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Thomas Archer and the Hurstbourne Park Bee House

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Extract

There are two paintings by the younger John Griffier in the collection of the Earls of Portsmouth. They are views of the house, canal and park at Hurstbourne Priors, Hampshire, taken from opposite points on the same axis. The house, with its elaborate baroque side pavilions and formal garden (Figs 1 and 2) is assumed to have been created after 1712 for John Wallop who was to become 1st Earl of Portsmouth in 1743 after a lifetime of assiduous politicking. The date of 1712 has not been suggested merely on stylistic grounds but because of the existence in the Clarke Collection at Worcester College, Oxford, of a plan inscribed ‘A house designed for Mr. Wallop at Husbourne, Hants, by Mr Archer 1712’.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1987

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References

Notes

1 The paintings are illustrated in John Harris, The Artist and the Country House (1979), plates 200a and 200b. There are copies of the two canvases at Audley End House, Essex.

2 Biographical information on John Wallop from D.N.B.

3 The plan is illustrated in Whiffen, Marcus, Thomas Archer (1950), p. 28 Google Scholar. For the Clarke drawings see Colvin, H. M., Catalogue of Architectural Drawings of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries in the Library of Worcester College, Oxford (1964)Google Scholar.

4 The staircase design is given in Whiffen, Archer, p. 29.

5 Whiffen, Archer, p. 28.

6 Colvin, H. M., A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (1978), p. 69 Google Scholar.

7 Pevsner, N. (gen. ed.), The Buildings of England: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight (1967), p. 301 Google Scholar.

8 Hampshire Record Office, 11/11/28.

9 The Wrest pavilion is illustrated in James Lees-Milne, English Country Houses: Baroque 1685-1715, plate 20. A further garden pavilion at Wrest, the demolished Cain Hill House, has been attributed to Archer; Rocque’s engraving of it is illustrated in Whiffen, Archer, p. 84. Other possible, but as yet undocumented, Archer park buildings are the Cascade House at Chatsworth (see Whiffen, Archer, pp. 35-36 and plate on p. 82) and the Horton Tower, Dorset (see Country Life, 13 April 1978).

10 By Colvin, H. M. in ‘The Architectural History of Marlow and its Neighbourhood’ in Records of Buckinghamshire, vol. XV Google Scholar.

11 Marlow Place is illustrated in Lees-Milne, English Country Houses, pp. 211-12.

12 Monmouth House is illustrated in Whiffen, Archer, frontispiece.

13 Archer’s original design for Harcourt House, altered in execution by Edward Wilcox, is given in Whiffen, Archer, p. 75.

14 Hampshire Record Office, Microfilm 234.