Own work: The Temple of Bacchus, Stowe

     Of late I've been rather interested in garden structures, such as follies and banqueting houses, and, slightly tangential, to that the influence English garden structures, such as those by Vanbrugh and Kent had on French Neo-classicists such as Claude-Nicholas Ledoux.  I'm particularly drawn to the over-scaled and dramatic architecture of Sir John Vanbrugh.

     Here is my interpretation of a now lost building by Vanbrugh - The Temple of Bacchus that once stood in the gardens at Stowe, in Buckinghamshire.  It was built in 1719 for Viscount Cobham and survived until the 1920s when it was demolished for the school chapel designed by Sir Robert Lorimer.  I accidentally discovered a photographic illustration of the temple in a book in the horticultural library at Aberglasney.  It was my first I encounter with the building and I was very intrigued - it had drama and heft.  A quality of presence and mystery.  It was, I thought, a suitable subject for a painting, but could find very few other illustrations of the temple? and those were of poor quality or too small.  However I wasn't to be deterred, and so here then, based on those meagre resources, is my evocation of a lost part of our architectural history, our patrimony.  Mixed media, 23 x 46 cms.

Dinefwr

     Over to Llandeilo last Monday to meet up with family who were staying there for a couple of days.

     After a tour of the town we walked over to the landscape park at Dinefwr. Quite interesting for the hand of Capability Brown, who was employed here as an adviser, and who could be terribly dull, but here had good bones to work with.

   It was our second visit and it is only in researching post have I come to realise how rich, complex and ancient is the history of this site. There is an Iron Age hill fort where the castle stands and a large Roman fort under the park. With the collapse of the Empire in the West the ancient Kingdom of the Demetae (its civitas was at Carmarthen) re-emerged as Dyfed. The subsequent history is one of repeated dissolution and consolidation, until the emergence of Deheubarth, which was centred on Llandeilo and Dinefwr where eventually the Lords Rhys erected a castle high on the bluff above the river Towy. A small town grew up to the north of the castle augmented by a second community, Newton (Drenewydd) further north still. Both have disappeared, and the Park has swallowed their remains. The castle survives though succeeded by Newton House, aka Plas Dinefwr, built on the site of that second community. And Newton House was our first destination, though because of Covid closed to the public. I'm not that sure we missed much. I wrote about this in my first Dinefwr post, but I will say it again. The National Trust should have employed a leading interior designer to work on the interior. This was their policy in the 1960s & 70s: David Milnaric at Benningbrough; John Fowler at Clandon Park and Sudbury Hall; and David Hicks at Blickling Hall. These designers combined historical knowledge and refined aesthetics. It was a self-confident approach, but like many institutions today confidence is something the Trust lacks. Enough with the rant. Newton House dates from the 1660s and was given a thorough-going High Victorian Gothic face-lift in the 1850s by J R Penson. The result is, perhaps, not entirely satisfactory.

     Our next stop was the castle. The views from the battlements were wonderful. The 12th century round keep, continued in use into the 17th century, a belvedere being added to the top to take advantage of those views.

     Our final stop was Llandyfeisant church - a tiny structure embowered beautifully in trees below the park, dedicated to St.Tyfi. One of the followers of St Teilo, there are a number of confusing traditions around the saint one of which places his martyrdom here. Heavily restored in c. 1879, but rather beautifully and sensitively done. According to 'The Buildings of Wales' the architect was Rev William Wiggin of Hampnett, Glouscetershire, Lord Dynevor's brother-in-law; according to 'Coflein', J Kyrke Pearson (I think they mean Penson) of Oswestry, the guy who worked on Newton House. Roman remains were found here in the late 18th century and it was then asserted that the church stands on the site of a Roman temple. Contemporary historians have suggested it stands on the site of a Roman bath house attached to the fort. Just to the north of the church we found what we wondered was a holy well. Research on the internet didn't get me very far. There was mention of the Dinefwr Well and the Nant-y-Rheibis, but nothing to firmly locate it by the church. Long the estate church of Dinefwr, the late 20th century has not been kind and for a number of years the church was derelict.  It is now being restored.

