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William Talman’s First Country House

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Frances Harris
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Extract

In a former issue of this journal I presented evidence to suggest that in or about 1686 William Talman was concerned in the rebuilding of Holywell House in St Albans for the then John, Lord Churchill, afterwards first Duke of Marlborough. The chief clue was a payment of £500 to Talman entered in Churchill’s account with Child’s Bank, a sum not sufficient for a complete rebuilding even of a small house such as Holywell was, but perhaps representing an advance or intermediate instalment. This one payment, for which the actual purpose was not specified in the account, together with two smaller ones in the following year to craftsmen of the King’s Works and some independent evidence that Holywell was being remodelled at this time, were all the evidence then available for what appeared to be one of Talman’s earliest country house commissions; and as such it has made its appearance in the latest edition of Colvin’s Biographical Dictionary of British Architects.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 40 , 1997 , pp. 110 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1997

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References

Notes

1 Harris, Frances, ‘Holywell House, St Albans: an Early Work by William Taiman?’, Architectural History, 28 (1985), pp. 32–36 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Northamptonshire Record Office, Spencer Estate Papers SOX Box 395. Dr Paul Hopkins identified the contract in the course of cataloguing the papers, and I am indebted to his generosity and that of the County Archivist, Rachel Watson, for bringing it to my attention and for allowing me to publish it.

3 Harris, Frances, ‘Holywell House: a Gothic Villa at St Albans’, British Library Journal, 12 (1986), pp. 176-83Google Scholar.

4 Harris, John, William Taiman: Maverick Architect (London, 1982), p. 26 Google Scholar.