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The restoration of the south front of Wilton House: the development of the house reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

John Heward
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Extract

The south front of Wilton House (Fig. 1) and the State Apartment on the first floor of the south range are justly famous as one of the most important and influential works of English architecture to survive from the seventeenth century. The work has been described, recorded and analysed by travellers, connoisseurs and art historians since its completion shortly before 1652. Much of that analysis has been based on documentary sources with only limited investigation of the fabric. A recent comprehensive restoration of the south range has enabled a detailed reconsideration of its complex historical development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 35 , 1992 , pp. 78 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1992

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References

Notes

1 International Fine Art Conservation Studios, 43-45 Park Street, Bristol. Samples or paint sections were taken by Pam Lewis of English Heritage.

2 Plotted and drawn by Mark Corney from the Salisbury office of RCHME.

3 Bold, J. with Reeves, J., Wilton House and English Palladianism, RCHME (1988)Google Scholar.

4 William Worcester: Itineraries, ed. J. H. Harvey (1969). This implies that the church was in the north range or possibly detached.

5 Victoria County History; A History of Wiltshire VI (1962), Institute of Historical Research, University of London, p. 2.

6 Survey of the Lands of William, 1st Earl of Pembroke Wiltshire Record Office 2057/S3, ed. Straton, C. R., privately printed for the Roxburghe Club (1909)Google Scholar.

7 The medieval monastery would have been approached from the north or west.

8 Estate survey of c. 1565, WRO, 2057/S3.

9 The Journal of Sir Roger Wilbraham, The Camden Miscellany, x, 3rd series, 4 (1902), p. 65.

10 Again, from the conventions of monastic planning rather than from incontrovertible evidence in the fabric. On the south side of the cloister the land falls away to the river, leaving little space for a church with two aisles. Drains uncovered within the south range are unlikely to have been within the church and the position of the town, to the north, is also important, for the church should have been on the town side of the cloister.

11 The porch, known as the Holbein Porch, was dismantled when Wyatt built the north walk of the cloister in the early nineteenth century. It was rebuilt to the west of the house as a feature in the garden.

12 The main garden in the sixteenth century was probably on the west side but there were no windows looking down into it from the principal rooms in the west range. The plan in Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus shows that, even in 1717, the windows of the west range looked into the courtyard and fireplaces were on the west wall.

13 At Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, William Sharrington contrived a new first-floor hall in the west range of the monastic quadrangle. The kitchen and the great chamber, in the monastic refectory, were, unconventionally, at the same end of the hall. From the high end of the hall, away from the entrance, a narrow gallery on the site of the church led to apartments in the east range.

14 Aubrey, , The Natural History of Wiltshire, ed. Britton, J. (1847), pp. 83–84 Google Scholar.

15 The ceiling drawings are in the collection of Worcester College, Oxford, Gotch 1/8-15. Published by Harris, J. and Tait, A., Catalogue of the drawings by Inigo Jones, John Webb and Isaac de Caus at Worcester College Oxford (1979), catalogue numbers 58–63 Google Scholar. Drawings for panelled doors are in Wiltshire Record Office, 2057/H1/1a.

16 Warrant Book of the Lord Chamberlain, Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. Order dated 14 March 1636.

17 This is the same length as the garden front at Holdenby in Northamptonshire which, when it was built in the 1580s, was reputed to be the largest private house in England.

18 The drawing in the collection at Worcester College, Oxford was discovered and identified by Colvin, Howard and published in ‘The South Front of Wilton House’, Archaeological Journal, cxi (1954), pp. 181-90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 The plan published in Vitruvius Britannicus in 1717 shows the walls of the south range towards the courtyard as blind.

20 Harley Collection of Drawings, Society of Antiquaries of London. Purchased in 1741. Popper, G. and Reeves, J., ‘The South Front of Wilton House’, Burlington Magazine, 124 (1982), pp. 358-61Google Scholar.

21 Colvin, H. M., Archaeol.J., cxi (1954), p. 189 Google Scholar.

22 J. Bold with J. Reeves, Wilton House and English Palladianism (1988).

23 Wyatt skilfully adapted and replanned complex country houses, inserting necessary service rooms and corridors, to provide the required comfort usually within a new Gothic shell but frequently the work was poorly executed and disputes with frustrated patrons were not uncommon.

24. For a discussion of the use of king-post roof construction by Jones see Yeomans, D., ‘Inigo Jones’s Roof Structures,’ Architectural History, 29 (1986), pp. 85–101 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 RIBA Drawings Collection. Bold and Reeves, Wilton House (1988), fig. 35.

26 At Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, the land drops away to the east towards a river and the ground-floor rooms of the east range step down towards the north-east corner.

27 In the sixteenth century the ground floor was raised and levelled; the cross-walls built in the seventeenth century which bore the weight of the tower were constructed on the infill. Differential settlement started almost immediately.

