Sir John Vanbrugh and Landscape Architecture in Baroque England E-Book

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 528

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Sir John Vanbrugh is celebrated today as one of England's finest country house architects. His masterpieces include palatial private homes such as Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, greatly admired by any enthusiast of English Baroque architecture. However, his work extended far beyond such projects, and included a remarkable variety of temples, belvederes, pyramids and many other features which he designed for the gardens and parks of the estates at which he worked. The originality of such work has shown that Vanbrugh played a crucial role in the development of the eighteenth-century English garden, and this unique and fascinating book uses the fruits of new research to assess just what contribution this great man made to our heritage.

Leseprobe

For Laurence Whistler, a great Vanbrugh scholar

Cover illustration: Vanbrugh’s Temple of the Four Winds at Castle Howard. (Photograph, Nicholas Howard)

First published 2000

This paperback edition first published 2024

The History Press

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Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© The Contributors, 2000, 2024

The right of the Contributors to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 756 8

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Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface and Acknowledgements

1     Vanbrugh over Fifty YearsKerry Downes

2     Estate Management and Landscape DesignTom Williamson

3     The Formal GardenDavid Jacques

4     Fortified GardensRobert Williams

5     Antiquaries, Theatre and Early MedievalismTimothy Mowl

6     Exotics and Botanical IllustrationMark Laird

7     Vanbrugh’s India and his Mausolea for EnglandRobert Williams

8     ‘After ye Antique’: Vanbrugh, Hawksmoor and KentGiles Worsley

9     Stephen Switzer and Water GardensJudith Roberts

10   Rethinking the PicturesqueChristopher Ridgway

11   Remembering VanbrughDerek Linstrum

Notes

Bibliography

List of Illustrations

1.    John Vanbrugh, Design for South Front, Castle Howard with Inset Plan, 1699, drawing. The Victoria and Albert Museum (E.2826.1995); photograph: V&A Picture Library.

2.    John Vanbrugh, Design for South Front, Castle Howard with Lantern and Dome, 1699, drawing. The Victoria and Albert Museum (E.2825.1995); photograph: V&A Picture Library.

3.    John Vanbrugh, Ground Plan of the North-east Angle of the Main Block for Castle Howard, 1699, drawing. The Victoria and Albert Museum (E.2825.1995, verso); photograph: V&A Picture Library.

4.    ‘Chatsworth, Derbyshire’, engraving, from Leonard Knyff and Jan Kip, Britannia Illustrata, 1707. Private collection.

5.    Dovecote at Rougham Hall, Norfolk, designed by Roger North, 1690s. Photograph: Tom Williamson.

6.    Duck decoy at Flixton, Suffolk, detail from an estate map, 1652.

7.    ‘Cassiobury, Hertfordshire’, engraving, from Leonard Knyff and Jan Kip, Britannia Illustrata, 1707. Private collection.

8.    Henderskelfe Castle, Yorkshire, estate map, 1694, ink and watercolour on parchment (P1/2). Castle Howard Archives.

9.    Anon., Averham Park, Nottinghamshire, oil on canvas, c. 1730. Private collection.

10.   ‘Badminton, Gloucestershire’, engraving, from Leonard Knyff and Jan Kip, Britannia Illustrata, 1707. Private collection.

11.   ‘Aspenden Hall, Hertfordshire’, engraving, from Sir Henry Chauncey, Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire, 1700.

12.   ‘Madingley, Cambridgeshire’, engraving, from Leonard Knyff and Jan Kip, Britannia Illustrata, 1707. Private collection.

13.   Castle Howard, Yorkshire, estate map, 1727. Ink and watercolour on linen-backed parchment (P1/4). Castle Howard Archives.

14.   ‘Caversham, Berkshire’, engraving, from Colen Campbell, Vitruvius Britannicus, III, 1725. Private collection.

15.   Paston Manor, engraving, from Stephen Switzer, Ichnographia Rustica, II, 1718. Private collection.

16.   Charles Bridgeman, A General Plan of Hampton Court Palace and Bushy Park, c. 1712, drawing. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

17.   Charles Bridgeman, A Plan of Blenheim, 1709, drawing. Blenheim Archives, Blenheim Palace. By kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Marlborough.

18.   ‘The East Prospect and Garden Front of Kiveton House’, c. 1710, engraving, from Thomas Badeslade and John Rocque, Vitruvius Britannicus, IV, 1739. Private collection.

19.   Thomas Badeslade and Jan Kip, ‘Waldershare, Kent’, engraving, from Dr John Harris, A History of Kent, 1719. By permission of The British Library.

20.   Colen Campbell and Henry Hulsbergh, ‘Plan of the Gardens and Plantations of Claremont, Surrey’, c. 1717, engraving, from Colen Campbell, Vitruvius Britannicus, III, 1725. Private collection.

21.   Charles Bridgeman (attrib.), A Plan of Eastbury, c. 1718, drawing. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS Gough Drawings, a.3*, f. 9).

22.   Charles Bridgeman (attrib.), A Plan of Sacombe, Hertfordshire, c. 1715, drawing. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS Gough Drawings, a.4, f. 64).

23.   Colen Campbell and Henry Hulsbergh, ‘Bird’s-eye View of Castle Howard, Yorkshire’, c. 1715, engraving, from Colen Campbell,Vitruvius Britannicus, III, 1725. Private collection.

24.   John Griffier II, Hurstbourne Priors: A View of the Canal and Cascade from the House, 1748, oil on canvas, one of a pair on loan to Audley End, Essex. By kind permission of Lord Braybrooke; photograph: English Heritage Photographic Library.

25.   Peter Tillemans (attrib.), A View of the Garden and House at Upper Winchendon, Buckinghamshire, late 1720s, watercolour. New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

26.   Colen Campbell and Henry Hulsbergh, ‘Plan of the Gardens and Plantations at Belton Hall, Lincolnshire’, c. 1717, engraving, from Colen Campbell, Vitruvius Britannicus, III, 1725. Private collection.

27.   Charles Bridgeman (attrib.), Proposal for the Gardens at Houghton, c. 1717, drawing. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS Gough Drawings, a.4, f. 57).

28.   ‘A Great Wood of Forrest trees Cut into Single Star with Cabinets’, engraving, from John James, The Theory and Practice of Gardening, 1712. Private collection.

29    Thomas Badeslade and John Harris, ‘Belton in Lincolnshire’, c. 1725, engraving (detail), from Thomas Badeslade and John Rocque, Vitruvius Britannicus, IV, 1739. Private collection.

30.   ‘The Plan of an Octagonal Kitchen Garden’, engraving, from Stephen Switzer, The Practical Kitchen Gardiner, 1727. Private collection.

31.   Sir Bernard de Gomme, Tilbury Fort, Essex, 1670–83. English Heritage Photographic Library.

32.   William Stukeley, Plan of Grimsthorpe, 1736, drawing. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS Top. Gen. d.14, f. 36v).

33.   William Stukeley, The Duchess’s Bastion, Grimsthorpe, 1736, drawing. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS Top. Gen. d.14, f. 36r).