St Denis, Aswarby

     A brief trip out on the Friday back in November while the the bf was staying, a cold blustery day of intermittent showers.  We had intended to drive up to Lincoln for the day but all sorts of stuff was going viz the sale of the house. How deeply stressful these things really are....

     Anyway we headed a little way north up the A15 to Aswarby in the heart of Lincolnshire and a sort of deflated landscape that is neither fen nor hill-country and empty in feeling. I've been past the place for decades intrigued by the park, which is bounded on its western side by the great curve of the A15, the enigmatic two columns (that actually mark the site of original house, home of the Whichcotes, demolished in the 1950s) standing among the lank grass and the trees, and the church situated picturesquely on the lane into the village.  It was here in his youth that M R James came to stay with a school friend; a long laborious journey one would have thought from Eton. Eventually Aswarby was used, in a vague sort of way, as a location for one of James's more famous ghost stories - 'Lost hearts'. One of those ghost stories that were so evocatively adapted by the BBC in the early 70s and broadcast at Christmas. You can view it here. It was filmed in the county but Aswarby was not used, all the locations being in the north-east of the county eg South Ormsby and Brocklesby. And I suppose Aswarby is a lost sort of place itself, even with the noise of traffic on the main road from the across the wide and level parkland.  The village, which really is small, and quite dispersed, consists of Picturesque Tudor style estate cottages built of the local limestone.

     Architecturally the church is rather good - sophisticated stuff in such a rural location; mainly a mixture of flowing Dec and rectilinear Perp, of good ashlar and a noble tower and spire. There is a splendid Transitional south door - not so sure about the colour of the door though!

      The interior is atmospheric - a fine north arcade - and could be more so, being largely untouched since its nineteenth century restoration by Blore.  There is a large family pew and vault and a full compliment of box pews with unusual undulating ends - think of a child's drawing of a roller coaster.  A good example of what things could look like before the Oxford movement took hold, with everything neat and orderly.  It would be nice to see all that restored and enhanced.  I really didn't like to see the family vault used as a informal prayer space, but lovely to see the clipped yews in the churchyard.

Holy Cross, Burley-on-the-hill

When, thou shall visit, in the Moneth of May

A costly garden, in her best array;

And, view the well-grown trees, the wel-trimm'd Bowers,

The beds of Herbs, the knots of pleasant flowers,

With all fine deckings, and the fine devices,

Perteyning to those earlthy Paradises,

Thou canst not well suppose, one day, or two,

Did finish all, which had beene, there, to doe.

     One of the delights of the British Summer is visiting gardens, especially if it involves afternoon tea.  Last weekend A paid his monthly visit and we headed off into Rutland, to Burley-on-the-Hill and The Old Vicarage, open as part of the National Garden Scheme. The garden is most impressive - a series of garden rooms surround the house at all different levels.  The influence of Lutyens is evident in the formal structure of paths, walls, rills and hedges.  The use of colour was very interesting: blue and purple predominate, there is little white and next to nothing in the way of yellow and red. Interesting too the use of contrasting shapes and colour of foliage, eg very green lavender contrasting with silver blades of iris, and use of wisteria as standards as though they were roses. The cake was very good too.

     The Old Vicarage sits on the edge of the purlieus of Burley House built by 2nd earl of Nottingham in the late 1600s.  It is vast complex of buildings, now divided up into apartments; the cour d'honeur is 500 x 650 ft. and quite beyond my competence as a photographer using a smart phone.

     More within my technical capabilities was the small parish church of the Holy Cross, redundant now but under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.  It stands sequestered in one corner of the complex of house and service buildings.  The churchyard is enclosed with a high wall, and is overlooked by the house giving it an oddly urban feel.  House and church are connected with a Gothic Revival corridor - not a cloister as there are far too few windows for that.  I think it must date from J L Pearson's restoration in the mid nineteenth century.(1869-70, almost twenty years after his restoration of neighbouring Exton church) A pretty thorough job he did of it too; apart from the lean west tower the exterior is completely his. Not that bad of itself but somehow not quite right either. Perhaps it is too polished, too sophisticated work for a country church even one in so grand a setting. I'm tempted to say that even after 150 years after completion it may too soon to make a judgment as to its merit and only after another 150 years of wind, rain and frost can such a judgement be made. 

