No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Until recently relatively little was known of the secular seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Woburn Abbey. The surviving small north range with its famous grotto has sometimes been discussed, but generally in connexion with the grotto designer Isaac de Caus, and with no reference to Nicholas Stone, the King’s Master Mason and an architect, who worked with De Caus on several other occasions. Woburn’s monastic architectural origins have been all but ignored. The known architectural history has been largely confined to Henry Flitcroft’s rebuilding in the mid-eighteenth century, and to the work carried out subsequently by William Chambers, and Henry Holland. These eighteenth-century works began the erosion of the monastic fabric which remained after the seventeenth-century conversion, a slow process which culminated in the demolition of Flitcroft’s east range in the early 1950s, then thought to be irretrievably infected with dry rot. It is now known that with this demolition the remaining major vestiges of the subsumed former abbey buildings were unfortunately lost.
1 For example, Harris, John and Higgott, Gordon, Inigo Jones: Complete Architectural Drawings (London, 1989), pp. 300-01Google Scholar. See also Colvin, Howard, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (New Haven and London, 1995), pp. 929-31Google Scholar.
2 Pevsner, Nikolaus, in The Buildings of England: Bedfordshire Huntingdon and Peterborough (London, 1997), p. 166 Google Scholar, states that the ‘cloister was probably where the courtyard between the three wings now is; but more is not known’. Fergusson, Peter, in Architecture of Solitude: Cistercian Abbeys in Twelfth-Century England, (Princeton, 1984), pp. 154–55 Google Scholar, states that ‘no documents on the history of building [Woburn Abbey] have come to light … In 1627 Inigo Jones’s new mansion for the fourth earl was built over the site of the church, incorporating some parts of the abbey, probably the claustral buildings in the foundations’. The Cistercian Abbeys of Britain, ed. Robinson, David (London, 1998), p. 205 Google Scholar, states only that ‘Nothing survives of the abbey [but] it has been suggested that the quadrangle around which extends the present largely eighteenth-century house could perpetuate the cloister …’.
3 Between 1748-59 Henry Flitcroft rebuilt the west wing, and added piecemeal to the other ranges for the fourth Duke of Bedford. In 1768 William Chambers carried out more changes to the south wing, to which Henry Holland also made further changes in 1786. See Woolfe, John, Vitruvius Britanniens, IV (London, 1767), pls 21–25 Google Scholar, for the Flitcroft rebuilding; and Howard Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, p. 504, for an account of Holland’s work at Woburn Abbey. See also Stroud, Dorothy, ‘The Growth of Woburn Abbey’, Apollo, LXXXII, 46 (December 1965), pp. 442-47Google Scholar; and Draper, Marie P. G., ‘The Houses of the Russell Family’, Apollo, CXXVII, 316 (June 1988), pp. 387-92Google Scholar.
4 See Coldstream, Nicola, ‘The Cistercians as Builders’, in The Cistercian Abbeys of Britain, ed. Robinson, David (London, 1998), pp. 35–61 Google Scholar.
5 It is not known if Bryan resided at Woburn after acquiring it. George Bassett, who was resident in Bryan’s household, wrote to his mother and stepfather from Woburn in July 1539. As noted, however, ‘Bryan had grants of land at Woburn, which may mean Woburn, Woburn Green, or Woburn Sands’; Lisle Letters, ed. Byrne, M. St Clare, 6 vols (Chicago and London, 1981), III, no. 549, p. 103 Google Scholar, n. 2. By 1560 the tenant Smythe had left the abbey; see Thomson, Gladys Scott, ‘Woburn Abbey and the Dissolution of the Monasteries’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Series 4,16 (1933), pp. 129-60CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 146-49).
6 The Countess of Bedford, wife of the second earl, died at Woburn c. 1561-62; Gilson, J. P., Lives of Lady Anne Clifford and Her Parents (London, 1916), p. 3 Google Scholar, 47. Anne Clifford was a granddaughter of the second earl and countess.
