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Hawksmoor’s house at Easton Neston
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
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The mansion house at Easton Neston is Nicholas Hawksmoor’s first masterpiece. It was substantially complete in 1702. The first of these two statements is supported by the architect’s own claim; the second is inscribed on the entablature of the east front as well as on rainwater heads. But few documents or drawings have ever been found, and the house reveals only limited evidence of its early history. The name of Sir Christopher Wren also has consistently been linked with it, but the meaning of this connection needs re-examining. It is now possible to trace most of the stages by which a drawing by Wren became a building by Hawksmoor, and to show that the building begun in the early 1680s was not designed by Wren; that possibly Sir William Fermor having rejected Wren’s good advice was offered that of his assistant Hawksmoor and accepted it; that while the author of the service wings is unknown, the body of the house, as Hawksmoor called it, is his alone; that it was built only once and is not a stone cladding of an already completed house. Some further evidence is added of the rôle of the Arundel Marbles in the adornment of the house. Although dates are still extremely hard to find, there seem still to be good reasons for, and none against, the view that the main house was begun in or soon after 1695.
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- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1987
References
Notes
1 Some of the documentary material was summarized in the second (1979) edition of my original monograph on Hawksmoor, p. 274, as Appendix H; however, I have worked over the whole problem again two or three times since then. I am especially indebted for information and fruitful discussions to Robert Taylor and John Heward of the Cambridge office of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME), who in researching for the Commission’s forthcoming volume on Northamptonshire Country Houses have investigated the fabric more thoroughly than has ever been done before. Thanks are also due to Howard Colvin, John Wilton-Ely and John Kenworthy-Browne for their helpful observations on many aspects of the subject; to John Bold who helped me take measurements in an April snowstorm; to Lord Hesketh and the Dowager Lady Hesketh for many kindnesses at Easton Neston; to those who have given permission for documents to be reproduced; finally to the Hon. Editor for his patience.
2 This last suggestion was made by Colvin, H. M., ‘Easton Neston Reconsidered’, Country Life, CXLVIII (1970), 968-71Google Scholar. The Socratic value of this article will appear.
3 For a plan based on ground surveys see RCHME, County of Northampton, IV (1982), 43, fig. 46Google Scholar.
4 For the history of the Marbles, acquired in the early seventeenth century by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, see Haynes, D. E. L., The Arundel Marbles (published by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 1975)Google Scholar.
5 BL MS. Add. 22911, fol. 77.
6 PRO PROB. 11/525, fol. 11. For the Barony of Leominster, or Lempster as contemporaries spelled it, see Complete Peerage.
7 Luttrell, N., Brief Relation of Historical and State Affairs, II (Oxford, 1857), 380 Google Scholar.
8 See n. 2. In subsequent correspondence with Messrs Kenworthy-Browne and Wilton-Ely (who kindly showed me copies of some of it) Colvin modified the details of his argument, and the statements under ‘Hawksmoor’ and ‘Wren’ in his 1978 Biographical Dictionary reflect the changes.
9 Morton, John, The Natural History of Northamptonshire (1712), 493-95Google Scholar.
10 A Catalogue of the Curious Collection of. . . George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. In which is included. . . a Description of Easton Neston (1758), 53-66.
11 Bridges, John, The History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire, 1 (Oxford, 1791), 289 Google Scholar.
12 Bodleian MS Top. Northants. f. 1. Bridges quoted ‘Dr Alderich’ (presumably Henry Aldrich) as saying that through the cramping effect of the earlier wings ‘my Lords wings were dipt’. Further notes are in MS Top. Northants. e. 3.
13 First printed, with some errors, in Tipping, H. A. and Hussey, C., English Homes, IV. II (1928), 124 Google Scholar; wrongly described by Colvin, Dictionary, p. 925, as unpublished. ‘Luthern’ windows are lucarnes or dormers. Sir Roger Pratt noted that ‘Fir timber etc, is best to be bought at London not at the beginning of the year, as about April when it first comes in; nor towards the latter end of it, as about Christmas’ ( Gunther, R. T., The Architecture of Sir Roger Pratt (Oxford, 1928), p. 326)Google Scholar.
14 Evelyn, Diary, 17 June 1679, 5 May 1681.
15 V & A E415-1951. A Hawksmoor drawing for a gateway, identified by the device of crossed Ls, cannot be dated, and no conclusions can be drawn from its presence in what are collectively known as the Wren Drawings at All Souls (I. 17A; Wren Society, v, pl. IX).