34.   Nottingham Castle, a detail from John Badder and Thomas Peat, A Plan of the Town of Nottingham, 1744. Private collection.

35.   John Vanbrugh, Seaton Delaval, Northumberland, Entrance Front, 1720–8. Photograph: Robert Williams.

36.   A Plan of Seaton Delaval, 1860, detail from an Ordnance Survey map. Private collection.

37.   Seaton Delaval, the ditch, platform and north-west bastion. Photograph: Robert Williams.

38.   Jacques Rigaud, ‘View of the Queen’s Theatre from the Rotunda’, engraving (detail), from Sarah Bridgeman, Views of Stowe, 1739. The National Trust Photographic Library.

39.   James Bretherton after Henry William Bunbury, The Siege of Namur by Captain Shandy & Corporal Trim, 1773, etching with drypoint. Private Collection.

40.   Anon., Ribston Hall, Yorkshire, c. 1688–90, drawing. Country Life Picture Library.

41.   George Vertue, ‘London as Fortified in the Years 1642 and 1643’, from William Maitland, The History of London, 1739. By permission of The British Library.

42.   Anon., The North Front of Southampton House (later Bedford House) London, late seventeenth century, drawing. Museum of London.

43.   William Stukeley, Vanbrugh Castle, Greenwich, 1721, pen and ink. Society of Antiquaries, London.

44.   The Old Ordnance Board-room at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, 1718–20. Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, National Monuments Record.

45.   John Vanbrugh, Castle Howard, from the south, begun 1699. The Castle Howard Collection.

46.   John Vanbrugh, Eastern Service Range at Castle Howard, begun 1710. Photograph: Christopher Ridgway.

47.   The Belvedere, Claremont, Surrey, c. 1715. Photograph: Timothy Mowl.

48.   Longford Castle, Wiltshire, completed 1591. Photograph: Timothy Mowl.

49.   Lulworth Castle, Dorset, 1607. Photograph: Timothy Mowl.

50.   Jeffry Wyatville, East Front of the Upper Ward, Windsor Castle, by Hugh May of 1675–84, drawing. The Royal Library, Windsor Castle, HM The Queen.

51.   Wenceslaus Hollar, ‘Windsor Castle’, from Elias Ashmole, The Institutions, Laws & Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, 1672. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

52.   A Triumphal Arch raised to line Charles II’s coronation procession, from John Ogilby, The Entertainment of His Most Excellent Majestie Charles II in His Passing through the City of London to His Coronation, 1662. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

53.   Charles II’s enthronement in Westminster Abbey, from John Ogilby, The Entertainment of His Most Excellent Majestie Charles II in His Passing through the City of London to His Coronation, 1662. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

54.   Thor, Woden & Frea, three of the Saxon gods illustrated in Aylett Sammes, Britannia Antiqua Illustrata, 1676. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

55.   John Vanbrugh, North (entrance) Front of Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. Photograph: Christopher Ridgway.

56.   John Vanbrugh, East Gate, Blenheim Palace. Photograph: Timothy Mowl.

57.   Shirburn Castle, Oxfordshire, 1716–25. Photograph: Timothy Mowl.

58.   John Vanbrugh, Mock Fortification Walls at Castle Howard, 1719–25. Photograph: Christopher Ridgway.

59.   Anon., William Sherard, before 1728, oil on canvas. The Plant Sciences Library, University of Oxford. Photograph: Courtesy of Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

60.   John Banister, Magnolia virginiana, c. 1688, drawing. By permission of The British Library, Dept of Manuscripts (Sloane 4002, f. 90).

61.   John Banister, Dicentra cucullaria, c. 1688, drawing. By permission of The British Library, Dept of Manuscripts (Sloane 4002, f. 59).

62.   John Banister, Dodecatheon meadia, c. 1690, drawing. Sloane 4002, f. 42. By permission of The British Library, Dept of Manuscripts.

63.   Everhard Kychious, Gomphrena globosa, 1703–5. By kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Beaufort.

64.   Everhard Kychious, Asclepias tuberosa, 1703–5. By kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Beaufort.

65.   Everhard Kychious, Quamoclit coccinea, Flanked by Two Other Types of ‘Convolvulus’, 1703–5. By kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Beaufort.

66.   Everhard Kychious, An Auricula (Primula x pubescens) and a Polyanthus (Primula x variabilis) to Either Side of a ‘Cynoglossum’, 1703–5. By kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Beaufort.

67.   Draught of a Wilderness, Badminton House, Gloucestershire, after 1699, drawing. Badminton Muniment room, 1.21. By kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Beaufort.

68.   Draught of a Wilderness, Badminton House, Gloucestershire, after 1699, drawing. Badminton Muniment room, 1.22. By kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Beaufort.

69.   Draught of the Great Garden, Badminton House, Gloucestershire, after 1699, drawing. Badminton Muniment room, 1.23. By kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Beaufort.

70.   Jan Kip, Badminton House, Gloucestershire, from the North, c. 1700, engraving. By kind permission of His Grace, the Duke of Beaufort.

71.   Francis Richardson, Proposal Plan for Lowther Castle, Westmorland, 1754. By permission of the Trustees of the Lowther Family and in the custody of the Cumbria Record Office (D/Lons/L5/3).

72.   Jacobus van Huysum, Hibiscus syriacus cvs., before 1730. The British Museum, London, Dept of Prints and Drawings (Sloane 5284, f. 31 or 32).

73.   Jacobus van Huysum, Campsis radicans, before 1730. The British Museum, London, Dept of Prints and Drawings (Sloane 5284, f. 139).

74.   Jacobus van Huysum, Physocarpus opulifolius, before 1730. The British Museum, London, Dept of Prints and Drawings (Sloane 5284, f. 129. [ex-f. 125]).

75.   Mark Catesby, ‘Catalpa bignonioides’, from The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, 1731–43, vol. I, pl. 49. Dumbarton Oaks, Studies in Landscape Architecture, Photograph Archive.

76.   ‘Carlton House Garden’, detail from John Rocque, A Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, 1746. Photograph: Courtesy of David Coombs.

77.   William Woollett, Carlton House Garden, London, 1760, engraving. Photograph: Courtesy of John Harris.

78.   Johannes Jacobus Dillenius, ‘Staphylea trifolia’, Hortus Elthamensis, 1732, tab. CXXII fig. 148. The Plant Sciences Library, University of Oxford, Special Collections (Sherard 643).

79.   Johannes Jacobus Dillenius, ‘Symphoricarpos orbiculatus’, Hortus Elthamensis, 1732, tab. CCLXXVIII, fig. 360. The Plant Sciences Library, University of Oxford, Special Collections (Sherard 644).

80.   ‘Surat from the North Bank of the River Tapti’, c. 1670, from Philip Baldaeus, Beschreibung der ostnidischen Kusten Malabar und Coromandel, Amsterdam, 1672. By permission of The British Library.

81.   Detail from John Rocque, A Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, 1746, showing Bedford (ex-Southampton) House, St George, Bloomsbury, and the burial grounds near the Foundling Hospital. Guildhall Library, Corporation of London.

82.   John Vanbrugh, Sketch of a Six-acre Cemetery, 1711, pen and ink. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS Rawl. B.376, f. 352v).