28 At Cleeve Abbey in Somerset the south range, containing the refectory, is 9.1 m (30 ft) wide overall and 6.7 m (22 ft) wide internally. The east range, containing the dorter, is marginally wider. The cloister at Cleeve is 28 m square (92 ft × 92 ft) and the cloister walk, within that, 4.26 m (14 ft) wide. Wilton cloister is larger. The cloister at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, being 24.2 m (79 ft 6 in.) square is smaller than Wilton but the ranges are about 10 m (33 ft) wide overall.

29 Hammond, Lieutenant, ‘Relation of a Short Journey of the Western Counties’ dated 1635. Ed. Legg, L. G. Wickham and published in The Camden Miscellany, xvi (1936), pp. 66–68 Google Scholar.

30 David Sumpster suggests that the ‘archt cellars’ may imply that a loggia had been inserted into the ground floor of the range by de Caus and that the rustication at the centre of the north front was part of this work. Loggias below lodgings or state apartments are reasonably common in the seventeenth century, but in the absence of conclusive evidence it seems improbable that the Great Stair could have risen out of open loggia.

31 It was not possible to excavate a continuous trench running east-west along the centre of the range.

32 It is similar to the processional door surviving at Lilleshall Abbey, Shropshire which gives access from the cloister to the church and probably dates from the second half of the twelfth century.

33 See the comparable conversion of the monastic ranges at Chicksands Abbey, Bedfordshire.

34 Historic views show that, apart from the towers, the other ranges were two storeys high.

35 Some great houses of the late sixteenth century, such as Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire, have the same feature. There would have been space for at most a thin moulding just below the plaster of the ceiling.

36 There is a patch of different stonework or blocking in the position of the sixteenth-century window, suggesting that the front has not been refaced. This shows clearly on the photogrammetric drawing of the east front.

37 British Museum Add 3367B fol. 24, Bold and Reeves, Wilton House (1988), fig. 42. The wall had been demolished by 1723 for it is not shown on the view of the south front by Stukeley, Bodleian Library, Gough Maps 33, 19r. Bold and Reeves, Wilton House (1988), fig. 43.

38 A stair hall in the centre as at Coleshill, Berkshire, twenty years later, is possible but this was not the main entrance to the house and there was only a small door below the portico and no windows.

39 The front was divided into three sections; the portico approximately 24 m (79 ft) wide and eight bays on either side approximately 42 m (137ft) wide.

40 Worcester College, Oxford. Gotch 1/58G, Harris and Tait (1979), cat. no. 111, pl. 92.

41 The engraving also shows a double flight of stone steps at the centre of the front. In fact the steps were built against the first-floor window of the south-west tower but removed by 1746 when Roque drew the front. Bold and Reeves, Wilton House (1988), fig. 106.

42 I am grateful to Bridget Cherry for this information.

43 The present cross-walls would have cut across the windows of the de Caus design now in the RIBA, London.

44 In medieval and sixteenth-century ranges where only the outer walls were in stone, timber-framed cross-walls were not bonded in, merely tied in at tie beam and bressummer.

45 Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire has a cantilevered stone staircase of 1638 which was designed by Nicholas Stone. Stone also worked at Wilton where he carved the panels surviving on the orangery in the west garden.

46 David Sumpster has pointed out that the cornice of the south front was trimmed back by 1 in. at each end just before it butted up to the towers. Was this to create a remarkably subtle illusion of the towers breaking forward?

47 Bold and Reeves, Wilton House (1988), fig. 101.

48 David Sumpster felt that the wall plate continued ‘some way beneath the masonry of the corner towers’. He suggests therefore that the sixteenth-century south-east tower was dismantled in 1636, the hipped roof in the de Caus drawings was constructed but then after the fire the tower was reinstated. Corinne Bennett felt that the plate was so decayed that its extent could not be traced accurately, but it appeared to be curtailed by brickwork at the towers.

49 Scamozzi, V., Dell’Idea dell’Architettura Universale I, III (1615)Google Scholar.

50 The Queen’s House, Greenwich by Jones had a flat roof with a balustrade. However many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century houses, including Montacute, Somerset and Apethorpe Hall, Northamptonshire were provided with a roof walk from which to view the gardens or hunting in a park, though few were provided with as extensive a promenade as the present flat roof at Wilton.

51 The east range at Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire was gutted by fire during the Civil War. Dark orange stains mark the stonework above the windows.

52 A cornice above the second-floor windows of the front towards the courtyard, now hacked back, may have been added in 1636. David Sumpster has pointed out that this does not survive at the west end of the front and this may indicate that the fire was concentrated over the Single Cube room.