7 Parry, J. D., History and Description of Woburn and its Abbey (London, 1831), pp. 12–13 Google Scholar.
8 See Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy (Oxford, 1965), pp. 483-84Google Scholar.
9 See Bedford and Luton Archives and Record Services (hereafter BLARS) Russell Papers, General Evidences, Vol. 1, for a listing of the various actions. See also Duggan, Dianne, ‘The Architectural Patronage of the 4th Earl of Bedford, 1587-1641’, 2 vols (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London, 2002), i, Chapter 1 Google Scholar, ‘Introduction: Taking Control’.
10 There is plenty of evidence that Francis Russell and his family were in residence at Woburn Abbey from 1621 at the latest. Gladys Scott Thomson mistakenly assumed that they had borrowed Woburn from Russell’s cousin, the third earl, when they were actually returning home to Woburn in 1625 from Corney House (their residence at Chiswick); Thomson, Gladys Scott, Life in a Noble Household (London, 1937), p. 13 Google Scholar. See, for example, Woburn Abbey Archives (hereafter WAA), 4E, Wills, no. 29, dated 21 June 1621, where the future fourth earl bequeathed his moveable goods at ‘my house called Woburne’ to his son, William. Frances, Lady Chandos, widowed mother-in-law of Russell died at Woburn in September 1623, and was interred in the Bedford Chapel at Chenies; see Bedford, Adeline Marie, Duchess of, Chenies Church and Monuments (London, 1901), p. 56 Google Scholar. See also n. 13.
11 Francis also owned Thornhaugh, his main boyhood home, which was a modest but fine castellated manor house not far from Peterborough, and close to the lands that were part of the estates of the cadet line of the Russells of Thornhaugh and Thorney. For Thornhaugh, see WAA, Gladys Scott Thomson, ‘Thorney 1539-1700’, an unpublished paper read to the Cambridge Archaeological Society, October 1943. For Nyn Hall, see Smith, J. T., Hertfordshire Houses, RCHME (London, 1993), pp. 134-35Google Scholar.
12 Hertford Record Office, Binyon MS, D/P73/29/4, pp. 13, 21. There is some confusion concerning the year Russell first sold land to King James; Binyon states it was ‘15 James 1618’, although the regnal year 15 was actually 1617. Victoria County History of Hertfordshire, ed. Page, William, 4 vols (London, 1912), 2, p. 358 Google Scholar.
13 WAA, 4E Accounts, 1625, 2861. The dating of the main conversion is discussed below.
14 WAA, 4D Flitcroft Letters (n.d.).
15 See Draper, ‘Houses’, pp. 390-01, and see n. 26. The Sanderson drawings are mounted in a bound volume with the bookplate of John, sixth Duke of Bedford; WAA (HMC 151), Saunderson’s [sic] Designs for Woburn Abbey.
16 Two of these are included in HMC 151 — fols 13 (Fig. 1 here) and 42 (Fig. 6 here, and incorrectly included in the volume of drawings from 1733, discussed below). See also Draper, ‘Houses’, p. 391.
17 HMC 151, fol. 13 [n.d.]. A c.1730S date can be confirmed for Fig. 1, firstly by comparison with ‘A Plan Of the Manor And Parceli Of Woburn In The County Of Bedford … Surveyed and Delineated by Thomas Browne Anno Dom: 1738’ (on display in the undercroft at Woburn Abbey); both ground plans show the ancillary buildings in the area of the south-east inner angle that were later removed when minor building alterations were carried out c. early 1740s. Furthermore, a painting at Woburn of the ‘Steward of Woburn’ [Joseph Willoughby], 1728, attributed to Isaac Whood, depicts the north-west outer angle of the abbey buildings in the background. This clearly shows, as do Figs 1 and 4, a doorway on the north-west pavilion which was apparently changed to a window in the early 1740s, as shown on Fig. 3, the ground plan from c. 1747.
18 The difference in the refectory position at Woburn is explained below. Not all ancillary buildings, such as a reredorter, for example, were located in exactly the same position in different monasteries; see below.