83.   John Vanbrugh, Sketch of the Cemetery at Surat, 1711, pen and ink. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS Rawl. B.376, f. 352r).

84.   John Vanbrugh, Mausoleum for a Park, drawing, from the Elton Hall album. The Victoria and Albert Museum; photograph: V&A Picture Library.

85.   John Vanbrugh, ‘Garden Building at Claremont, Surrey’, from John Rocque, A Plan of Claremont, 1738. By permission of The British Library, Map Library.

86.   Seventeenth-century Mausolea of East India Company staff in Surat Cemetery. Photograph: DPA/Images of India, 1999; courtesy of Robert Williams.

87.   Francis Breton’s Mausoleum in Surat Cemetery, begun 1649. By permission of The British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections.

88.   The Hedges Visnu, eleventh century, a siltstone image from Sagar Island, West Bengal, given by William Hedges to the Ashmolean c. 1686–7. The Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

89.   William Kent, Design Sketch, showing Vanbrugh’s Pyramidal Temple and Belvedere at Claremont, c. 1730, drawing, The British Museum (1962–7–14–51); photograph: The Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

90.   William Kent, Detail from the engraving for II.vi.20 in Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. Thomas Birch, 1751 (I, following p. 304). Private collection.

91.   John Vanbrugh, Seaton Delaval, Northumbria, South Front. The Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

92.   After John Vanbrugh, ‘Plan of Eastbury’, from Colen Campbell, Vitruvius Britannicus, III, 1725. The Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

93.   Pietro da Cortona, A Reconstruction of Praeneste, c. 1636, from a scrapbook formerly belonging to John Talman. The Victoria and Albert Museum; photograph: The Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

94.   After John Vanbrugh, ‘Design for the Temple at Eastbury’, from Colen Campbell, Vitruvius Britannicus, III, 1725. The Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

95.   Andrea Palladio, Idealized Reconstruction of the Upper Terraces and Temple of Fortuna Primigenia, Praeneste, late 1560s, pen & ink. RIBA Drawings Collection, IX/9 recto; photograph: The Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

96.   Andrea Palladio, Fanciful Reconstruction of the Forum and Temple of Fortuna Primigenia, Praeneste, late 1560s, pen & ink. RIBA Drawings Collection, IX/7; photograph: The Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

97.   William Kent, The Temple of Venus, Stowe, before 1731. The National Trust Photographic Library.

98.   Detail from a reconstruction drawing of ancient Rome, from Antiquae urbis praeclarissima aedificia. Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees.

99.   Plan of Tusculum Villa, from Robert Castell, Villas of the Ancients, 1728.

100.   Thermae Antoninianae of Caracalla, Rome, in a reconstruction. Photograph: John Harris.

101.   Nicholas Hawksmoor, Mausoleum at Castle Howard, 1729–36. Photograph: Christopher Ridgway.

102.   Reconstruction of the Mausoleum of Hadrian, Rome.

103.   John Vanbrugh, Temple of the Four Winds, Castle Howard, 1725–8. Photograph: Christopher Ridgway.

104.   Monumental Bust of Lord William Howard in the Pyramid at Castle Howard.

105.   John Vanbrugh, mock fortification walls at Castle Howard, 1719–25, with Hawksmoor’s Pyramid, 1728, in the distance. Peter Smith Photography, Malton.

106.   John Vanbrugh, the Pyramid Gate, Castle Howard, 1719. Photograph: Christopher Ridgway.

107.   ‘The Albano Gate’, from Roland Fréart de Chambray, Parallèle de l’Architecture, 1650.

108.   The Walls of Rome and the Mausoleum of Caius Cestius. The Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

109.   The Avenue at Castle Howard. Photograph: Christopher Ridgway.

110.   William Kent’s Vale of Venus, Rousham. Photograph: A.F. Kersting.

111.   Stephen Switzer, Design for Beaumanor, Leicestershire, 1737. Reproduced by kind permission of the Leicestershire County Record Office.

112.   The Pumping Engine at Blenheim, from Stephen Switzer, Hydrostaticks, 1729. Private collection.

113.   Caius Gabriel Cibber, Triton and Sea-horses Fountain, Chatsworth, c. 1690. Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees.

114.   John Stevens, South Prospect of Hampton Court, Herefordshire, c. 1705, oil on canvas (detail). New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

115.   Jan Kip, ‘Dyrham, Gloucestershire’ (detail), from Sir Robert Atkyns, The Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire, 1712. The National Trust Photographic Library.

116.   Cascade design from John James, The Theory and Practice of Gardening, 1712. Private collection.

117.   The Cascade at Shireoaks, Nottinghamshire. Photograph: Judith Roberts.

118.   View across the Canal at Stanway, Gloucestershire. Photograph: Judith Roberts.

119.   Peter Bourguignon, The Park and Garden at Gisburn, Yorkshire, West Riding, 1721. By kind permission of the West Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Leeds.

120.   Ideal Cascade, from Stephen Switzer, Hydrostaticks, 1729. Private collection.

121.   Cascade and Fishing Pavilions at Studley Royal, Yorkshire. Photograph: Judith Roberts.

122.   Cascade design, from Stephen Switzer, Hydrostaticks, 1729. Private collection.

123.   Francis Vivares, The Lower Cascade at Exton Park, Rutland, c. 1739, engraving and etching. Private collection.

124.   Francis Vivares, The Upper Cascade at Exton Park, Rutland, c. 1739, engraving and etching (detail). Private collection.

125.   Anon., The Old Palace in Woodstock Park, c. 1714, engraving after a drawing by an unknown artist. Private collection.

126.   Blenheim Park, with the site of Woodstock Manor to the north. Photograph: Christopher Ridgway.

127.   The Vale of Woodstock, looking west from the town of Woodstock, with the Manor visible on the hilltop, from Robert Plot, The Natural History of Oxfordshire, 1677. Private collection.

128.   William Stukeley, Rosamond’s Well, Woodstock Park, 1724, drawing. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS Top. Gen. d.14, f. 14v).

129.   Samuel and Nathaniel Buck, Holdenby House, Northamptonshire, 1729, engraving. Private collection.

130.   Leonard Knyff and Jan Kyp, ‘Guisborough, North Yorkshire’, engraving, from Britannia Illustrata, 1707. Private collection.

131.   Samuel and Nathaniel Buck, Conisborough Castle, South Yorkshire, 1728. Private collection.

132.   A double-page plate from Itinerarium Angliae, illustrating the second section of the London to Berwick route. J.B. Morrell Library, University of York.

133.   Ogilby’s prefatory map of England in Itinerarium Angliae, densely crammed with the principal thoroughfares.

134.   A detail from the London to Holyhead route in Itinerarium Angliae, showing a network of roads from other parts of the country converging at Daventry.

135.   A detail from the London to St Neots route in Itinerarium Angliae, marking Kimbolton on the second strip.

136.   A detail from the Bristol to Exeter route in Itinerarium Angliae, marking Glastonbury and the Tor.

137.   Samuel and Nathaniel Buck, Kirkham Abbey, North Yorkshire, n.d., engraving.

138.   William Stukeley, Robin Hood’s Well on the Great North Road, 1725, pen and wash (detail). Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS Top. Gen. d.14, f. 21).

