No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Norwood Hall and Micklefield Hall: Works by Sir John Soane
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
It is surprising that an architect of the standing of John Soane should have taken on, in October 1801, work as trivial as cleaning and blackening the letters on a mural tablet memorial. This he did for Elisha Biscoe in the church of St Mary, Norwood Green in Middlesex. This can be explained only by relating it to more significant work in progress at precisely the same time on a site adjacent to the church; Norwood Hall was being built to designs by Soane, but for John Robins not Elisha Biscoe. The two clients are intimately linked, and had much to do with other commissions from Soane in the years around 1800. At the turn of the century Soane had a very successful architectural practice. Large as well as small jobs were coming his way steadily, as Dorothy Stroud’s chronological catalogue clearly shows. The remodelling of his own new house at Pitzhanger became one of Soane’s major preoccupations in 1800. The important work at Pitzhanger and the unimportant work on the mural tablet are both relevant to this study which is concerned with John Robins’s new house at Norwood and works for Elisha Biscoe at Micklefield Hall, near Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1987
References
Notes
1 Stroud, D., The Architecture of Sir John Soane (1961), p. 164 Google Scholar and Soane Museum, Bill Book D, p. 9. Soane’s records often incorrectly refer to his client as Briscoe.
2 Stroud, D., Sir John Soane, Architect (1984), pp. 262-65Google Scholar.
3 Ibid., pp. 262-65.
4 Greater London Record Office, ACC 5381 1st Dep. Box 42/6; Hertfordshire Record Office, Miscellaneous Collections 25522 and 25594; Buckinghamshire Record Office, 17/18-21; Oxfordshire Record Office, Birch II/2-4 and PL/I/65-7; Victoria County History, Middlesex, III (1962), 90 Google Scholar.
5 Smith, J. C. C., Pedigree of the Family ofBiscoe (1887), pp. 6–9 Google Scholar.
6 Survey of London, Southern Kensington: Brompton, XLI (1983), 36 Google Scholar.
7 VCH, Middlesex, IV (1975), 40 Google Scholar.
8 Rocque’s Map of London, 1754. In 1767 Elisha Biscoe built a Free School at Norwood Green, a charming little building which is still standing today.
9 VCH, Middlesex, III (1962), 90 Google Scholar.
10 GLRO, ACC 5381 1st Dep. Box 42/6.
11 Survey of London, XLI, 11.
12 Smith, op. cit., p. 9 and Dictionary of National Biography, 11 (1975), 1789.
13 George Basevi, the most successful of Soane’s pupils, married Francis Agnata Biscoe, a distant relative of Elisha Biscoe. The daughter of T. H. Earle and Ann Biscoe married T. G. Tyndale, possibly the son of Soane’s longstanding tenant at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, G. B. Tyndale.
14 In 1824 Biscoe sold some property in Brompton through John Robins (Survey of London, XLI, 39).
15 Climenson, E.J., The History of Shiplake, Oxon. (1894), 343 Google Scholar.
16 Oxon. RO, FC IX/3.
17 GLRO, ACC 5381 1st Dep. Box 42/6 and Middlesex Deeds Register, 1799, 1/414-7.
18 Herts. RO, Misc. Coll. 25594.
19 Climenson, Shiplake, 350.
20 Soane Museum, Journal 4, p. 26, Day Book 1798-99, pp. 104-05, 107-08, 110 and Ledger C, p. 406.
21 Ibid., D5/1/16-19.
22 In the south aisle of the church of St Mary, Rickmansworth there is a mural tablet to T. Earle, d. 1787, designed by John Flaxman in 1796, which also commemmorates T. H. Earle of Swallowfield Place, d. 1816.
23 Dury and Andrew’s Map of the County of Hertford, 1766.
24 Ibid., Misc. Coll. 79958X. I am grateful to Mr J. S. Sudbury for bringing this to my attention.
25 Soane Museum, Journal 4, p. 295.
26 Cussans, J. E., History of Hertfordshire, 111/2 (1972), 141 Google Scholar; VCH, Hertfordshire (1908), pp. 382-83; Clutterbuck, R., The History and Antiquities of the County of Hertford, 1 (1815), 201 Google Scholar. A nephew of this last author, Thomas Clutterbuck, lived at Micklefield Hall from 1844.
27 Soane Museum, Day Book 1800-01, p. 16, Ledger C, p. 406 and Journal 4, p. 70.
28 GLRO, MDR, 1803, 2/765. In 1815 Biscoe rebuilt Holton Park in a castellated Gothick style and in the following year T. H. Earle died leading Biscoe’s sister Ann to come to live at Holton. She outlived her brother and inherited the Holton estate.
29 Soane Museum, Ledger C, p. 406.
30 A New Description of Sir John Soane’s Museum (1986), pp. 15, 17 and 51.
31 Stroud, D., Sir John Soane, Architect (1984), pp. 210 and 273Google Scholar; Prey, P. de la Ruffinière du, Catalogue of Architectural Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum: Sirjohn Soane (1985), Nos 443-48Google Scholar.
32 Stroud, Sirjohn Soane, p. 184.
33 Norwood Hall is now used as a horticultural college by the London Borough of Ealing.
34 Soane Museum, Journal 4, p. 371.
35 Ibid., Journal 4, p. 372 and Notebook 4, pp. 35-36, 63, 79 and 85. It was not until 1804 that work at Pitzhanger was finally completed.
36 Ibid., Bill Book D, pp. 1-10.
37 As late as 30 March 1818 W. Filbey, the bricklayer responsible for work at Norwood Hall, wrote to Soane regarding a small sum that remained unpaid by Robins; Soane Museum, Letters Cupboard I Div II R. 7. Soane also paid out £5 8s. od. to James Cook for attending unspecified but obviously minor works at Norwood between March and August 1818; Soane Museum, Journal 6, p. 353.
38 Soane Museum, D 4/4/14-23.
39 Sold at Christie’s, 30/11/1983, Sir Albert Richardson Collection, Lot No. 83, Sirjohn Soane: Design for House at Norwood Green, Plan no. 4. The sketch is now at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Soane’s note reads ‘NB. This plan Mr R. took to Mrs R. (?) it only wishing to have a.b. wider(?)’.
40 Soane Museum, D 81/2/59. This drawing is marked ‘copy of Col. Graham’s’, presumably referring to No. 12 Stratton Street completed by Soane in 1799, and ‘as one for the Bank’.
41 This has been discussed at length in Stroud, Sirjohn Soane, passim, and Ruffinière du Prey, John Soane: The Making of an Architect (1982), passim.
42 There are two wooden models at Lincoln’s Inn Fields labelled as ‘a House at Acton’ designed by Soane for himself in May 1800, before Pitzhanger came on the market. They are square three by three bay-villas. One of the façades has a composition with tall blind arches in the outer bays on the principal floor and blind oculi above but not in a triumphal arch. The left return elevation is identical to that of Norwood Hall as built. Perhaps the sketch (Fig. 20) reflects plans for a house more closely resembling these models. (D. Stroud, ‘Sir John Soane and the Rebuilding of Pitzhanger Manor’, Festschrift to Henry Russell Hitchcock, p. 39.