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Lord Stawell’s Great House in Somerset
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
Under ‘Hazlegrove House’, Pevsner’s South and West Somerset (1958) draws attention to ‘the gateway from Sparkford’, which, ‘with its segmental arch, its broad pilasters and rudimentary Ionic capitals . . . is evidently earlier [than the Georgian house] . . . c. 1690’. As he goes on to explain, it was brought in 1872 from Low Ham, where the second Lord Stawell had begun to build what, according to John Macky’s Journey through England of 1737, was destined to be ‘the biggest and most regular house in the County of Somerset’.
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References
Notes
1 Pevsner, N., The Buildings of England: South and West Somerset (Harmondsworth, 1958), p. 193 Google Scholar; Macky, John, A Journey through England (London, 1732 edn), 11, p. 150 Google Scholar.
2 Lankester, R. P. A., History of Hazlegrove House (Sparkford, 1958), pp. 28, 31Google Scholar.
3 The scrolled consoles on either side also appear to have been added in 1872, since they resemble those on the eighteenth-century ‘Dog Gate’ at Hazlegrove House.
4 For most of these examples I am indebted to Dr Rosalys Coope.
5 The church (or, strictly speaking, chapel, since it did not enjoy parochial status) was evidently built in the 1620S, for a deed of endowment dated 10 June 1622 is noted in Proc. Somerset Archaeological Soc., XL (1894), p. 33. See Pevsner, op. cit., pp. 223-24. In his will dated 10 November 1623 (PRO, PROB 11/143, fol. 38) Sir Edward Hext directed that his body was to be buried ‘in the North Isle of the Chapple of Netherham under a Tombe which I have caused to be made there’. The building is said to have been damaged in the Civil War, restored by Hext’s grandson George Stawell (d. 1669) and consecrated in 1669. (Cf. Collinson, J., History of Somersetshire, III (1791), p. 445nGoogle Scholar.)
6 Collinson, torn, cit., pp. 445-46.
7 Somerset Archive and Record Office, DD/SAS c/212.
8 As described by Samuel Lysons (d. 1819) in his notes on Somerset (BL, Add. MS 9459), cited by Stawell, G. D., A Quantock Family (Taunton, 1910), p. 121 Google Scholar.
9 In a study of the earthworks at Low Ham in Somerset Archaeology and Natural Society, 122 (1977-78), M. A. Aston identified the site of the Hext house with some irregular foundations seen on aerial photographs near the top of the terraces, but in Low Ham, Somerset, an archaeological survey by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (1996), R. Wilson-North considers that they are too slight and irregular to represent the remains of a destroyed great house, though he nevertheless favours a so far unidentified hill-top site for it.
10 Collinson, torn, cit., p. 445. The map is scaled in chains (66 feet), and the site of the house measures approximately 3 × 1½ chains, that is about 200 × 100 feet. According to Wilson-North (as in n. 9) the ‘accumulated evidence’ of maps and field-work would indicate that the house was ‘some 27m. wide and probably around 70m. long.’
11 St John’s College Biographical Register 1660-1775, compiled by Valerie Sillery, privately printed 1990, p. 116.
12 Ibid.
13 Somerset Record Office, DD/CM 53, account-book of Lord Stawell’s steward, 1682-91, p. 111. In June 1690 Lord Stawell was reported to be ‘going beyond the sea’, and consequently unable to serve as Custos Rotulorum of Somserset (Historical Manuscripts Commission, Finch, 11, p. 303).
14 St John’s College Biographical Register, as above, pp. 17-18.
15 Printed in G. D. Stawell, op. cit (n. 8 above), pp. 424-25.
16 Low Ham, Somerset (n. 9 above), pp. 9-13 and fig. 9.
17 Colvin, H. M. et al., History of the King’s Works, V (London, 1976), p. 329 Google Scholar.
18 For whom see Harris, John, The Artist and the Country House (London, 1979), p. 96 Google Scholar.
19 Thirsk, Joan (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, v(ii) (Cambridge, 1985), p. 556 Google Scholar.
20 I am grateful to Dr Jon Whiteley of the Department of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum for his comments on this drawing.
21 For this drawing see Evans, Elspeth A., ‘A Rousseau Design in England’, Country Life, 23 June 1966 Google Scholar.
22 Croft-Murray, Edward, Decorative Painting in England 1537-1837, 1 (London, 1962), p. 258 Google Scholar; Murdoch, Tessa (ed.), Boughton House (London, 1992), pp. 57–58 Google Scholar.
23 ‘Vertue Notebooks’, Walpole Society (1931-32), 11, pp. 21, 85.
24 Colvin, H., A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, 3rd edn (New Haven and London, 1995), pp. 365, 1068Google Scholar.
25 Idem., Calke Abbey, Derbyshire (London, 1985), p. 101.
26 Gomme, Andor, ‘Architects and Craftsmen at Ditchley’, Architectural History, 32 (1989), p. 91 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Luttrell, Narcissus, Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, II (Oxford, 1857), p. 629 Google Scholar.
28 See the printed Case upon the Bill for Payment of the Debts of John Lord Stawell lately deceased, 1694 (Gloucestershire Record Office, Dutton papers, no. 822) and House of Lords Papers, New Series i (1900), pp. 345-48 (no. 801).
29 Journals of the House of Lords, xv, pp. 200-417, passim.
30 Lankester, op. cit., p. 26; Collinson, tom. cit., p. 446.
31 Ibid., pp. 445-46.
32 London Gazette, 31 July-3 August 1693, no. 2893.
33 Macky, op. cit.
34 Collinson, loc. cit.
35 Somerset Record Office, DD/MKG 22.
36 Ibid., DD/MKG, box 4, illustrated by R. Wilson-North on p. 2 of the publication referred to in n. 9 above.
37 Wilson-North, op. cit., p. 9 and fig. 7. ‘Bare walls and mounds of rubbish, covering a considerable extent of ground’ were still visible in 1861, but had been utilized to build farm-buildings by 1905 (Stawell, op. cit. (n. 8 above), pp. 471-72).