139.   Robert Adam, Seton House, East Lothian, 1790–1. Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland.

140.   Robert Adam, Design for a Ruined Castle at Osterley Park, Middlesex, 1774, drawing. Victoria & Albert Museum, London, on loan to Osterley Park; photograph: The National Trust Photographic Library.

141.   William Walker (attrib.), Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County, Virginia, late 1730s. Jessie Ball DuPont Memorial Library, Robert E. Lee Memorial Association, Inc., Stratford Hall Plantation; photograph: Christopher Cunningham.

142.   Chimneys at Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County, Virginia, late 1730s. Jessie Ball DuPont Memorial Library, Robert E. Lee Memorial Association, Inc., Stratford Hall Plantation; photograph: Christopher Cunningham.

143.   John Soane, Men’s Penitentiary Design, 1781. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

144.   John Soane, Design for a Royal Palace, 1821. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

145.   Sita Ram, Dilkusha Palace and Park, Lucknow, 1815, watercolour (detail). By permission of The British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections.

146.   Dilkusha Palace, Lucknow, Entrance Front, built 1798–1814, shown in a mid-Victorian photograph. By permission of The British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections.

147.   Dilkusha Palace, Lucknow, Garden Front, built 1798–1814, in a mid-Victorian photograph. By permission of The British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections.

148.   Jeffry Wyatt [aka Wyatville], Design for the West Front of Chatsworth, 1818. Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees.

149.   C.R. Cockerell, Bank of England, Liverpool, 1844–7. Photograph: Alex Laing.

150.   Charles Fowler, Design for the Lower Court of Hungerford Market, London, 1831, watercolour. RIBA Drawings Collection.

151.   Richard Norman Shaw, Design for Wellington College, 1853, from The Illustrated London News. Private collection.

152.   Cuthbert Brodrick, Town Hall, Leeds, Yorkshire, 1853–8. Photograph: David Sheard.

153.   Cuthbert Brodrick, Wells House, Ilkley, Yorkshire, 1854. Private collection.

154.   Art Union Medal, 1856, with a portrait of Sir John Vanbrugh. Photograph: Jeremy Taylor.

155.   Detail of the podium frieze showing the portrait of Sir John Vanbrugh, The Albert Memorial, London, built by Sir George Gilbert Scott, 1863–72. English Heritage Photographic Library.

156.   John Brydon, Government Offices, Parliament Square, London, 1898–1912. Private collection.

157.   J.M.W. Turner, Blenheim House & Park – Oxford, c. 1832, watercolour. Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery.

158.   John Piper, Seaton Delaval, 1941, oil on wood. Tate Gallery, London, 1999.

159.   Felix Kelly, A Capriccio of Castle Howard, 1976, oil on panel. The Castle Howard Collection.

Preface and Acknowledgements

John Vanbrugh (1664–1726) was a man who collected many titles: he was a London trader, a merchant in India, a soldier, a herald, a civil servant (as Comptroller of Works), a theatre impresario, a knight of the realm, and a devoted husband and father. Today he is known principally as a playwright and as an architect – in his latter capacity he was the designer of some of the most important country houses and landscapes that survive in England. His works include Castle Howard, Blenheim Palace and Seaton Delaval, which today are still privately owned, and Claremont and Stowe, whose gardens are now in the care of the National Trust. These and other commissions were undertaken during a period when a hitherto insular England was transforming itself into Europe’s most innovative region for both architecture and landscape design. Among Vanbrugh’s contemporaries were the architects Sir Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor and William Talman, and the garden designers George London, Henry Wise, Charles Bridgeman and Stephen Switzer, with some of whom he collaborated. This was a formidable constellation of talent, wherein Vanbrugh’s star, it is felt by many today, shone the brightest.

While Vanbrugh is famously remembered for his great houses, it should not be forgotten that on many occasions he turned his attention to smaller buildings, sited within planned landscapes that he had also fashioned to some degree. The essays in this volume seek to address these twin aspects of Vanbrugh’s working career and the work of leading contemporaries. Sir John Vanbrugh and Landscape Architecture therefore marks a novel investigation into the period 1690–1730, and into the direction and spirit of landscape architecture during the reigns of William & Mary, Queen Anne, and George I. Too often these complementary aspects of designed landscape and architecture have been explored in isolation from one another, with the unfortunate result that our appreciation of individual houses and the importance of their garden and estate settings is limited.

With this in mind we invited experts in the worlds of architectural history and landscape design to collaborate on a book of essays that would eschew myopic divisions. Despite the example of Christopher Hussey, Gervase Jackson-Stops and John Harris, too few historians have grasped the fact that architecture and situation constitute a twin experience; buildings, most especially country mansions, do not exist in isolation from their surroundings; their location is often determined by specific topographical considerations – contour, elevation, adjacent water, woodland and approaches. Vanbrugh’s written pronouncements on landscape and on garden buildings are few, but there is sufficient evidence in his surviving temples, belvederes, arches, obelisks and fortifications to show just how acutely interested he was in raising structures within the wider landscape, as well as in fashioning the gardens around some of his great houses. There can be little doubt that these fundamental considerations preoccupied Vanbrugh, and many of his contemporaries too, especially when we consider his two greatest commissions – Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace.

Estate management is among the topics tackled in these essays, and Tom Williamson demonstrates just how essential it is to understand the economic base of country properties, as this often provided the income owners needed to pay for improvements. It is important to try to discern the motivations for these improvements. They may have been aesthetic, economic, or a combination of the two. Vanbrugh visited many estates in England, and there is no doubt that he was aware of the status and political affiliations of their owners. Moreover, he would surely have noted many other points of local significance, including the topography and management of those estates. Garden fashions in this period, as David Jacques explains, were various, and defy any simplistic chronology that claims a linear development from the formal to the ‘natural’. Vanbrugh would have noted gardens fashioned in different manners: he would have seen examples of French-style and Dutch-style gardens in England (as well as in France, the Low Countries and northern Germany), and their deployment of such stock features as parterres, basins, fountains, gates, sculptures, railings and ornamental planting schemes. Importantly, he would have observed how these features connected with adjacent buildings.

Among the aspects of garden design that have never before been considered in relation to Vanbrugh, or in relation to many of his contemporaries, is the question of horticulture. Because we largely associate Vanbrugh with extensive landscapes, the minutiae of flowers and plants have been forgotten. But, as Mark Laird reveals, Vanbrugh cannot have remained unaware of the pleasures and curiosities of the vegetable world. For instance, he may have chosen to ‘plant up’ his parterre at Castle Howard with obelisks, vases and lead statues, but he would have recognized that flowers, shrubs, topiary and ornamental trees were also vital materials for good garden design.