16 BL MS Add. 30092. The front case is titled IOHN: GROVE: HIS BOOK: 1713.
17 All Souls II. 83 (Wren Society, XII, pl. XII), in Wren’s own hand. The drawing is in pen and grey wash.
18 Overlays of images provided useful demonstrations of similarities and differences between the various stages of the Easton Neston design, but their value is in suggestion rather than in proof, since there are no measured elevations of house or model to make accurate comparisons.
19 Whinney, M. D., Archaeological Journal, cx (1953), 210 Google Scholar (amplified in personal discussion). The letter was printed in Wren Society, XII, 23 and, with a facsimile, in Sotheby’s sale, 6 July 1953 (298). For Tring see n. 40.
20 Administration 11 May 1687.
21 BL MS Add. 29573, fol. 142.
22 Evelyn, Diary, 19 March 1691
23 National Maritime Museum MS ART/8 (Accession No. MS 62/030). The title-page in Hawksmoor’s early round copperplate hand reads Arcana Mecha in Re Adificattora Nee Non altri Scientiis; in time it extends from c. 1683/85 to 1700.
24 Colvin, ‘Easton Neston Reconsidered’ p. 970, unaccountably refers to half-inch piping and therefore concludes that ‘by 1694 . . . the plumbing was being installed’ in the house.
25 Gunther, op. cit., p. 233.
26 Finch, Pearl, Burley-on-the-Hill, 1 (1901) 110 Google Scholar. Lees-Milne, James, English Country Houses, Baroque (1970), p. 145 Google Scholar, interpreted this reference as to the entrance steps at Easton Neston, which ignores the meaning of the Italian term; in any case the entrance steps are not original. It is perhaps unfortunate rather than significant that in his discussion of house design Roger North made no mention of Easton Neston. His manuscripts on Architecture and Of Building were compiled about 1687–91 and before 1696 respectively ( Colvin, H. M. and Newman, John, ed., Of Building: Roger North’s Writings on Architecture (Oxford, 1981))Google Scholar.
27 Walpole Society, xix (1931), 126. The second Lord Lempster was created Earl of Pomfret or Pontefract in December 1721.
28 Green, David, Blenheim Palace (1951), 309 Google Scholar; now BL MS Add. 61353, fol. 239.
29 The obituary, reputedly by Hawksmoor’s son-in-law, is reprinted in Downes, K., Hawksmoor (1959), pp. 7–8 Google Scholar. For Hawksmoor’s service under Wren see, for example, ibid. p. 245.
30 Measurements of individual bays at basement/ground level. The exact overall dimensions are 120 ft 4¼ in. by 73 ft 8¼in. The plans reproduced here are based on those made for the forthcoming RCHME volume, and are Crown Copyright, reproduced by permission.
31 Corrected by Kenworthy-Browne, John, Connoisseur, CLVII (1964), 73 Google Scholar; the error has nevertheless survived, as errors do.
32 Minet Library, Camberwell, No. 2524.
33 There is only one correct arrangement of the mezzanines in the model, though it is possible to put them in — and photograph them, as in Fig. 21 — in the wrong order.
34 BL MS Harl. 7588, fols 512-17; Harl. 7597, fols 99-100.
35 Hypotheses about which was drawn first are in this case reversible, because we do not know when the two sheets that make up the plan were first joined together; they are not accurately matched now, but this may be either Colepeper’s fault or that of a later repairer. The redrawn versions illustrated here of Colepeper’s plan and elevation are based on full-size copies (including the use of the north elevation to complete the plan), measured from the originals, which are creased, torn and dog-eared through having been bound into a volume too small for them.
36 I would again thank John Wilton-Ely for his notes about alterations to the model. These seem to me mainly to involve the insides of the outer walls, and the infillings suggest repairs rather than changes of design.
37 Pointed out to me by John Heward. One of the major uses of brick within the house seems to be in surfaces to be plaster rendered.
38 In 1984 Mr Colvin very kindly re-examined the originals and expressed his acceptance of this description of what they show.