19 The few exceptions where the abbey church stood to the south include Forde (Dorset), Stanley (Wiltshire), and Tintern (Monmouthshire) Abbeys; see Robinson, Cistercian Abbeys, pp. 109-10, 173-75, 186-91. I am indebted to Stuart Harrison who examined copies of the Woburn ground plans, and greatly assisted with identification of the former abbey layout. All references to Stuart Harrison’s comments refer to correspondence with this author.
20 Bay 2 of the west façade also appears to show former monastic fenestration on the first floor which would indicate survival of the abbey fabric in this area; see the discussion below.
21 Scott Thomson refers to a fire at Woburn in 1639, and this may have affected the soundness of the church fabric. Unfortunately she does not state where she found this information; Scott Thomson, ‘Woburn Abbey and the Dissolution’, pp. 158-59. See also Howard, Maurice, The Early Tudor Country House Architecture and Politics 1490-1550 (London, 1987), p. 139 Google Scholar,143; Airs, Malcolm, The Tudor and Jacobean Country House A Building History (London, 1995), p. 27 Google Scholar; and Colvin, Howard, ‘Recycling the Monasteries’, Essays in English Architectural History (New Haven and London, 1999), pp. 52–66 Google Scholar.
22 Harrison states that the buttresses could be the plan of an open arcade with later inserted blockings, like the reredorters at Byland; see also Robinson, Cistercian Abbeys of Britain, p. 82. The regular bay spacing and the south-east corner buttress indicated on the secular east range (e), suggest that it had not been truncated.
23 Stuart Harrison made this observation.
24 The limited eating of flesh was introduced following an edict of Benedict XII in 1335, but its consumption had to be separate from the area where the monks ate their ‘normal’ diet; see Fergusson, P., ‘The Twelfth-Century Refectories at Rievaulx and Byland Abbeys’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles, ed. Norton, Christopher and Park, David (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 160-80Google Scholar (p. 160). The small building at the far centre south is probably the former meat kitchen.
25 This might also be indicated by the gap between the west range and kitchen, occupied on the plan by the main staircase (t) to the first floor at Woburn. Byland Abbey in Yorkshire also had a multi-niched lane along the western perimeter of its cloister, and much of its eastern wall survives in the abbey ruins (see Fig. 2b). A superb aerial view of Byland, p. 46 in Robinson, Cistercian Abbeys of Britain, clearly shows this feature.
26 Marie Draper makes the observation, however, that Flitcroft’s Woburn owes much to Stratton Park, which was partially rebuilt c. 1731 for Lord John Russell (the future fourth duke), and for which design John Sanderson has been attributed. Sanderson also made various other designs for the interior, garden and outbuildings at Woburn in the early 1640s; see Draper, ‘Houses’, p. 391, and Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, p. 846.
27 Draper, ‘Houses’, p. 391.
28 These rooms are listed in WAA, 5E (lD) Inventory, 1700.
29 Toynbee, P. (ed.), The Letters of Horace Walpole (Oxford, 1903), p. 69 Google Scholar. The 1700 inventory of Woburn Abbey lists ‘One hundred and three pictures of the family & others and a Billiard Table’ in the Long Gallery; 5E Inventory.
30 Toynbee, P. (ed.), ‘Horace Walpole’s Journals of Visits to Country Seats & C’, Walpole Society, XVI (Oxford, 1928), p. 17 Google Scholar. Draper, in ‘Houses of the Russell Family’, pp. 391-402, wrote that in 1752 Flitcroft offered the duke two designs for the west central entrance; in 1762 he had to write to the duke concerning the unpaid bills for finishing the Grand Apartments in the west range in the years 1755-58.
31 Defoe, Daniel, Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, 4 vols (London, 1769), 3, pp. 52–53 Google Scholar. Rogers, Pat, in The Text of Great Britain: Theme and Design in Defoe’s Tour (Delaware, 1998), p. 97 Google Scholar, sets the date of Defoe’s visit to Woburn Abbey as the summer of 1724 because of Defoe’s allusion to an extensive fire that year in Woburn village. Defoe, however, mentions the Woburn village fire ‘which happened some years ago’; see Defoe, Tour, p. 52.