At Blenheim, Stowe and Seaton Delaval in particular, Vanbrugh showed a penchant for defensible gardens, which boasted formidable bastions, hahas and palisades. These were more than just the indulgences of a former soldier. Military, or fortified, gardens, as explained by Robert Williams, were a visible reminder of unsettled times, when the security of a moat or a bastion was far more valuable than any number of dressed lawns, clipped hedges or ornamental basins. Water, whether trickling, cascading or steady, was also an essential component in garden design. Judith Roberts shows how designers like Stephen Switzer were able to harness new technologies and exploit water for a variety of decorative and practical purposes, fashioning basins, cascades, fountains and canals.

Nor should we forget the intellectual materials that might have furnished a mind as lively and curious as Vanbrugh’s was. Timothy Mowl insists that late-seventeenth-century drama and the burgeoning state of antiquarian studies stimulated Vanbrugh with images and ideas about the past, which undoubtedly influenced his architecture, and the effects he was seeking to achieve. Christopher Ridgway reminds us that Vanbrugh was an intrepid traveller, frequently journeying throughout England, noting the evidence of a rich and intriguing national history that surrounded him; ancient buildings and ruins, plus a wealth of antiquarian researches, both in published or manuscript form, would also have alerted him to the pleasures of the past. His awareness of styles and phases of architecture, whether classical or Gothic, and his knowledge of buildings, both indigenous and foreign, would have been stimulated by contemporary engravings and drawings, if not by first-hand experience. Thus Giles Worsley probes a stylistic continuity between the work of Vanbrugh and that of the generation of Palladian architects and garden designers who succeeded him. The similarities between the work of Vanbrugh and William Kent challenge our assumptions about those useful but complicated terms ‘Baroque’ and ‘Palladian’.

Vanbrugh’s reputation suffered in the early eighteenth century, but, as Derek Linstrum sets out in detail, it began to be rehabilitated later in that century by the Adam brothers and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and in our own time Vanbrugh’s status as a major architect is no longer questioned. Celebrated as a genius, responsible for some of the grandest buildings and landscapes in England, today’s architects, artists and even would-be country house owners turn to his work for inspiration. Kerry Downes, after a lifetime devoted to the study of English architecture in this period, reviews the current state of Vanbrugh studies, which have been boosted by Robert Williams’s discovery that Vanbrugh spent time as an East India Company trader in Surat on the west coast of India. Kerry Downes also establishes that 1699 is the correct date for the conception of Vanbrugh’s first masterpiece, Castle Howard, and that therefore the last year of the twentieth century marked a significant moment of celebration. Appropriately, he also reminds us that although our academic understanding of Vanbrugh and his work, as well as that of his contemporaries, is more advanced than ever, it is still not possible, nor perhaps even desirable, to disentangle the mysteries of that richest and most enduring of architectural collaborations in the British Isles, namely the relationship between Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh.

The making of this book began as a conference on Vanbrugh, held in July 1999 to celebrate the tercentenary of the building of Castle Howard. It was organized jointly by Castle Howard and the University of York. We would like to express our deep gratitude to The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, The British Academy, The Yorkshire Gardens Trust and The British Council, Paris, for generous financial assistance in supporting the conference. Our thanks also extend to Castle Howard, and in particular to the Hon. Simon Howard and the Hon. Nicholas Howard; and at the University of York, to Dr Allen Warren, Professor Harold Mytum, Louise Dewhurst and the staff of I.F.A.B. Communications, for all their support and encouragement, and Peter Goodchild. Many individuals have assisted the editors and contributors for Sir John Vanbrugh and Landscape Architecture, generously offering advice and the benefit of their expert knowledge, and we are especially indebted to Dr Brian Allen, Professor Malcolm Andrews, Professor John Dixon Hunt, and Patrick and Bridget Nuttgens, and to Professor Michel Baridon for his input. Additionally, we are grateful to the following for their material and practical assistance: The National Trust; The Historic Houses Association; The Garden History Society; The Georgian Group; The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain; The Folly Fellowship; Michael Hall of Country Life; Clive Boursnell; David Whiteley; Gordon Smith; Philip Lewis; Gordon Lee; Deirdre Mortimer; Rosie Wade; Cristiano Ratti; Alison Brisby; Janette Ray Books; Ken Spelman Booksellers; Peter Smith Photography, Malton; Rossmann Haigh; and Fulprint, York. We are also indebted to the many owners of works of art, as well as to the staff of country houses, museums, galleries and libraries for making available to us illustrations of works in their collections, and for other kindnesses. In particular we would like to thank His Grace the Duke of Beaufort, His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, His Grace the Duke of Devonshire, The Lord Hastings, His Grace the Duke of Marlborough; Elizabeth Heaps and Dr David Griffiths of the J.B. Morrell Library at the University of York; and John Harris. We are also grateful to the Marc Fitch Fund for supporting this publication.

Finally, we would like to thank the authors for their contributions, and for their willingness to identify and explore important but under-researched subjects that are crucial to a richer understanding of landscape architecture in the period 1690–1730. Of course, estate management, theatre, horticulture, hydraulics, garden design, travel, antiquarianism, architectural styles and Vanbrugh’s afterlife hardly exhaust the range of enquiry for this period and this subject. Lead sculptures, architectural drawing, topographical art and mapmaking, as well as a badly-needed treatment of the contributions to garden design made by Wren, Hawksmoor and Thomas Archer, await investigation. None the less, we hope that this collection of interdisciplinary essays will advance our understanding of the landscape architecture of Vanbrugh and his contemporaries.

Christopher Ridgway and Robert WilliamsCastle Howard

ONE

Vanbrugh over Fifty Years

Kerry Downes

Fifty years ago, in 1949, the late George Howard returned to his family home, Castle Howard, and moved into the Pyramid Gatehouse; a good deal of the south range of the great house was roofless and windowless, and the dome had gone in the fire of 1940. The move was symbolic of his intention, happily realized, to save Castle Howard and return it to something like its original splendour.

This essay was drafted within days of the twenty-ninth anniversary of the death of Geoffrey Webb, a fine and gentle scholar to whom all Vanbrughians owe an enormous debt. In 1949 his edition of Vanbrugh’s letters was two decades old,1 as was Christopher Hussey’s account of the buildings – the first ever – in English Homes.2 Laurence Whistler’s biography of Vanbrugh was a decade old.3

The year 1949 passed without any public celebration of the quarter-millennium of Castle Howard’s inception. As an undergraduate I was studying the European Baroque, with Sacheverell Sitwell’s British Architects and Craftsmen (1945) fresh in my memory as an introduction to the idea of an English variety.4 Two years later a couple of shelves from Hawksmoor’s plan-chest came up at Sotheby’s in the Bute Collection. I remember seeing them before the sale in the photographer’s studio. I knew enough to grasp the significance of lots 17 and 19 in the sale – early drawings for Castle Howard, which the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired. Until then, apart from those by Hawksmoor for the Mausoleum, there were virtually no known drawings. Suddenly drawings became the main evidence for studying the genesis of the house. Whistler, already working on his second book on Vanbrugh, published the most significant ones in the winter of 1952/3 in advance of his book.5 The effect on early eighteenth-century studies was galvanic.

There may be some who will wonder whether 1999 was the correct year in which to hold tercentennial celebrations, especially as the tablet on the great obelisk says ‘began in 1702’. For better or for worse, the date, like the millennium, was decided upon, but I hope to show that 1699 was the crucial year.

