TEXT © THE AUTHORS 2003 Giles Worsley, ‘Courtly stables and their implications for seventeenth-century English architecture’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. XIII, 2003, pp. 114–140
COURTLY STABLES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE
Mar 30, 2023
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4119_09_17–11–03.qxpGiles Worsley, ‘Courtly stables and their implications for seventeenth-century English architecture’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xIII, 2003, pp. 114–140
One of the more hotly contested areas of architectural history is the classical revolution
in taste that took place under the early Stuarts. Did the simple astylar classicism prevalent after the Restoration establish itself in the s and s, as I suggested in Classical Architecture in Britain: The Heroic Age, or was it the product of the Commonwealth – a ‘Puritan Minimalism’ – as Tim Mowl has argued? Every example that marks the arrival of this classical revolution tends to be seized upon, but one of the most productive areas to examine has passed almost unnoticed, the stable. At least ten important stables built before the Civil War in the new astylar classical manner can be identified. That makes them perhaps the single most important corpus of the new style. Virtually all, tellingly, were for courtiers. As such the stables shed valuable light on the use of the classical language in early-Stuart England and in particular on the varied approaches taken to courtly and non-courtly buildings and to buildings of differing status.
The greatest stable of these years was built at the royal palace of Theobalds in Hertfordshire, which had been acquired by James I in largely because of its excellent hunting. Despite the survival of a detailed record by Robert Smythson (Fig. ) the stable has never been the subject of careful analysis. Smythson’s drawing, which shows the plan of the stables, was probably made on his way to or from London in .The drawing shows a regular ft. square quadrangle with slightly projecting wings, closed at the far end by a barn, and housing
horses.
The stables are described in the Office of Works accounts as “two newe double stables of Brickes by the highway with a new coatche house saddle house a smiths forge house a shoeinge horse and new grayners adioyninge to the same stable”. These details are fleshed out by the Parliamentary survey of the King’s properties, made after the Civil War. Its description confirms the essential accuracy of Smythson’s drawing and demonstrates that the Theobalds stables were of unparalleled grandeur. They were probably the most substantial new building commissioned by James I before the Queen’s House at Greenwich.The survey notes that the building took the form of a great quadrangle ft. square, with a central gate, flanked by a pair of stables. Further ranges of stables ft. long and ft. wide were placed in the flank elevations and, at the far end, the quadrangle was closed by a large barn.
Smythson’s drawing does not entirely correspond with the Parliamentary survey. Some of the dimensions vary and he places further stables at the two ends of the entrance range, where the survey records houses for the saddler and the farrier. Smythson would thus seem to have copied a design for the stables that was varied in execution, rather than surveyed them himself. This would suggest that the stables were incomplete when he saw them, which would fit with a visit in as the stables were built between April and September
and fitted up the following year.
The architect of the Theobalds stables is unknown, though as a major royal building it must have been designed by someone in court circles. One
COURTLY STABLES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
G I L E S W O R S L E Y
and in he was appointed Surveyor to Henry, Prince of Wales. But the key connection is with Lord Salisbury.
Robert Cecil, st Earl of Salisbury, was a central figure at the court of James I, and a keen builder, as his work at Salisbury House, the New Exchange and Hatfield House demonstrates. He was Secretary of State from to and in May that year was appointed Lord Treasurer, the King’s key minister.
As John Harris put it, he “began immediately to investigate the Office of Works. From this moment on, Jones as an emergent architect, the British Vitruvius in embryo, began to exert influence towards a reformation of style, even though without any official position”. Jones’s design for Cecil’s new Exchange in the Strand must predate June and it was probably in that year that Jones made a design for a new termination on the central tower of St Paul’s Cathedral to replace the destroyed medieval spire, almost certainly at the request of Salisbury.Two years later Jones was paid £ ‘for drawinge of some Architecture’ at Hatfield House, which may have included an unexecuted scheme for a riding house.
