The Interior Topography of the Picturesque: Level Changes and Stepped Floors in James Wyatt’s Dodington Park and Ashridge House

Abstract

The picturesque aesthetic of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain, as manifested in country house architecture, often involved moving the principal floor from an elevated piano nobile down to ground level, lowering one’s visual perspective and facilitating more direct movement between house and garden. While these developments are well recognised in the literature, one repercussion for architects has been largely overlooked: how to deal, in both practical and aesthetic terms, with the vertical challenges posed for a groundlevel principal floor by uneven terrain or pre-existing fabric. A particularly interesting case study is provided by the work of James Wyatt at two very different houses, the classical Dodington Park (1796–1813) and gothic Ashridge House (1807–13), through his carefully conceived and implemented use of small interior level changes, or stepped floors. Although the initial problems were similar, Wyatt’s solutions differed markedly in response to the demands of each commission; they also contrasted with the various approaches adopted by contemporaries such as Humphry Repton, John Nash and John Soane. Overall, this article suggests both the scholarly challenges, and the importance, of devoting enhanced attention to the interior topography of the picturesque experience.