Oxford

Back again

More than five and a half years ago (sometimes I find it hard to believe I have been blogging for so long) I wrote a post about this building in Oxford, and accompanied my thoughts with a rather lacklustre photograph, the best I could muster at the time. Aware that my photograph did not do the building justice, every time I've been in central Oxford since then I've had a look to see if the facade could be viewed with sunlight on its stone and without cars parked in front. As you can see, I have almost managed it – just the rear end of one car prevented me from getting the whole facade in the frame, and even with this intrusion, the result seemed closer to the mark.

So here it is: Vanbrugh House, a building of the early-18th century by an unknown designer that has more than a hint of the eponymous architect (or his brilliant assistant Hawksmoor) about it: those very plain window surrounds, with just the keystones emphasized on the upper floors and aprons in the middle floor; the exaggerated cornice and canopy; the pair of giant pilasters rising all the way up the building; the narrow space between the pilasters; the very plain doorway. The pilasters are especially odd: they seem to have been parked in front of the rest of the frontage, filling the gaps between the evenly spaced windows like an abandoned piece of stage scenery. The decoration towards the tops of the pilasters, beneath the protruding canopy, is also rather like scenery – a couple of those three-banded triglyphs to provide the idea of an entablature, but not the thing itself.

Like all scenery, it needs good lights. On a dark day, it can look brooding and oppressive. But with some sunshine it comes to life – although there's no getting away from the sheer weight of all that stone. Whoever designed it, he deserves Abel Evans's epitaph for Vanbrugh himself: 'Lie heavy on him, Earth! For he Laid many heavy loads on thee!'

Maze Hill, London

For my next trick…

The versatile Vanbrugh. Son of a tradesman and grandson of a refugee Flemish merchant, John Vanbrugh began his career as a soldier, won a commission in Lord Huntingdon’s regiment, and was imprisoned in the Bastille as a spy. Back home in London, he cut a flamboyant figure in society and became a playwright, popular for his Restoration comedies of the 1690s (The Relapse, The Provok’d Wife). Then in the early years of the 18th century he began to practise an architect, starting (starting!) with Castle Howard, the enormous house of the Earl of Carlisle, and continuing with equally grand so-called baroque piles such as Blenheim Palace and Seaton Delaval.

When the time came to build his own house, what did Vanbrugh produce? Another baroque mansion? Not quite. Thirty years before people like Horace Walpole began to put up medieval revival buildings, Vanbrugh designed himself a castle – albeit a rather un-medieval one, built of brick and with modern luxury within. Amazingly, it has survived, on top of Maze Hill in Greenwich, southeast London. The original building is to the left, a tall structure with central stair tower and square flanking towers. There are tall narrow windows too, not quite narrow enough to look like genuine medieval arrow-slits, but near enough to give one the idea.

When the architect married, he extended the house adding a wing to the right – the current right-hand wing is partly this extension, partly a further, post-Vanbrugh addition. The result of Vanbrugh’s extension (still in brick, still vaguely castle-like) was an asymmetrical building, something very unusual for a grand house of the early-18th century and seeming to anticipate the Picturesque movement that got going much later, in the 1780s. That’s just one more surprise from a man whose life that was never entirely predictable, who was never afraid to shock. People probably laughed, but the laugh was on them.

Horton, Dorset

Inspired by Vanbrugh?

Readers of my previous post may be interested to see a picture of the church at Horton that I mentioned there. It’s a very unusual building, with a curious L-shaped plan and a striking tower topped with a stone spire like an elongated truncated pyramid. This spire and the tower’s cornice are similar to details appearing on plans made by Sir John Vanbrugh, famous as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard, for Eastbury Manor at Tarrant Gunville. It’s not known who designed the church. There is a chance it could have been Vanbrugh himself, but it is more likely that it was designed under his influence, perhaps by John Chapman, the mason who is recorded in the churchwarden’s accounts as having rebuilt the tower and other parts of the building in the 1720s.

Whoever it was produced a strong design, in which the tower’s exaggerated cornice, the chunky window surrounds, and other details catch the light memorably, and in which the spire gives the place a special character. When Vanbrugh wrote a memorandum on church-building for the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches in London in the 1712, he expressed his wish that the new churches should be ‘monuments to posterity…ornaments to the Town, and a credit to the Nation.’ The imposing quality of the tower and spire at Horton embodies this wish for monumental churches – but this time in a rural setting. The result is as characterful a country church as you could wish for. Vanbrugh would no doubt have approved.

