make a “trial with boards” to make sure the distinctive chimneys made the effect he intended.

We’re grateful to Mark Small from Bristol Archives for transcribing the whole letter and presenting it along with images of the original. It can be viewed as a PDF here.

Vanbrugh’s original design for the kitchen wing, attached to the north corner of the main house 


Kings Weston on the verge

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The Loggia, designed in 1718 by Sir John Vanbrugh. Seen here in 1927 (Country Life)

The area recently worked on by KWAG volunteers, just below the coffee shop terrace, Is an odd corner of the Kings Weston estate. Hard up against Kings Weston Lane in its gulley to the east it has always been an abrupt edge to the Landscaped grounds.

Before the present house was built the slopes descending towards Lawrence Weston here were laid out as formal kitchen gardens, though would have been sorely exposed to the brisk winds off the Severn. The top of the slope offered spectacular panoramas across the estuary and, in 1705, a banqueting house was built on a terrace overlooking the kitchen gardens. When Sir John Vanbrugh came to rebuild the house for Edward Southwell his plans extended to major landscape interventions. The small banqueting house received a new façade in 1718, one that looked back into the park and along a vast new terraced promenade; this building forms the core of the current Loggia.   

As garden fashions changed the whole of the area below the banqueting house and Loggia were deformalised and the topography took on a form much the same as today’s. By 1772, when the area was surveyed by Isaac Taylor, only the Loggia remained, and the terraces and formal gardens swept away. In their place the open parkland swept unbroken to an area described as “verge plantations”. On his plan Taylor identified a railed fence separating the newly planted area from the recently created rolling meadowland below the house; the remains of this Georgian fence can still be found in the area recently cleared.

The view from the loggia across the meadow land. Hieronymus Grimm, 1788 (Bristol Museum and Art Gallery) 
 Taylor’s 1772 estate plan with later alterations annotated

Within the plantation new trees and shrubs were laid out as part of a pleasure walk that connected the house and Loggia with the Home Farm and Menagerie below. This planting would have been intentionally picturesque in style and some of the holly, yew, and Portuguese laurel from this era are still growing there, though the path has long become lost. Maps show there to have been many evergreens incorporated within a design intended to frame the open meadow and focus the eye on Kings Weston house commanding the ridge above it.  

As time went on the trees and shrubs grew up and the view of the Loggia from the park was sadly obscured. The pleasure walk and planting continued to be maintained until the 1930s, but since then there has been little attention spared on them. Since WWII and the cessation of regular livestock grazing, this has resulted in the gradual encroachment of self-seeded trees beyond the historic fence line and the loss of the tamed edge of the meadow. Today trees cover almost twice the area of the original verge plantation and have further obscured the house and Loggia from within certain areas of the park. It is hoped that KWAG’s work, and forthcoming work as part of the National grid contributions, will help enhance the setting of Both Grade I Listed buildings and the park as a whole.