It may not be inappropriate, in an opening essay, to say something about landscape architecture and about labels, in addition to my remarks on Vanbrugh. Of landscaping I am qualified to say rather little; I shall go no further than to recall that in the long and rather tedious poem composed by Anne, Lady Irwin, Lord Carlisle’s daughter, entitled ‘Castle Howard’, there is not a word about architects.6 We should not be too surprised at the implication that it was all Carlisle’s own work: it has always been the prerogative of the great and the good to do things by delegation, and no doubt His Lordship would excuse, if not welcome, our interest in what was delegated, and to whom.

Labels are dangerous. Fifty years ago it was still customary to offer explanations as to why there was no English Baroque; I remember having done so myself in a school examination. Nowadays, when we have Baroque orchestras, Baroque oboes and Baroque players, the ambiguities between Baroque as a style-label and as a date-bracket are more numerous and more confused than ever. After I had abandoned custom and written an exploratory book on, and titled, English Baroque Architecture,7 people said to me of some building or other – ‘It must be Baroque: it’s in your book!’ Personally, it would only be after an exceptionally good dinner that I might put forward Lord Burlington’s villa at Chiswick (built in the same years as Vanbrugh’s Temple of the Four Winds) as the last masterpiece of the English Baroque, but I quote from a text also written fifty years ago: ‘In spite of his academic conviction, Burlington, the artist, deviated from Palladio’s models, both when he was more Baroque – as in the exceptional features of the stairs and the lofty dome of Chiswick – and when he was less Baroque.’8

Chiswick remains difficult to label, but that attempt shows why labels are dangerous. Writing history, like playing the violin, is not a faculty with which we are born; it is a cultural application and adaptation of some of our natural gifts. One of those gifts is the ability to categorize, to give mental – not necessarily verbal – labels to things. There is a very good reason for this: it saves us from chronic sensory overload. The amount of information constantly coming into our senses is enormous – gigabytes every second. Our brains cannot cope with most of it, so we learn in infancy to ignore most of what is familiar. We begin doing this before we can speak, but language enables us to name things. Two-year-olds are obsessed with the names of things: at twenty-one months of age, Vanbrugh’s son knew ‘Pillars, & Arches and Round Windows & Square Windows already, whether he finds them in a Book or in the Streets’.9

But as we mature it is the things we cannot quite see or identify that give us most trouble in daily life, and most enjoyment in picture puzzles. When you have identified, categorized, labelled anything, you can ignore it. In a strange town you have to look at everything – which is both tiring and exhilarating; at home you know the landmarks so well that you can walk past the postbox and forget that you have a letter to put in it. There has to be a good deal of label-making in history, but the danger is that when you have made the labels you stop looking.

And so to ‘Sir John Vanbrugh’: something about Vanbrugh the man and something about the events of 1699, and also something about Hawksmoor’s and Lord Carlisle’s part in them. Vanbrugh, it seems to me, was a very private person. It may be fortuitous (in the proper sense of the word) that his most revealing letter is unheaded and unsigned, which is why Webb missed it: it is the letter to an unknown third party (probably one of Carlisle’s daughters) about his feelings for Henrietta Yarburgh of Heslington, the young lady who became his wife.10 One thinks of him as such an easy correspondent because he wrote so naturally, whether for himself in letters or for the characters in his plays, and because his interests were as varied as his acquaintance. But just as his stage dialogue conceals its artifice, his letters do not reveal the degree or depth of thought that preceded the introduction of the pen into the inkwell. And this may also apply to drawing, even though we depend on the accidents of survival. Vanbrugh often drew sketchily, but we have very few sketches. Hawksmoor on the other hand, although his letters are mostly about architecture, employment and his health, seems always to have been ready to put pen to paper – and this applies also to drawing. Hawksmoor was not afraid to make on occasion quite lamentable designs; they qualified as what he called ‘tryalls, so that we are assured of the good effect’.11 We can say that second thoughts mattered to Hawksmoor because we have seen some of the first ones.

Three hundred surviving Vanbrugh letters tell us nothing of Vanbrugh’s parents, his uncles or aunts, their activities or connections, and almost nothing about his early life. There is a solitary joking reference to his inside knowledge of French prisons; no word that he was in them for four and a half years. Nothing about his education, his adventures in the London wine trade, the army, or the marines, where his competence and bravery in the battle at Camaret Bay, near Brest, in 1694 during King William’s War only came to light recently because of an obscure pamphlet published by his superior officer.12 We know of his years as a hostage only from partial French documents and from a few letters relating to his efforts to extricate himself; he must have counted himself lucky that the Jacobite pose he adopted during this process did not rebound on him in later life.

And then there are the missing years, 1682–5. Robert Williams’s brilliant discovery now establishes that Vanbrugh sought then his fortune in the East India Company, but that his expectations were not met. Three thoughts strike me here. First, the adolescent tone of his earliest letter – he was nearly twenty-two – seeking a job from his kinsman the Earl of Huntingdon after his return from India, must be seen to reflect not inexperience but the deference to nobility that he never lost.13 Second, the life of an East India Company merchant was not to his taste. Was the whole venture a desperate attempt by his father and uncle to settle this aimless, star-struck, dreamy elder son in a sound business? If so, it was bound to fail; finding out what was not for him was but a necessary hurdle on the path to his true métier. Third, as an official Company passenger en route to and from India, he would have been at sea for six months in 1683, and as much again in 1685. Some sixty years later, another future architect, William Chambers, travelling for the Swedish India Company, used his time on board to continue his self-education, and Vanbrugh surely did the same. Maybe that is when he learned shorthand (Shelton’s, the system used by Pepys).14

Probably his contemporaries knew little more about him than we do. Peter Le Neve, his fellow in the College of Heralds, noted down a page of particulars of the Vanbrugh family.15 It has more blanks than facts, and some of the facts are wrong; he cannot have obtained them from Sir John. I must confess to forgetting this document when I wrote that there was no contemporary evidence that Vanbrugh’s father, Giles, had been a sugar-baker. There is no other evidence, for a century, but as the page is in a Harleian manuscript in the British Library it may be the source, and that is what it does say. I still believe it has nothing to do with elegant confectionery, and that Giles had not caramel fingers but shares in the Chester sugar refinery run by a friend of his named Henthorne. That accords with everything else we know of Giles, as someone who dealt wholesale in cloth, European or oriental, and perhaps Irish linen; in real estate, in bulk grain, and in lead mining. Vanbrugh’s privacy probably came from his home: the wills of his parents are remarkably uninformative documents. It can only have increased after his experiences with the French judiciary taught him to trust no man. The French prison in which he ‘began my days’ as a mature adult turned the dreamer into an achiever; with the key that freed him came the key that would at last unlock his fertile, intuitive, creative genius. All he wanted was occasion, and in the course of the 1690s occasion began to bring success. If he had managed to keep quiet his earlier failures, he was no more inclined to publicize the labour that led to his successes. This is the background to the first letter in Webb’s edition, dated Christmas Day 1699:

I have been this Summer at my Ld Carlisle’s, and Seen most of the great houses in the North, as Ld Nottings: Duke of Leeds Chattesworth &c. I stay’d at Chattesworth four or five days the Duke being there. I shew’d him all my Ld Carlisle’s designs, which he said was quite another thing, than what he imagin’d from the Character yr Ldship gave him on’t; He absolutely approv’d the whole design, perticularly the low Wings, which he said wou’d have an admirable effect without doors as well as within, being adorn’d with those Ornaments of Pillasters and Urns, wch he never thought of, but concluded ’twas to be a plain low building like an orange house. There has been a great many Criticks consulted upon it since, and no one objection being made to’t, the Stone is raising, and the Foundations will be laid in the Spring. The Modell is preparing in wood, wch when done, is to travel to Kensington where the Kings thoughts upon’t are to be had.16

Perhaps he had written likewise to his mother after – not before – the success of his first play, The Relapse, three years earlier. After a long catalogue of West End gossip (for the addressee was in Paris) he presents a fait accompli. Clearly, and by implication, a great deal of quiet desk-work had gone on over the preceding year. Now the designs are made, and universally approved of, especially by the Duke of Devonshire; the stone is raising in the quarry, even a wooden model is being made which will be sent for King William’s opinion. This last, which took another six months, was surely quite gratuitous; it was none of the King’s business what Lord Carlisle built in Yorkshire, or how – but it does add to the atmosphere of joy. If it was an advertisement, it was for Carlisle rather than for Vanbrugh.

I have published five accounts of Castle Howard, longer or shorter, and I am not going to rehearse them here. But it has been suggested, because they are all different, that I don’t know my own mind – which is not true; moreover, there are a couple of pieces of evidence – a memorandum and some little drawings – that were not available then. I do know my own mind, but in the light of this evidence I have changed it somewhat, in respect not of who did what, but of when. The summary I now offer is thus different in some respects, which is my justification for offering it.

Lord Carlisle arrived in Yorkshire in late July 1698 and stayed until November.17 On 20 August Vanbrugh received a warrant for half-pay as Captain of Marines; effectively he retired from the service and was a free man. On 31 October 1698 Carlisle signed a lease with his grandmother on Henderskelfe Castle – gutted by fire five years earlier – and its estate; the lease was to take effect from March 1699. Because other events preclude it, William Talman’s visit to Henderskelfe can have been no later than the autumn of 1698. George London, his associate garden designer, is known to have been there the following year, in July 1699, but Talman must have been involved earlier since Hawksmoor’s plan-chest contained layouts with both Talman’s and Vanbrugh’s house plans. By the end of 1698 Carlisle must have tired of Talman, who (as we know from the subsequent lawsuit) disagreed with both Carlisle and Vanbrugh about the financial value of small and large drawings.18 It would also have been known about town by then that the Duke of Devonshire, at Chatsworth, had sacked Talman, upset by his extravagant lifestyle as well as by the fact that he, the Duke, had been paying London prices, which were more than twice the local ones.

Carlisle made a short visit to Henderskelfe in March 1699; the estate was now effectively his, and he was back there by 21 June. The key to what had been happening in the previous six months is a memorandum from his neighbouring landowner, Thomas Worsley of Hovingham, dated 26 June. This was mentioned to me forty years ago by George Howard, but its significance was curiously ignored by Charles Saumarez Smith.19 It includes the following:

In the two first of the Base & Window caseing

att 1s p foot I think may be wrought 1/3 pte cheaper

than Propos’d, wch will save                                                                    61. 0. 0

As For the Higer Prices, As 1s.6d. 3. & 5s p Foot, I know

nothing of, Being Rates Above wt is ever given hear . . .

Norway Oake wth Workmansp att 6s p yard. will be sav’d                   153. 12. 6

For Deale wth Workmansp 3s. 6d. p Yard

Two Stair Cases with Norway Oak Raile Balister & Wansscott.          70£ . . .

Sash Windows I know Nothing of

Lead for Covering . . .

The Body of the House in Feet – Long – 106. Broad – 75 . . .

The Two Wings in Feet – Long – 142. Broad – 3520

Evidently Carlisle was thinking of using direct labour – something one could not do if Talman was in charge, but which Vanbrugh recommended, and Carlisle, under the guidance of Hawksmoor, managed to do and found very satisfactory.21 Worsley had done so; it is interesting not just that the new high-tech sash-windows were unknown to him but that he assumed Carlisle’s staircases were to be of wood, not stone.

1. John Vanbrugh, Design for South Front, Castle Howard with Inset Plan, 1699.

More importantly, Carlisle had given Worsley the dimensions of his proposed house – or at least of the main block and the southern wings that had reminded Devonshire of a long, low orangery. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that drawings with a main block less than 106 feet long – like, for example, those known ever since Whistler’s articles as the ‘first’ Vanbrugh design – were earlier, and those of about 106 feet, the same as built, were later. The question is, how much later?

It is here that the most remarkable feature of Vanbrugh’s house comes in: the great dome that is too big for it but that makes the building from a distance. We know this was an afterthought, because in the ‘first’ plan there is no support for it and in the ‘second’ plan it was added at a late stage. Again, how late?

About five years ago, after the death of the 6th Marquess of Bute, Francis Russell of Christie’s found a folder containing some more material from Hawksmoor’s plan-chest, including three little drawings in Vanbrugh’s own hand: drawings ‘as big as your hand’ – the kind he testified at the lawsuit that you did not pay for – which are now also in the Victoria and Albert Museum. There is a plan with a main block marked only 100 feet long (30+40+30; fig. 1), and an elevation which by calculation is only 96 feet long (fig. 2). Unless the design process went backwards, this means that Vanbrugh drew a domed house in the early part of 1699; therefore, the dome, although an afterthought, was an early one. It was always to be, objectively, too big, although in this little drawing it is by no means as big as it would come to be.

This means that the design – apart from the towered stable- and kitchen-courts – was virtually settled when Vanbrugh showed it to Devonshire at Chatsworth in the late summer of 1699. (Devonshire arrived there in August.) We have all been misled by the fact that Hawksmoor’s fine elevations – the sort you certainly did pay for – do not show a dome. But they do not show other things either, and the discussion recorded in Vanbrugh’s Christmas letter can – and I now believe should – be read as concerning the south wings, rather than the house as a whole. So when Vanbrugh wrote that it was all going forward, he meant it. Even today a building work may take months before anything is visible: you need not only drains but surfaced tracks for heavy carts to reach the site. Hawksmoor wrote on 26 May 1701:

I find the work at Henderscelf to go on with vigour and grt industry altho there is not soe much done as I expected by this time but the impediment has been the backward season which has much obstructed us. I am come time enough to regulate some errours and difficultys the workmen were going into, and in generall the worke is firme and strongly performed; the situation yr Lp has chose is under the covert of the Wood but it runs us into some hardships about levelling & makeing our access to the great façade and principall courts, I am takeing all the declivitys and disposition of the ground that they might not Loose time . . .