Thus by , when the Theobalds stable was begun, Inigo Jones was closely involved in court circles, was showing a strong interest in architecture and had been asked to make designs for two of the most prestigious commissions of the day. What is more, his patron Lord Salisbury was in a position to push important projects his way. Though confirmation is lacking, the possibility that Inigo Jones was involved with the design of the Theobalds stable, and that this therefore is his first executed building, must be taken seriously. If so, it is tempting to wonder what form the building took, and in particular whether the two projecting wings were marked by some form of ‘Dutch’ gable, as was the case with his contemporary design for the New Exchange. That, in turn, would explain the appearance of pairs of ‘Dutch’ gables shortly afterwards on the stables at Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland, and on Raynham Hall, Norfolk, as will be discussed below.
possibility was the Surveyor-General of the King’s Works at the time, Simon Basil, who was employed by the Earl of Salisbury between and at Salisbury House and the New Exchange in the Strand, and at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire.
However, the extent of Basil’s involvement in design is uncertain. Robert Liminge, who was employed as a carpenter on the almshouses at Theobalds in , is known to have been responsible for the design and supervision of Hatfield House in – and went on to design Blickling Hall, Norfolk, in –.This makes him the most plausible candidate for the stables. But Inigo Jones should also be considered.
As Howard Colvin notes, even before Basil’s death in the artistic initiative in royal works was passing to Jones. As early as it was hoped that, through Jones, “all that is praiseworthy in the elegant arts of the ancients [including architecture], may one day find their way across the Alps into England”. His court connections were close. He was designing masques for Queen Anne of Denmark from ,
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
Fig. . Robert Smythson, plan of the stables at Theobalds, Hertfordshire, . British Architectural Library.
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
Fig. . Wenceslaus Hollar, the stables at Arundel House, Strand, London.
Fig. . The Seventh Proposition from Book Seven of Sebastiano Serlio, On Architecture.
timber-framed buildings except along its east side. Here, in marked contrast, is a six-bay range that stands out for its up-to-date architectural language. Ordered, astylar, two-storeyed with platband, vertical rectangular windows, an emphatic cornice, roofline parallel to the front elevation and dormer windows, this is the familiar manner of the Jonesian stylistic revolution. That it was the stable is shown by the large gaggle of horses gathered before it and the coach houses beside it. Both engravings make it clear that the range was unfinished, suggesting that it was only the first stage in an intended complete rebuilding of the entrance courtyard in the new fashionable style.
The Earl of Arundel was one of the leading virtuosi of the day, with an astonishing collection of paintings and sculpture, as well as the owner of two chests of drawings by Vincenzo Scamozzi, the Italian architect who took up Andrea Palladio’s mantle. As a young man he made an extensive tour of Italy in – accompanied by Inigo Jones, for whom this journey was fundamental to his emergence as England’s leading classical architect. Arundel’s patronage of Jones is well known. Drawings by Jones survive of the ‘Italian’ gate at Arundel House, which was built in , and for a house for Lord Maltravers, Arundel’s son, at Lothbury, dated . He is also generally credited with work on the gallery wing known from Cornelius Bol’s View of the Thames with Arundel House (c.) and Hollar’s birdseye view of London.
There is no reason to believe that these stables were not part of Arundel’s major remodelling of Arundel House around , for which Jones was the architect. A direct comparison can be made with the elevation of the clerk of works’s house at Newmarket of –, recorded by John Webb in the s (Fig. ). If the Arundel House range is to be dated , as seems plausible, then these stables are one of the first accurately recorded examples of the new astylar classical language.
Stables were certainly an important part of
Equestrian buildings certainly played an important part in Jones’s early career. Three of his earliest recorded buildings were stables at Newmarket (where he also built a riding house for the king), for James I, Sir Thomas Compton and Mr Dupper in –. He designed a stable for camels at Theobalds in – and was also almost certainly responsible for the stables at Arundel House on the Strand in London.
Two evocative engravings by Wenceslaus Hollar survive of the outer court of Arundel House, the London home of his patron the Earl of Arundel (Fig. ).The yard is shown busy with people, horses and coaches, a higgledy-piggledy mix of
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
Fig. . John Webb, after Inigo Jones, the Clerk of Works’s House at Newmarket, Suffolk. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth.
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
Fig. . The Villa Maser, from Andrea Palladio, I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura, Venice, , II, .
Fig. . Burley-on-the-Hill House, Rutland, and its stables, from a seventeenth-century plan, reproduced in Pearl Finch, History of Burley-on-the-Hill, London, , .
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
Fig. . George Lambert, Fonthill House, Wiltshire, a detail showing the stables. Property Services Agency.
