Frampton on Severn, Gloucestershire

Aide memoire

Going through my photographs to pull out some to share, I came across the first digital photograph I took, or at any rate the first I thought at all fit to preserve. As you will see straight away, it’s far from an ideal picture, an ‘over the wall’ job, showing what can be seen of a building on private land from a public road. The building in question is the orangery at Frampton Court, Gloucestershire, and when I took the picture it was to jog my memory to go back on one of the occasions when the grounds of Frampton Court are open and it’s possible to see the this building – and the impressive architecture of the main house – clearly. Years later, I’ve still not made this visit, so the image above remains my only photograph of the orangery. Carpe diem.

Over the wall we see the building from the side, almost end-on but at a slight angle. Viewed from the front, it’s symmetrical and consists of a pair of matching octagons with ogee windows all round, joined in the middle and complemented by a central octagonal turret. In my picture the two matching octagons and turret can be seen, the turret topped by a tiny cupola. Pinnacles and crenellations crown the skyline, ogee-topped windows with glazing in a pattern of hexagons and diamonds dominate the walls. Indeed the walls, made of very high quality ashlar, are minimal, so many and so large are the windows. The stonework is finely detailed, with lovely curvy hoodmoulds. If you click on the picture, it might just be possible to make out tripartite ‘skirts’ beneath the window sills, carved in very shallow relief.

Reference books tell us that this building’s exquisite Gothick* architecture dates from the late 1740s and may be the work of William Halfpenny, who drew heavily on drawings in Gothic Architecture Improved (1747) by Batty Langley.§ This filigree architecture is in marked contrast to the Baroque and Palladian cocktail of the main house. It must make a wonderful garden feature – and is likewise enchanting if tantalizing when viewed, as in my photograph, over the garden wall. A future visit will be something to look forward to…

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* I use the 18th-century faux-archaic spelling for this fanciful 18th-century version of Gothic architecture.

§ Halfpenny was probably based mainly in Richmond, Surrey, or London, but spent some time in Bristol. He was both an architect and the author of numerous architectural pattern books that showed a strong interest in the Gothick style as well as in Chinoiserie. William Halfpenny, Batty Langley: mid-18th century building could be both architecturally and onomastically lively!