53 Country Life, CXXXIII (1963), p. 112.

54 In form it is reminiscent of the roof of the Riding School at Bolsover, Derbyshire.

55 The position of the wall plate was marked clearly by a void in the stonework but only decayed fragments of the timber survived; these were too small for dendrochronology samples or for an evaluation of details of any housings.

56 Worcester College, Oxford, Gotch 11/29. Published in Harris and Tait (1979), cat. no. 73, pl. 55.

57 Worcester College, Oxford Gotch 1/8 Harris and Tait (1979), pl. 40.

58 Murray, E. Croft, Decorative Painting in England, 1530-1837, Vol. 2, The Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (1970), p. 194 Google Scholar.

59 The arrangement within a royal palace involved a greater number of rooms and their functions were modified. The Great Chamber or Guard Room was a place of assembly (rather than for dining as in a smaller house). A Presence Chamber, served by staff of the Outer Chamber, led to the Audience Chamber, which accommodated the Throne and Canopy of State. The king dined in public here and peers and privy councillors had direct access to the room. The Privy Chamber beyond, served by Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, possibly functioned as a withdrawing room and grew in importance during the late seventeenth century. Access to the king’s bedchamber was restricted to the king’s immediate family, ministers and secretaries of state. Even the Lord Chamberlain was excluded from this inner room by the late seventeenth century. See H. M. Baillie, ‘Etiquette and the Planning of the State Apartments in Baroque Palaces,’ Archaeologia (1967), pp. 169-99.

60 The Journeys of Celia Fiennes, ed. Morris, C. (1947), pp. 8–9 Google Scholar.

61 He was one of the committee responsible for organizing the funeral of James I which included a catafalque designed by Inigo Jones.

62 Aylmer, G. E., The King’s Servants, The Civil Service of Charlesi 1625-1642 (1974), p. 27 Google Scholar.

63 If the Double Cube Room had been at the centre of the long range there would have been space for several rooms before the State Bedroom. The desire to place the chamber at the centre is discussed by Mark Girouard in Life in the English Country House (1978). At Chatsworth, Derbyshire after the Civil War the Great Chamber was at the corner of the front but a mirror was placed on the end wall to create the illusion of the enfilade continuing through a matching apartment.

64 Sir Oliver Millar in a lecture at the National Gallery Symposium ‘Sir Anthony Van Dyck and Wilton House’ (20 May 1989) showed that the family portrait was seen at Durham House in 1650 before it was moved to Baynards Castle, along the Thames. It was apparently not at Wilton in 1654 because it was not mentioned by Evelyn when he visited the house but was there at the time of the visit of Cosimo de’ Medici in 1669. Alan Bush, conservator from IFACS Bristol in his lecture ‘The Restoration of the Pembroke Family Portrait’ considered that it fitted well the space where it hangs now with no evidence of any reduction in size. John Bold suggests that removal to Wilton could have been in mind from the time of its being painted (1635-36).

65 H. M. Baillie, ‘Etiquette and planning…’, (1967).

66 In January 1636 Pembroke furnished two canopies to the Middle Temple for their celebrations for the Prince of Misrule. Baillie, ‘Etiquette and planning…’, p. 171.

67 The rebuilding at Apethorpe was completed in 1625 and is directly comparable to the work at Wilton. The State Apartment was remodelled by Frances Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland (1583-1628) for James I, at his instigation because the house was a favourite retreat for hunting. Westmorland was an exact contemporary of Philip Herbert. The grand scheme for Wilton was intended presumably to surpass this.

68 Durham House 3rd design. Worcester College, Oxford Gotch 1/23. Harris and Tait (1979), pl. 67. Plan redrawn in J. Bold, John Webb, Architectural Theory and Practice in the Seventeenth Century (1989), Figs 2 and 3.

69 The river front at Durham House was to have had twenty-three bays but the extra windows lit small additional lobbies, between the bedroom and its closet, at each end.

70 A large apartment above the State Rooms at Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire, was probably used by the immediate servants of the king. There were good chambers on the top floors of the towers at The Vyne, Hampshire.

71 Both sills are just over 1 m (3 ft 4 in.) above the floor level. The small window is 1.37 m (4 ft 6 in.) high and the taller window 2.49 m (8 ft 2 in.).

72 Ground-floor plan Wilton House Archive, 2051 H3/21 with inventory, Wiltshire Record Office, 2057 H5/1.

73 Murray, E. Croft, Decorative Painting in England, I (1962), p. 207 Google Scholar; and 2 (1970), p. 194.

74 Wilton House Archive, 2057 H1/6 and H3/22.

75 Purcell, Miller and Tritton produced 247 drawings between January 1984 and December 1990. Copies of these drawings are held in their Winchester office.

76 This was the work of John Reeves from the Salisbury Office of RCHME.

77 This work was funded by English Heritage.