Fig. . The Ninth Proposition, from Book Seven of Sebastiano Serlio, On Architecture.
between and , such an astylar elevation and such gables are highly innovative. The gables can be compared to that on Inigo Jones’s Brooke House in London of c. and, even more pertinently, to Andrea Palladio’s Villa Barbaro at Maser (Fig. ), where they are also used to emphasise the ends of office ranges. Similar gables could be found on Sir Roger Townshend’s Raynham Hall, Norfolk, a composite of fashionable contemporary stylistic motifs, designed in about .
The lack of documentation means there is no record of the architect for the stables at Burley-on- the-Hill, but the purity and innovation of the design and Buckingham’s position as royal favourite suggests a court-based architect. It is hard to see who that might be at this date except Jones or Gerbier, with Jones the more plausible candidate given the parallels with Brooke House and with his astylar designs elsewhere.
The stables at Fonthill, Wiltshire, were equally famed. These were built by another of Charles I’s
courtly architectural patronage. Thomas Fuller, writing about George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in his History of the Worthies of England in , highlighted the stables he built at Burley-on-the-Hill as one of his particular achievements. He described these as superior to any other stable in the country: “where the horses (if their pabulum so plenty as their stabulum stately) were the best accommodated in England”.
Buckingham, favourite of James I and then of his son, Charles I, was a keen horseman who had studied haute école at Duplessis-Mornay’s academy at Angers in and was appointed Master of Horse in .He was also a famed connoisseur of art and architecture who vied with Charles I (and Lord Arundel) to establish classical tastes in England, collecting paintings and sculpture and commissioning the country’s most sophisticated architects to design buildings that set new standards of classical design. Inigo Jones worked for him at Whitehall in –
and at New Hall, Essex, in –, as did Sir Balthazar Gerbier, who was employed at New Hall and York House in the Strand in –.
Buckingham bought Burley-on-the-Hill in about , entertaining the King there that year, and used it principally during the hunting season. He is said to have much improved the house, but this was destroyed by fire during the Civil War. What does survive, though altered after another fire in , is the impressive stable range, which, according to a survey by Parliamentary commissioners, held horses. No documentary evidence survives to date these precisely but they must have been built before Buckingham’s murder in , probably soon after his purchase, given the house’s role as a centre for hunting.
The original appearance of the stables is known from a copy of a survey of the park, perhaps made in – (Fig. ). This shows a two-storey astylar building with vertical rectangular windows, unbroken roofline and curved ‘Dutch’ gables (probably removed after the fire) over slightly projecting wings. For its date, that is somewhere
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
Fig. . The stables at Bedford House, Strand, London (bottom right), detail from Wenceslaus Hollar,
west central view of London. British Museum, Prints and Drawings Department.
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
Fig. . The former stables at Wilton House, Wiltshire, now known as the Grange. William Curtis Rolf.
Fig. . The Fifteenth House, from Book Seven of Sebastiano Serlio, On Architecture.
was unlikely to have been Inigo Jones, who was too busy to design Wilton House, Wiltshire, for the Earl of Pembroke, despite his close connections with Charles I. Edward Carter, Chief Clerk in the Office of Works, has been suggested as a candidate for West Woodhay and he would be a possible name for Fonthill. But Isaac de Caus has a stronger claim.
De Caus is likely to have been the architect of very similar stables at Bedford House on the Strand in London (Fig. ). These stables, which were built for the th Earl of Bedford in about , are known from a number of surveys and from Wenceslaus Hollar’s birdseye West Central View of London.