39 Some parts of the cross-section are inexplicable, and Wren may not have fully worked out the interior.
40 There is no good reason to doubt Wren’s authorship of Winslow. For the dating of Tring to the 1680s see Downes, K., The Architecture of Wren (1982), 103-04Google Scholar, where the plan is reproduced. For the plan of Winslow see Wren Society, XVII, pl. LVIII.
41 K. Downes, Hawksmoor (1969), fig. 10; J. Lees-Milne, op. cit. fig. 13.
42 This raises the question of what Wren meant in his letter of 5 September by ‘greenhouses’; whether indeed the south wing was intended as an orangery (for greenhouses were not yet glasshouses). Bridges saw ‘In a Coridor or room adjoining to the S end of the H . . . 15 Statues & bassi rilievi’ (MS Top. Northants. f. 1, p. 59). But the 1758 Description mentions two greenhouses at the end of a walk, one full of’greens’ and the other of statues (p. 56), and Vertue saw many statues in ‘a large greenhouse under cover’ in the gardens (Walpole Society, xxvi (1938), 104). A mid-eighteenth-century account of the statues (BL MS Add. 6269, fol. 244v) refers to the two doors at the south end of the hall (shown in Fig. 1, no longer extant) as false; there may have been no direct way from the main house to the south wing. See also n. 43.
43 It might be supposed from the plan that the westernmost detached pier of the vaults was aligned on the piers in the rooms under the two ends of the hall, but close examination shows that they are not in line. The upper link to the north wing is through a window adapted to a doorcase and therefore is probably not original; the links shown in the Bridges drawing (Fig. 10) look too low to accommodate entrances above basement level.
44 Letter of 26 February 1970.
45 Two other blocked doors have been found, and are shown on the ground-floor plan, Fig. 1. One is in the room left of the entrance, behind a fireplace which archaeological evidence suggests was in existence by 1702. The second, in the east wall of the main staircase, appears to be of the same date as the house, and indeed occurs in the model. That on the backstairs does not. The chimney-piece behind the backstairs in Colepeper’s plan and the model also occurs in the plan engraved in Vitruvius Britannicus.
46 See above: dimensions in the main text following the reference to n. 17.
47 Perrault, C., Ordonnance des Cinq Espèces de Colonnes (Paris, 1683)Google Scholar. Also in Vignola. Hawksmoor cited the Arch of Titus to Lord Carlisle in 1733 (Walpole Society, XIX (1931), 146), giving Evelyn’s translation of Fréarťs Parallèle as a reference. However, none of his uses of this order is exact; the single row of leaves occurs in a more succulent form inside St Anne, Limehouse and Christ Church, Spitalfields.
48 The plate (by J. Green after Samuel Wale) illustrating the Oxford Almanack for 1757 shows Lady Pomfret in an architectural landscape accompanied by some of the Marbles. A proof before letters is in an extra-illustrated copy of Bridges’s Northants (BL MS Add. 32118).
49 Northants County Record Office 1. L. 5275; communicated by Robert Taylor.
50 Bodleian MS Top. Northants f. 1, p. 59.
51 BL MS Add. 32467, fols 92-94.
52 Ibid, fols 19-64. For the metrological relief see Fernie, Eric, ‘The Greek Metrological Relief in Oxford’, The Antiquaries Journal, LXI (1981), 255-63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
53 Burlington Magazine, XCVII(1955), 139-40. On 15 November 1718 William Kent wrote from Rome to Burrell Massingberd, ‘I am still in my resolution to get out next Spring, and my Lord Lempster has agreed with a very good sculptor to come along with me’ ( Wilson, M. I., William Kent (1984), p. 32)Google Scholar.
54 This could have been at any time after Kent’s return to England in 1719 (see preceding note).
55 The south wing was probably demolished before 1841 since in that year Baker, G., History and Antiquities of the County of Northampton, II, 144-45Google Scholar, refers to both wings as destroyed.
56 Tipping and Hussey, English Homes, fig. 179.
57 See n. 50, and also n. 26. Vertue’s notes (n. 42) include a confirmatory sketch.
58 This ghost is still entertained by Colvin (1970), p. 971.
59 No better suggestions have been offered to make sense of Colepeper’s erratic handwriting.
60 At least it is possible to exclude Wren’s 5 September letter from the middle of the 1690s, since it is addressed on the back to ‘Sir William Farmor’.
61 Hawksmoor to the Dean of Westminster, 18 March 1735 (Downes (1959), p. 260).
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