Compton Verney, Warwickshire

Palace of art

When I first came across Compton Verney the place had an air of melancholy mystery. The great 18th-century house can be glimpsed through trees from a road the joins the Fosse Way, the old Roman route that runs northeast from Cirencester to Leicester and on to Lincoln. Rows of sash windows and gigantic corner stones made the place look imposing in the manner of a house by Sir John Vanbrugh, but in the 1970s it all looked rather down at heel. What was this place, and who lived there?

The building that I could make out through the trees had been begun on the site of an older house in the early years of the 18th century for the 12th Lord Willoughby de Broke. The designer isn’t known, but the strongest candidates (apart from Vanbrugh) are William and Francis Smith of Warwick, successful Midlands master builders who often also acted as architects. What is known is that in the 1760 the 14th Lord Willoughby de Broke had the place remodelled by Robert Adam. It was Adam who was responsible for turning what had been a courtyard house into the striking U-shaped building that still exists.

In the 1970s, when I first saw the place, no one lived there. Requisitioned by the army during World War II, Compton Verney had stood empty ever since, and could easily have been one of the hundreds of country houses that were demolished in the years after the war. But the building’s absentee owner held onto it, and it was finally bought and turned into an art gallery with funds from the Peter Moores Foundation. The architectural firm Stanton Williams were commissioned to convert the interior and build an extension – modern in idiom but discreet and complementary to the original building – on the site of former service buildings.

After almost 50 years of neglect, Compton Verney has found a fitting role. The building houses a permanent collection that specializes in a number of interesting areas of art history (highlights: Chinese bronzes, British folk art) and puts on temporary exhibitions that keep one going back. No doubt one day the place will have me blogging again, too. The conservation work, which embraces the Capability Brown landscape in which the house sits, is now turning to the ice house in the grounds. I wonder if they will find a way of showing visitors the impressive sunken brick-domed interior. Anyone for CCTV?

Go here for more about Compton Verney and its history.

St Michael's Street, Oxford

In the early 1700s, one of the most important and monumental English buildings was begun just outside Woodstock, near Oxford. Blenheim Palace, the nation’s gift to its military hero the Duke of Marlborough, is a country house on a vast scale, designed by Sir John Vanbrugh. Soon, builders began to learn about Vanbrugh’s heavyweight, rather ponderous brand of Classicism, and the influence of Blenheim was being felt in other new buildings in Oxfordshire.

This house in St Michael’s Street is an example. The twin giant pilasters that shoot up on either side of the door, the curious canopy above them, and the curve-topped windows above that – all these are Vanbrugh-type features. So are the heavy keystones – the central wedge-shaped stones the top the first- and second-floor windows. It all adds up to a surprising piece of grandeur in a side street, but it’s the kind of thing that English cities are good at – pulling us up short with something dramatic in a quiet or everyday setting. Not for nothing is this compact piece of architectural splendour called Vanbrugh House.

Marlborough House, London

Most people striding along the Mall towards Buckingham Palace don’t look over the wall about half way up on the right, but they should. Just visible above the stonework is Marlborough House, one of Britain’s royal palaces. This important but little known English building was originally the town house of the Duke of Marlborough, the general who won the Battle of Blenheim and was rewarded by Queen Anne with the stupendous Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. Marlborough’s Duchess, the queen’s bosom-friend Sarah, fell out with John Vanbrugh, the architect of Blenheim, and chose Christopher Wren to design their town house. It was finished in 1711 in Wren’s trademark ‘brick-with-stone-trimmings’ style, though the architect’s son, also called Christopher, may have been mainly responsible for the drawings.

Marlborough House became a royal palace in 1817. It was the home of Queen Adelaide, widow of William IV, and later of Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VII). In the 1960s, it became home to the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Foundation. The building is only occasionally open to the public, when the elaborate wall paintings depicting Marlborough’s victories can be seen on the stairs and in the saloon. For the rest of the time, we must be content with the view over the garden wall, while officials diligently discuss burning issues such as the Kiribati question inside.