These were about ft. wide and lay in a separate stable court to the east of the garden at Bedford House, with a nine-bay range with a pedimented central doorcase flanked by two-bay wings. Hollar’s details of buildings need to be treated with care. He certainly elides the west wing of the Bedford House stables with an adjacent range and the position of the ground-floor windows, which appear to be set above the level of the pedimented central door, is also curious. Though reminiscent of the way Diocletian windows were placed above blank walls to light
courtiers, Lord Cottington, Chancellor of the Exchequer from to . In George Garrard wrote to the Earl of Strafford of his recent visit to Fonthill: “He [Cottington] hath built a Stable of Stone, the third in England, Petworth and Burleigh on the Hill only exceed it”.The Fonthill stables, which must have been built after the estate was bought in , have since been demolished, but are known from an eighteenth-century painting by…
One of the more hotly contested areas of architectural history is the classical revolution
in taste that took place under the early Stuarts. Did the simple astylar classicism prevalent after the Restoration establish itself in the s and s, as I suggested in Classical Architecture in Britain: The Heroic Age, or was it the product of the Commonwealth – a ‘Puritan Minimalism’ – as Tim Mowl has argued? Every example that marks the arrival of this classical revolution tends to be seized upon, but one of the most productive areas to examine has passed almost unnoticed, the stable. At least ten important stables built before the Civil War in the new astylar classical manner can be identified. That makes them perhaps the single most important corpus of the new style. Virtually all, tellingly, were for courtiers. As such the stables shed valuable light on the use of the classical language in early-Stuart England and in particular on the varied approaches taken to courtly and non-courtly buildings and to buildings of differing status.
The greatest stable of these years was built at the royal palace of Theobalds in Hertfordshire, which had been acquired by James I in largely because of its excellent hunting. Despite the survival of a detailed record by Robert Smythson (Fig. ) the stable has never been the subject of careful analysis. Smythson’s drawing, which shows the plan of the stables, was probably made on his way to or from London in .The drawing shows a regular ft. square quadrangle with slightly projecting wings, closed at the far end by a barn, and housing
horses.
The stables are described in the Office of Works accounts as “two newe double stables of Brickes by the highway with a new coatche house saddle house a smiths forge house a shoeinge horse and new grayners adioyninge to the same stable”. These details are fleshed out by the Parliamentary survey of the King’s properties, made after the Civil War. Its description confirms the essential accuracy of Smythson’s drawing and demonstrates that the Theobalds stables were of unparalleled grandeur. They were probably the most substantial new building commissioned by James I before the Queen’s House at Greenwich.The survey notes that the building took the form of a great quadrangle ft. square, with a central gate, flanked by a pair of stables. Further ranges of stables ft. long and ft. wide were placed in the flank elevations and, at the far end, the quadrangle was closed by a large barn.
Smythson’s drawing does not entirely correspond with the Parliamentary survey. Some of the dimensions vary and he places further stables at the two ends of the entrance range, where the survey records houses for the saddler and the farrier. Smythson would thus seem to have copied a design for the stables that was varied in execution, rather than surveyed them himself. This would suggest that the stables were incomplete when he saw them, which would fit with a visit in as the stables were built between April and September
and fitted up the following year.
The architect of the Theobalds stables is unknown, though as a major royal building it must have been designed by someone in court circles. One
COURTLY STABLES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
G I L E S W O R S L E Y
and in he was appointed Surveyor to Henry, Prince of Wales. But the key connection is with Lord Salisbury.
Robert Cecil, st Earl of Salisbury, was a central figure at the court of James I, and a keen builder, as his work at Salisbury House, the New Exchange and Hatfield House demonstrates. He was Secretary of State from to and in May that year was appointed Lord Treasurer, the King’s key minister.
As John Harris put it, he “began immediately to investigate the Office of Works. From this moment on, Jones as an emergent architect, the British Vitruvius in embryo, began to exert influence towards a reformation of style, even though without any official position”. Jones’s design for Cecil’s new Exchange in the Strand must predate June and it was probably in that year that Jones made a design for a new termination on the central tower of St Paul’s Cathedral to replace the destroyed medieval spire, almost certainly at the request of Salisbury.Two years later Jones was paid £ ‘for drawinge of some Architecture’ at Hatfield House, which may have included an unexecuted scheme for a riding house.
Thus by , when the Theobalds stable was begun, Inigo Jones was closely involved in court circles, was showing a strong interest in architecture and had been asked to make designs for two of the most prestigious commissions of the day. What is more, his patron Lord Salisbury was in a position to push important projects his way. Though confirmation is lacking, the possibility that Inigo Jones was involved with the design of the Theobalds stable, and that this therefore is his first executed building, must be taken seriously. If so, it is tempting to wonder what form the building took, and in particular whether the two projecting wings were marked by some form of ‘Dutch’ gable, as was the case with his contemporary design for the New Exchange. That, in turn, would explain the appearance of pairs of ‘Dutch’ gables shortly afterwards on the stables at Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland, and on Raynham Hall, Norfolk, as will be discussed below.
possibility was the Surveyor-General of the King’s Works at the time, Simon Basil, who was employed by the Earl of Salisbury between and at Salisbury House and the New Exchange in the Strand, and at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire.
