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New light on William Kent at Hampton Court Palace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Juliet Allan
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Extract

The Georgian gothick remodelling of the east range of Clock Court at Hampton Court is well known, and its attribution to William Kent, although based only on an oblique comment by Horace Walpole,1 has never been questioned.2 What seems to have escaped the notice of modern architectural historians is that the building is no longer in its original form, a number of its most distinctive features having been destroyed in the nineteenth century, greatly to the detriment of the design (PI. ia).

Type
Section 1: Royal Works and The Office of Works
Information
Architectural History , Volume 27: Design and Practice in British Architecture , 1984 , pp. 50 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1984

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References

Notes

1 Walpole, H. Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Dallaway, II (1862), 564.Google Scholar

2 For example Colvin, H. M. ed. The History of the King’s Works, v (London, 1976), 181 Google Scholar; Colvin, H. M. A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (London, 1978), p. 493 Google Scholar; Harris, John ‘William Kent’s Gothick’ in A Gothic Symposium at the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Georgian Group (London, 1983).Google Scholar

3 Colvin, King’s Works, V, 180-81.

4 PRO T56/18 f. 63, 1 April 1718.

5 PRO Works, 4/1, 18 April 1716.

6 PRO Works, 4/1, i40ctober 1718; PRO Works, 34/43, is probably the plan in question (Colvin, King’s Works, v, 180 n. 7.).

7 PRO Works, 4/2, njuly 1721; reference kindly supplied by Mr G. D. Heath.

8 PRO Works, 4/3, 7 March 1728.

9 PRO Works, 4/4, 11 March 1729; reference kindly supplied by Mr G. D. Heath.

10 Not 1731 as stated in King’s Works, v, 180.

11 PRO Works, 4/5, 6 June 1732; I3june 1732; PRO T29/27 7june 1732; T56/18 f. 396.

12 PRO Works, 4/5, 1 June, 6June 1732.

13 PRO Works, 4/5, 3 October 1732.

14 PRO Works, 4/5, 21 November 1732.

15 PRO Works, 4/6, 5 February 1734.

16 PRO Works, 4/5, 16 April, 24july 1733.

17 PRO Works, 4/6, 3 September, 10 September 1734.

18 PRO T 56/18 f. 396.

19 PRO T29/27 f. 68, 5 October 1731.

20 For example, Jesse, E. A Summer’s Day at Hampton Court, 5th edn (London, 1842), p. 17 Google Scholar; ‘Felix Summerly’ ( Cole, Henry), A Handbook for the architecture, tapestries, paintings, gardens and grounds of Hampton Court Palace (London, 1841), p. 36 Google Scholar; ibid., 2nd edn (London, 1862), p. 36; Law, E. A History of Hampton Court Palace, 111 (London, 1891), 245.Google Scholar

21 PRO Works 34/588, 589.

22 Walpole, Anecdotes, 11, 564.

23 Colvin, King’s Works, v, 178.

24 fol. 33 in a volume of drawings attributed to Thomas Fort in the Department of the Environment Library at Croydon; reproduced in Colvin, King’s Works, v, pi. 14b.

25 PRO Works, 4/1, 28 October 1715.

26 fol. 32 in the ‘Fort’ album (see n. 24).

27 I have followed Crook, J. Mordaunt (Introduction to Eastlake, C.L. A History of the Gothic Revival (1872, reprinted Leicester, 1970), p. 37) and Pevsner, N. (Introduction to Gothick 1720-1840: Catalogue of an Exhibition at the Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery and Museums (Brighton, 1975), p. 5 Google Scholar) in the use of ‘associational’;John Harris (op. cit.) uses it to describe gothick used for environmental reasons.

28 Colvin, Dictionary, p. 491 n. 1.

29 Harris, J. ‘A William Kent Discovery: Designs for Esher Place, Surrey’, in Country Life, 14 May 1959, pp. 1076-78.Google Scholar

30 Drawings in Wimbledon Public Library, discussed and illustrated in Harris, loc, cit.

31 Drawing in British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings (Harris, loc. cit.).

32 White, R. ‘Saved by the Landmark Trust: Laughton Place, East Sussex’, Country Life, 5 May 1983, pp. 1184-90.Google Scholar

33 Spenser, E. The Fame Queen (London, 1731), 3 vols.Google Scholar

34 All Souls, 1, 34, 35, 36, 57, reproduced in the Wren Society, vn (Oxford, 1930), plsxxiv-xxv.

35 Colvin, King’s Works, V, 160; the date and occasion of these drawings is uncertain; Hawksmoor was not a member of the Office of Works in October 1718 and so it seems unlikely that they were made in connection with the Board’s request on the 14th of that month (n. 6 above) for plans marked up to show parts of the Palace that were in poor repair; it is more probable that they were associated either with the estimate for taking down the ‘Great roome’ which the Clerk of Works at Hampton Court was asked to prepare in 1716 (n. $ above) or with the 1728 request to him to send ‘an Elevation of the Inner Court at Hampton Court that is supposed to be in danger’ (n. 8 above).

36 PRO Works, 34/588-89.

37 Eastlake, op. cit., 55-56.