     Inside however it is more atmospheric.  The arcades are Medieval. The furnishings are by Pearson and rather subdued, except for the High Altar reredos and accompanying east window by Clayton and Bell. Oddly for an estate church there are few monuments of any standing.  There is however Sir Francis Chantrey's superb monument to Lady Charlotte Finch of 1820.  A kneeling figure of chaste white marble of great pathos and sensitivity. Chantrey has breathed life and warmth into Neo-classical froideur.

    Beautiful panoramic views of the Vale Of Catmose on the way to the church.

Two Abbeys II

     A quick trundle down the motorway took us on to Margam Abbey (Cistercian, founded 1147 by Richard, Earl of Gloucester) and a happier scene.  There the abbey's position above the coastal strip helped ensure its survival.  At the Dissolution the conventual buildings were, again, turned into a country house, while the nave passed in parochial use.  And it was to the church we first went. It sits in a small, bosky village above the motorway.  The churchyard is big with plenty of 19th memorials in the Welsh tradition. The exterior of the church dates from the early 19th century, though I suspect some of the features such as the west door are pretty faithful to the original.  The odd pinnacles are evidently not.

     Inside it is big boned; there is a satisfying solidity and strength to the austere Norman architecture. It is very Cistercian in that respect. Atmospheric too with the nave dark and mysterious, the aisles bright with spring sunshine. If there is one, only one, criticism it is the low, heavy ceiling. But that is a minor quibble for the church is filled with good things - in particular the the remarkable collections of funerary monuments in both aisles; Talbots to the North and Mansells to the south with a proper nestling of Jacobean alabaster tombs commemorating four generations of the family.  For me perhaps the most interesting monument is that to Theodore Talbot, based on the tomb of Archbishop Grey in York Minster. It is rather large, possibly over-scaled, but it adds a welcome element of spatial complexity to the Talbot chapel.

     Through the small door in the south aisle and into another world: Margam Park. (I don't think we should really have done that but got back into the car and driven round to the official carpark.) Perhaps an unexpected one at that, for who nowadays associates industrial south Wales with landscaped country parks.  However Margam is not alone, just outside Neath, only a few miles up the M4 from Margam, stands the Gnoll estate.  And like Margam, Gnoll is owned by the local council. Anyway the door opens to where once were the cloisters stood and is now a woodland garden with beautiful specimen trees.  To the left the remains of the east range of the cloisters - a kind of gothic skeleton, all the walls having been removed just leaving the piers and the vaults, and looking like an illustration in an 18th century Gothic novel.  Also surviving is the polygonal chapter house, alas without its vault.  Polygonal chapter houses are a bit of a British speciality; Margam is the only one in Wales, but there are three in Scotland and seventeen in England not counting the Norman circular one at Worcester, where the idea probably originated.  Ahead is the site of the great house built by the Mansells and incorporating parts of the abbatial buildings. 

     However in 1782 the house was demolished and a spectacular orangery constructed (1787) in its place.  It is the longest in Britain, and is the work of Anthony Keck (1726-1797). One part of the original Elizabethan/Jacobean house however was reused as a garden feature.  Oddly it wasn't until the 1830s that a new house, 'Margam Castle', was erected to the designs of Edward Hopper (1776-1856) further up the hill and linked to the church and orangery by a majestic staircase, a thoroughly Baroque concept that wouldn't be out of place in Sixtine Rome.  A nineteenth century equivalent, if you will, to the great cascade at Chatsworth.  The house has the most wilful detailing and is a sort of compendium of early Tudor houses such as Hengrave Hall in Suffolk and Melbury in Dorset.  Eccentric, ostentatious and oddly endearing. The family lived there until 1942.