However, the extent of Basil’s involvement in design is uncertain. Robert Liminge, who was employed as a carpenter on the almshouses at Theobalds in , is known to have been responsible for the design and supervision of Hatfield House in – and went on to design Blickling Hall, Norfolk, in –.This makes him the most plausible candidate for the stables. But Inigo Jones should also be considered.
As Howard Colvin notes, even before Basil’s death in the artistic initiative in royal works was passing to Jones. As early as it was hoped that, through Jones, “all that is praiseworthy in the elegant arts of the ancients [including architecture], may one day find their way across the Alps into England”. His court connections were close. He was designing masques for Queen Anne of Denmark from ,
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
Fig. . Robert Smythson, plan of the stables at Theobalds, Hertfordshire, . British Architectural Library.
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
Fig. . Wenceslaus Hollar, the stables at Arundel House, Strand, London.
Fig. . The Seventh Proposition from Book Seven of Sebastiano Serlio, On Architecture.
timber-framed buildings except along its east side. Here, in marked contrast, is a six-bay range that stands out for its up-to-date architectural language. Ordered, astylar, two-storeyed with platband, vertical rectangular windows, an emphatic cornice, roofline parallel to the front elevation and dormer windows, this is the familiar manner of the Jonesian stylistic revolution. That it was the stable is shown by the large gaggle of horses gathered before it and the coach houses beside it. Both engravings make it clear that the range was unfinished, suggesting that it was only the first stage in an intended complete rebuilding of the entrance courtyard in the new fashionable style.
The Earl of Arundel was one of the leading virtuosi of the day, with an astonishing collection of paintings and sculpture, as well as the owner of two chests of drawings by Vincenzo Scamozzi, the Italian architect who took up Andrea Palladio’s mantle. As a young man he made an extensive tour of Italy in – accompanied by Inigo Jones, for whom this journey was fundamental to his emergence as England’s leading classical architect. Arundel’s patronage of Jones is well known. Drawings by Jones survive of the ‘Italian’ gate at Arundel House, which was built in , and for a house for Lord Maltravers, Arundel’s son, at Lothbury, dated . He is also generally credited with work on the gallery wing known from Cornelius Bol’s View of the Thames with Arundel House (c.) and Hollar’s birdseye view of London.
There is no reason to believe that these stables were not part of Arundel’s major remodelling of Arundel House around , for which Jones was the architect. A direct comparison can be made with the elevation of the clerk of works’s house at Newmarket of –, recorded by John Webb in the s (Fig. ). If the Arundel House range is to be dated , as seems plausible, then these stables are one of the first accurately recorded examples of the new astylar classical language.
Stables were certainly an important part of
Equestrian buildings certainly played an important part in Jones’s early career. Three of his earliest recorded buildings were stables at Newmarket (where he also built a riding house for the king), for James I, Sir Thomas Compton and Mr Dupper in –. He designed a stable for camels at Theobalds in – and was also almost certainly responsible for the stables at Arundel House on the Strand in London.
Two evocative engravings by Wenceslaus Hollar survive of the outer court of Arundel House, the London home of his patron the Earl of Arundel (Fig. ).The yard is shown busy with people, horses and coaches, a higgledy-piggledy mix of
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
Fig. . John Webb, after Inigo Jones, the Clerk of Works’s House at Newmarket, Suffolk. The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth.
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
Fig. . The Villa Maser, from Andrea Palladio, I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura, Venice, , II, .
Fig. . Burley-on-the-Hill House, Rutland, and its stables, from a seventeenth-century plan, reproduced in Pearl Finch, History of Burley-on-the-Hill, London, , .
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
Fig. . George Lambert, Fonthill House, Wiltshire, a detail showing the stables. Property Services Agency.
