In the shadow of the great house (1)
The village of Lamport in Northamptonshire is dominated by Lamport Hall, a vast country house of various dates, designed principally by John Webb in the 17th century and the Smiths of Warwick in the 18th. Looking away from the hall’s long, sash-windowed facades, I began to notice interesting smaller buildings in the main village street, all of them related in some way to the great house.
This one was built as the rectory in c. 1727–30 for Dr Euseby Isham, who was rector and a member of the Isham family who owned the hall. The architect was Francis Smith of Warwick, principal member of a renowned family of architects and builders who came to prominence (rather like the Bastards of Blandford Forum) when their home town burned down at the end of the 17th century. The Smiths built many buildings in the Midlands, especially with striking distance of the home town.
The rectory was actually the first work that the Smiths did at Lamport – Francis Smith started to extend the hall a couple of years after this house was built – and it displays the typical features of its time and of Smith’s work: limestone quoins, sash windows with limestone eared architraves, a pediment above the door, and so on. Its design is very much of its time, its materials – especially the toffee-coloured lias stone – very much of its place: it is a gem of an early-18th century house.