I have severall instructions and memorandums to draw up for the workemen and I can see nothing to contradict the good execution of the worke: I desire the mason to sett on more hands that we may complete with expedition the two wings, and to do that will require another kill [i.e., kiln] for Lime. The coals come hard but now is the season to gett them in which I hope your Lp will order not to be wanting for now I shall wish the conclusion of the worke as earnestly as I was for opposing the beginning of it. I shall give your Lp a farther acct the next post.22

2. John Vanbrugh, Design for South Front, Castle Howard, with Lantern and Dome, 1699.

Some of the workmen were already going into errors and difficulties because preliminary or infrastructure work had been in progress for a whole year.

So the essence of today’s great house was on paper in the summer of 1699. That leaves the question of Hawksmoor’s part in it. ‘If the argument is judged to be sound, Vanbrugh emerges a more limited artist than the general opinion has allowed, and Hawksmoor a more capable one. . . . It is agreeable, then, to be of help in making tardy restitution to Hawksmoor.’ That was Whistler’s conclusion to his 1954 book.23 Here was the Vanbrugh expert giving it all away! Everything I have written has been guided by the belief that Whistler’s judgment, though well meant, was simplistic, and that in a unique partnership, the architect of Castle Howard was Vanbrugh. In about April 1700 he thought it was time to introduce his colleague officially to Carlisle, so that he could be not only recognised but also paid:

I wish’t I cou’d possibly have stay’d . . . till tuesday, that I might have seen yr Ldship, and known whether you are come to an agreement with the Mason & Carpenter. I talk’t a great deal to ’em both, the morning I came away; but found ’em very unwilling to come to any abatement. They made a world of protestations of its being impossible, without letting the work pay for’t: they say’d they believ’d yr Ldship might expect some abatement from their proposall as a thing of course; but that Mr Hawksmoor had persuaded ’em to make no provision for that, but to make the lowest offer they cou’d possibly work for, and do it well. I ask’t Mr Hawksmoor alone, what he really thought on’t; He said they were indeed come as low, as he ever expected to bring ’em; and yet perhaps it was not impossible for ’em to work lower, and that since they so positively declar’d, they cou’d not do the best work lower, and that if they lessen’d their rates, they must save themselves in the performance, it was to be fear’d (unless they have more honesty than is reasonable to expect) they might take this pretence, to performe the work ten per Cent: worse for five per Cent: they were reduc’t. since there was no direct form of Workmanship cou’d be agreed on, when once they had got loose from being oblig’d to the best. So that this wou’d give ’em a loophole to play the Rogue very much, and one cou’d not tell how to redress it: wheras, if they have the rates they have propos’d, they own themselves engag’d to do as good work as that they receive twice as much for, at London, and by consequence they have no room left for evasion . . .

I spoak to Mr Hawksmoor about his perticular concern and found him as he us’d to be. so he intended to ask yr Ldship fourty pound a year Sallary & fifty each journey wch mounts to £100 clear. I hope he’ll deserve it, and that all will go to yr Ldships satisfaction. for I shou’d be very sorry to have meddled in anything shou’d do otherwise.24

3. John Vanbrugh, Ground Plan of the North-east Angle of the Main Block for Castle Howard, 1699.

We can place this undated letter here, just a year before Hawksmoor’s, because the first recorded payment to Hawksmoor, on 25 May 1701, the day before his site report, was £150: two journeys at £50 each, a year’s salary at £40, and surely £10 for contingencies. In his letter Hawksmoor speaks as the expert consultant manager; in all the Vanbrugh letters quoted it is the architect who speaks. On 25 May 1716 he told the Duke of Marlborough, faced with completing Blenheim at his own expense, of the virtues of direct labour:

Out of the Several Proposals the Masons have given in, I have collected the Lowest price put to each Article in each Mans proposall, And so made the enclosed Scheme of Prices, to offer to them, which upon the whole, is therefore a good deal Lower than any one of their distinct offers . . .

I have farther look’d over the rates my Lord Carlisle pays in Yorkshire; and find them within a Small matter the Same with these, tho’ the work is by no means so good, and the Country vastly Cheaper than Oxfordshire: And yet my Lord has, during the whole Course of his Building managed all that part himself, with the greatest care; And tho’ he began with ignorant Masons at Lower Rates, he soon found there was good reason to give more, in order to have his work tollerably done.25

Vanbrugh was also proud of the warmth, economy and convenience he had provided. On 29 October 1713 he told James Craggs:

I am much pleased here (amongst other things) to find Lord Carlisle so thoroughly convinced of the Conveniencys of his new house, now he has had a years tryall of it: And I am the more pleas’d with it, because I have now a proof, that the Dutchess of Marlborough must find the same conveniency in Blenheim, if ever She comes to try it (as I still believe she will in spite of all these black Clouds.) For my Lord Carlisle was pretty much under the same Apprehensions with her, about long Passages, high Rooms &c. But he finds what I told him to be true. That those Passages woud be so far from gathering & drawing wind as he feared, that a Candle wou’d not flare in them; of this he has lately had the proof, by bitter stormy nights in which not one Candle wanted to be put into a Lanthorn, not even in the Hall, which is as high (tho not indeed so big) as that at Blenheim. He likewise finds, that all his Rooms, with moderate fires Are Ovens, And that this Great House, do’s not require above One pound of wax, and two of Tallow Candles a Night to light it, more than his house at London.26

Moreover, he believed his methods to be generally applicable. On 4 January 1719 he wrote, again from Castle Howard, to the young Duke of Newcastle, for whom he was refurbishing Nottingham Castle:

At least to encourage you, let me acquaint you, that this Place where I am now, has since I remember been Shiver’d at, when Nam’d for a Winter habitation. And yet, is now so very comfortable a One, that in this Sharp Season, there has not past a day, without setting Open Severall times, the door and Windows of the Room My Lord Car: and the Ladys constantly use; it has been so much too hot: And all the rest of the house, is so in proportion. And so may Nottingham Castle be made, by the Same care and Methods.27

And what of Lord Carlisle? Saumarez Smith concluded that, by the time he had finished with it, Castle Howard had changed from ‘an instrument of power and self-aggrandisement, a demonstration of personal and political prestige’ to ‘an expensive retirement home and, as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu described it, a nunnery for Lord Carlisle’s unmarried daughters’. He found ‘a curious irony in comparing the great lavishness of the Castle Howard interiors with the third Earl’s life of modest domesticity, of gossip and conversation, and long winter evenings without company, as he grew old and lame’.28

When the inscription on the great obelisk was put up in 1731 Carlisle was sixty-two, about the age at which Rembrandt and Rubens and Vanbrugh died; he would live to be sixty-nine. The rhyming epigraph is about the plantations; these, with the ‘faithful pillar’, are to be his memorial (as opposed to the Mausoleum, the dynastic burial place). Castle Howard itself, the ‘out-works’ and monuments and (again) the plantations are mentioned, as his creations, in the prose lines that conclude the inscription. What sort of man – and what sort of artistic patron – was he?

John Macky described Carlisle as ‘a gentleman of great interest in the Country and very zealous for its welfare; hath a fine estate and a very good understanding, with a grave deportment’.29 His views on religion and the afterlife were not entirely orthodox, but they had a part to play in the creation of the Mausoleum.30