Fig. . The Ninth Proposition, from Book Seven of Sebastiano Serlio, On Architecture.
between and , such an astylar elevation and such gables are highly innovative. The gables can be compared to that on Inigo Jones’s Brooke House in London of c. and, even more pertinently, to Andrea Palladio’s Villa Barbaro at Maser (Fig. ), where they are also used to emphasise the ends of office ranges. Similar gables could be found on Sir Roger Townshend’s Raynham Hall, Norfolk, a composite of fashionable contemporary stylistic motifs, designed in about .
The lack of documentation means there is no record of the architect for the stables at Burley-on- the-Hill, but the purity and innovation of the design and Buckingham’s position as royal favourite suggests a court-based architect. It is hard to see who that might be at this date except Jones or Gerbier, with Jones the more plausible candidate given the parallels with Brooke House and with his astylar designs elsewhere.
The stables at Fonthill, Wiltshire, were equally famed. These were built by another of Charles I’s
courtly architectural patronage. Thomas Fuller, writing about George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in his History of the Worthies of England in , highlighted the stables he built at Burley-on-the-Hill as one of his particular achievements. He described these as superior to any other stable in the country: “where the horses (if their pabulum so plenty as their stabulum stately) were the best accommodated in England”.
Buckingham, favourite of James I and then of his son, Charles I, was a keen horseman who had studied haute école at Duplessis-Mornay’s academy at Angers in and was appointed Master of Horse in .He was also a famed connoisseur of art and architecture who vied with Charles I (and Lord Arundel) to establish classical tastes in England, collecting paintings and sculpture and commissioning the country’s most sophisticated architects to design buildings that set new standards of classical design. Inigo Jones worked for him at Whitehall in –
and at New Hall, Essex, in –, as did Sir Balthazar Gerbier, who was employed at New Hall and York House in the Strand in –.
Buckingham bought Burley-on-the-Hill in about , entertaining the King there that year, and used it principally during the hunting season. He is said to have much improved the house, but this was destroyed by fire during the Civil War. What does survive, though altered after another fire in , is the impressive stable range, which, according to a survey by Parliamentary commissioners, held horses. No documentary evidence survives to date these precisely but they must have been built before Buckingham’s murder in , probably soon after his purchase, given the house’s role as a centre for hunting.
The original appearance of the stables is known from a copy of a survey of the park, perhaps made in – (Fig. ). This shows a two-storey astylar building with vertical rectangular windows, unbroken roofline and curved ‘Dutch’ gables (probably removed after the fire) over slightly projecting wings. For its date, that is somewhere
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
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Fig. . The stables at Bedford House, Strand, London (bottom right), detail from Wenceslaus Hollar,
west central view of London. British Museum, Prints and Drawings Department.
C O U R T LY S TA B L E S A N D T H E I R I M P L I C A T I O N S F O R S E V E N T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y E N G L I S H A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I I I
Fig. . The former stables at Wilton House, Wiltshire, now known as the Grange. William Curtis Rolf.
Fig. . The Fifteenth House, from Book Seven of Sebastiano Serlio, On Architecture.
was unlikely to have been Inigo Jones, who was too busy to design Wilton House, Wiltshire, for the Earl of Pembroke, despite his close connections with Charles I. Edward Carter, Chief Clerk in the Office of Works, has been suggested as a candidate for West Woodhay and he would be a possible name for Fonthill. But Isaac de Caus has a stronger claim.
De Caus is likely to have been the architect of very similar stables at Bedford House on the Strand in London (Fig. ). These stables, which were built for the th Earl of Bedford in about , are known from a number of surveys and from Wenceslaus Hollar’s birdseye West Central View of London.
These were about ft. wide and lay in a separate stable court to the east of the garden at Bedford House, with a nine-bay range with a pedimented central doorcase flanked by two-bay wings. Hollar’s details of buildings need to be treated with care. He certainly elides the west wing of the Bedford House stables with an adjacent range and the position of the ground-floor windows, which appear to be set above the level of the pedimented central door, is also curious. Though reminiscent of the way Diocletian windows were placed above blank walls to light
courtiers, Lord Cottington, Chancellor of the Exchequer from to . In George Garrard wrote to the Earl of Strafford of his recent visit to Fonthill: “He [Cottington] hath built a Stable of Stone, the third in England, Petworth and Burleigh on the Hill only exceed it”.The Fonthill stables, which must have been built after the estate was bought in , have since been demolished, but are known from an eighteenth-century painting by…
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