32 Stuart Harrison makes the observation that because the remaining transept structure seems to have been only two bays deep, this would tend towards the view that the church was quite modest with an aisleless presbytery.
33 See n. 17.
34 John Sanderson, ‘Elevation of the South Side’, is, as fol. 42, incorrectly included in the (HMC 151) volume of Sanderson’s 1733 drawings being a view of Flitcroft’s later proposed work on the seventeenth-century Woburn, and not previously recognized as such.
35 BLARS, Russell Papers, Box 356, ‘House repairs’ bundle. Dates on the plumber’s bill are more detailed than the glazier’s, enabling the work on the porch to be placed some time between 28 May and 30 July 1658.
36 See Robinson, Cistercian Abbeys, p. 60, and Fergusson, Peter and Harrison, Stuart, Rievaulx Abbey: Community, Architecture, Memory (New Haven and London, 1999), p. 58 Google Scholar.
37 Annabel Ricketts, in her extensive research on country house chapels, has found no surviving examples of such differentiated windows in the Elizabethan period.
38 See Fig. 2b, the basic ground plan of Byland Abbey, for an example of similarly adjacent doorways.
39 A 1930s perspective view drawn by Randolph Schwabe, obviously based on Sanderson’s north and west elevations, but with the artist’s own idea for an earlier porch, shows a somewhat ameliorated impression of the rather stark appearance of the earlier record drawing; see Scott Thomson, Noble Household, illustration facing p. 150. Schwabe’s view also suggests an interesting interpretation of the possible appearance of the garden, obviously based on Jonas Moore’s 1661 bird’s-eye survey of Woburn; see WAA, Jonas Moore, Survey Woburn Abbey, 1661, and Fig. 7 here.
40 See Summerson, John, Architecture in Britain 1530-1830 (New Haven and London 1993), pp. 142-44Google Scholar.
41 Charles I and Henrietta Maria visited Woburn Abbey for two nights in July 1636. This is mentioned in a letter written at Bagshot, 15 July, by Rodolphe Weckherling (a member of the King’s Household); this letter is now in the Earl of Denbigh’s papers, which were reported on by the RHMC; see WAA, GST, Notes and Transcripts, 5E/1D, Miscellanea from the accounts, 27. By the time of Charles’ second visit in 1645, Henrietta Maria had taken refuge in France following the birth of her youngest child at Bedford House in Exeter, put at her disposal by the fifth earl. In 1647 Charles stayed at Woburn more than a week, being a prisoner of the parliamentary army whose headquarters were at Bedford; see Blakiston, Georgiana, Woburn and the Russells (London, 1988), pp. 64–65 Google Scholar.
42 WAA, 4D [Box] 28/17/5, Rebuilding Interior Topography B.16c; ‘Carpenters Work done at Wooburn Abbey John Phillips’. A ‘trimmer’ is a short beam framed across an opening (such as a hearth) to support the ends of timbers which cannot be extended across the opening. This suggests that the fireplace was new, and therefore was very likely to have been part of the truncation process of the gallery which is discussed below.
43 That the Stone Gallery was an enclosed area is confirmed by glaziers’ bills from the seventeenth century; BLARS Russell Papers, Box 356, House Repairs bundle.
44 Oliver Millar wrote in 1965 that the fourth earl ‘seriously set about commissioning portraits of his own family’ after his succession, including ‘full lengths … presumably … to hang in the picture gallery which he had constructed at Woburn’; Millar, Oliver, ‘The Early Portraits of the Russells’, Apollo, LXXXII, 46 (December 1965), pp. 462-71Google Scholar (p. 468).
45 Gladys Scott Thomson came across some accounts from the time of the fourth duke which she believed indicated that a large room had been divided into two, for ‘we have the bills for the making of the doorways and their ornamentation, and for putting in the new fireplaces’; see WAA, GST, ‘The House’, West Front, V A1, pp. 6-7. Unfortunately, Miss Scott Thomson did not reference these particular accounts, and despite a search they have not been found.
46 The footprint of Flitcroft’s addition to the south range is shown on pl. 21, ‘Woburn Abbey’, Woolfe, Vitruvius Britanniens; see n. 3.
47 See Duggan, Dianne, ‘The Fourth Side of the Covent Garden Piazza New Light on the History and Significance of Bedford House’, The British Art Journal, iii, 3 (2002), pp. 53–65 Google Scholar.
48 For the Vitruvius Britanniens plan see n. 3; WAA, 4D, Rebuilding Accounts 28/17/6, Bi4d, B17, and B18.
49 WAA, 4D-A2-10-5 8 [for example] March 5 1768 ‘Benjn Willis Carpenter,… pulling down part of the South Front of Woburn’; 4D-A2-10-4, 29 August 1768-14 December 1770, ‘South Range, Masons work Martha Bayliss Old Building’.
50 An aerial view of Woburn Abbey taken from the west before the post-war demolitions clearly shows the raised ground level on the southern range; see Stroud, Dorothy, ‘The Growth of Woburn Abbey’, Apollo, LXXXII, 46 (December 1965), pp. 442-47Google Scholar (p. 442).
51 Gladys Scott Thomson’s statement that Russell’s architect (who she believed had been Inigo Jones) completely razed the old abbey in the early 1630s is incorrect; Scott Thomson, Noble Household, p. 49.
52 WAA, II, E2.
53 Harris, and Higgott, , Inigo Jones: Complete Architectural Drawings, 15 ‘Queen’s House’, pp. 70–71 Google Scholar, and 87; ‘seven-window house’, pp. 260-01.
54 The slender, iron posts on the south-west pergola (Fig. 4) are discernible, albeit faintly, on the original drawing. See Harris, and Higgott, , Complete Architectural Drawings, 34, pp. 112-13Google Scholar, and 94, pp. 274-75, for examples of Jones’s use of balusters.
55 I am grateful to Sir Howard Colvin who drew my attention to both this point and the similarity of the fenestration.
56 See Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, pp. 226-27 for Carter, and pp. 396-98 for Gerbier; and Harris, John, ‘Classicism Without Jones’, Country Life, CLXXXIV (4 October 1990), pp. 152-55Google Scholar. See also Duggan, ‘Architectural Patronage’, Chapters 3 and 5.
57 See Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, pp. 298-99, and Duggan, ‘Architectural Patronage’, Chapters 3,4, and 5 for Isaac de Caus; Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, pp. 929-31, and Duggan, ‘Architectural Patronage’, Chapter 3, for Nicholas Stone. See also Dianne Duggan, ‘Isaac de Caus, Nicholas Stone, and the Woburn Abbey Grotto’, Apollo (2003).
58 Stoakes entered a list of Stone’s further important architectural works; ‘The Note-Book and Account Book of Nicholas Stone’, ed. Spiers, W. L., Walpole Society, VII (1918-19), pp. 136-38Google Scholar, and see also pp. 9-12. White, Adam, in ‘A Biographical Dictionary of London Tomb Sculptors’, Walpole Society, LXI (1999), pp. 123-25Google Scholar, mentions other known omissions. For other suggestions concerning further possible works of Stone see Newman, John, ‘Copthall’, in The Country Seat, ed. Colvin, H. and Harris, J. (London, 1970), pp. 18–29 Google Scholar (P. 26); Newman, John, ‘Nicholas Stone’s Goldsmith’s Hall: Design and Practice in the 1630s’, Architectural History, 14 (1971), PP. 30–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Colvin, Biographical Dictionary, p. 931, where Balls Park, Herts., is discussed as possibly Stone’s work; Strong, Roy, The Artist and the Garden (New Haven and London, 2000), p. 55 Google Scholar. Whirmey, Margaret in Sculpture in Britain 1430-1830 (London, 1988), p. 70 Google Scholar, also remarks that Stone’s Note-book, ‘compiled late in life, is not very explicit’.
59 See Spiers, ‘Nicholas Stone’, pls XXXII (a) and XXVIII (b).
60 This elevation is illustrated in Newman, ‘Copthall’, p. 18.
61 White, ‘Biographical Dictionary’, p. 125.
62 Harris and Higgott, Complete Architectural Drawings, p. 300.
63 Sebastiano Serlio’s Tutte l’opere d’architettura et prospettiva was translated into English by Robert Peake in 1611 (see below), although this was a corrupted version taken from a Dutch translation, and contained only the first five books. Books I-V and VII had been published separately beforehand, Book VII by Jacopo Strada in Frankfurt in 1575. By the early seventeenth century the various parts had been translated into seven languages, and long before it was published in English Serlio’s treatise had become part of British architectural thought.
64 WAA, Francis Russell’s Commonplace Book, HMC 11/ (vol.)i/(fol.) 868; Homes … Buildings. The Serlian comment to which Bedford referred was ‘Among all the ancient building[s] to be seene in Rome, I am of the opinion, that the Pantheon … is the fairest, wholest, and best to be understood [and] For that the Pantheon seemeth unto me to be the perfectest peece of worke that ever I saw, therefore I thought it good to see it first in the beginning of this Booke, and for a principall head of all other peeces of work’; Serly, Sebastian, The first Booke of Architecture (published by Robert Peake, London, 1611)Google Scholar, The Third Booke The fourth Chapter, fol. 1.
65 See Spiers, ‘Nicholas Stone’, pl. XXIX (d) for the Cornbury Park fireplace, and Hart and Hicks, Serlio, iv, XXXIr (157r).
66 See Duggan, ‘Woburn Abbey Grotto’, Apollo (2003).
67 See ‘The Parish of St Paul, Covent Garden’, ed. Sheppard, F. H. W., Survey of London, XXXVI (London, 1970), p. 28nGoogle Scholar. The monuments were for Sir Charles Morrison, Bt, with his wife, and for Sir George Villiers, with his wife, Mary Countess of Buckingham; see White, ‘Biographical Dictionary’, p. 121. See also The History of the King’s Works, ed. Colvin, Howard, 6 vols, 1485-1600 (pt 1), iii (London, 1975), pp. 132-33Google Scholar, 330, and (pt 2), iv (1982), pp. 49, 266.
68 Bedford was intimately connected with and related to the Morrison family at Watford, for whom Stone made two important monuments in the 1620s. The mason was a tenant of Bedford in the Covent Garden area and, around 1628, was a co-signatory to a certificate concerning the worth of a garden statue commissioned by the earl for his Bedford House garden; see Alnwick MSS Syon Y III 2, Box 4 Envelope 10, ‘A Rentall of covent garden & ffriars Pyes pcell of the possessions of the Right honourable ffrancis Earle of Bedford …’, and London Metropolitan Archives, E/BER/CG, Survey 1635, North Side, p. 2, and WAA, 4E, 20. Moreover, not long after he returned to England in 1613, Stone had been commissioned by Lady Anne Clifford to make an elegant monument for her and Bedford’s (then Lord Francis Russell) cousin, Lady Frances Bourchier; Lady Anne and Bedford were extremely close, and it is known that she personally took him to see Stone’s work in the Bedford Chapel at Chenies Manor in 1616; see Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery 1590-1671, ed. Williamson, George C. (Kendal, 1922), p. 154 Google Scholar.
69 See Duggan, Dianne, ‘“London the Ring, Covent Garden the Jewell of that Ring”: New Light on Covent Garden’, Architectural History, 43 (2000), pp. 140-61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Duggan, ‘The Fourth Side of the Covent Garden Piazza’, pp. 53-65. There is also a strong suggestion that Francis Russell had been making preliminary plans to develop the Covent Garden pasture from as early as 1626; see Duggan, ‘Architectural Patronage’, Chapter 5, ‘Covent Garden’, n. 5.
70 Wells, Samuel, History of the Drainage of the Great Level of the Fens, 2 vols (London, 1830), 1, pp. 97, 107-08Google Scholar.
71 WAA, HMC 11/II/3783, ‘Buildings’.
72 Alnwick Castle, MSS Syon III 3a B3. It is tempting to speculate that the square ‘Paveing stone’ is that depicted in front of the abbey in Fig. 7.