Catchfrench Manor

Catchfrench, translated from the French phrase chasse franche meaning unenclosed hunting ground, was mentioned in the Domesday Book and became the principal seat in the Duchy manor of Bonyalva, near St Germans. The earliest house on the site belonged to the Tolverne family and was likely to have been built re-using old buildings, perhaps lodgings, left after the dissolution of St Germans Priory. The estate passed through marriage to George Kekewyche who rebuilt the house after a fire; the date 1580 and the name ‘George Kekewyche’ are carved above the roll-moulded doorway with deeply recessed spandrels decorated with leaves.

Descending from a Shropshire family Kekewyche rose to prominence as Sheriff of Cornwall under Elizabeth I and perhaps it was the likes of Kekewyche that made Queen Elizabeth declare that all ‘Cornish gentlemen are courtiers’. His house which displays evidence of a complex drainage system, a cobbled courtyard and an ice-house still stands, albeit in ruins, alongside the later Georgian house. The plan was typical of the period, a three storeyed porch led into a passage where on the right was a full-height hall and to the left a second chamber. After Dorothy Kekewich married the Quaker Francis Fox in 1646 they moved away to Fowey.

Catchfrench passed through several notable Cornish families, the Robartes, Boscawens and Fortescues until 1728 when the estate was purchased by the Devonian barrister John Glanville (1665-1735). Although initially from Wiltshire, John Glanville’s aunt, Mary Glanville, had close associations with the south-west through her marriage in 1636 to Richard Edgcumbe of Mount Edgecumbe. In the shadow of the Elizabethan house John built a new innovative Gothick detailed building with rendered stone and a tiled Mansard roof ─ an unusual design for a Cornwall. He subsequently retired to Catchfrench in order to pursue his literary interests and passed the estate to his nephew John (1696-1769) who served as High Sheriff of Cornwall and was later knighted.

His heir, Francis Glanville Sheriff of Cornwall in 1793 and Member of Parliament for Malmesbury, Wiltshire, in 1794 and later for Plymouth between 1797 and 1802, remodelled the house which was by then considered to be in poor repair. The work was carried out by the Lostwithiel based carpenter / architect Charles Rawlinson, who had previously worked Boconnoc, Clowance and Port Eliot. Rawlinson’s work was severely criticised by Sarah Gregor (nee Glanville) who was the daughter of Francis and his wife Sarah Masterman of RestormelPark. In her memoirs Sarah Gregor wrote

Mr Eliot’s advisor (by the name of Rawlinson, I believe) was sent for by my grandmother to see what he could do to improve Catchfrench. Two sides of the square were ruinous, the third in good repair and the walls of that portion are still standing to prove it. In that part had been placed the great dining hall, at one end of which was a raised gallery [used to look down upon the guests] communicating with other apartments, the hall itself going to the roof and occupying the height of two storeys…Mr Rawlinson re-built the two ruined sides of the square, and produced three large sitting rooms, one facing West and two the North; a strange plan, which showed small architectural skill; the Southern front was that which was left to the old part…There were also in the new fronts several handsome bed-rooms on the ground floor, as high as the sitting rooms, and over all ran a second storey of family apartments ruined by the determination to keep down the grand height of the building, which reduced these rooms to mere garrets in the roof lighted by dormer windows,

She considered Catchfrench’s battlements as ‘thoroughly contemptible’ displaying ‘the wretched taste of the day’ and criticised the quality of the work ‘the materials were so ill put together or so porous by nature that my father found it necessary to cover the front entirely with slates a plan I never saw adopted anywhere else, and which barely succeeded in excluding wet’. She concludes ‘Altogether a worse specimen of building could hardly have been concocted by an ignorant pay-mistress and a very dull architect’.

It was the Eliot family who had recommended Charles Rawlinson to the Glanvilles and it would seem it was they who endorsed Humphrey Repton (who was working at Port Eliot at the time) to give counsel on the landscape at Catchfrench. Repton visited in October 1792 and presented his ‘Red Book’ the following year with the author annotating ‘the following pages will only serve to call back the remembrance of the several matters I had the honour to mention in conversation…it is intended to be carried into execution by degrees, at your leisure’. He added ‘The romantic situation of the house, its picturesque front, and the delightful scenery with which it is everywhere surrounded, leave little else to be done, but to give the whole place an air of extent and importance’. Repton did consider several improvements not least hiding the public road by planting thereby enhancing the importance of the estate, opening the view westwards where the landscape was to be ‘distinguished by a lodge’ and making use of the old quarry to create a secret garden which would prove an ‘endless source of amusement’. C.S. Gilbert, in 1820, thought the situation of Catchfrench to be ‘injudiciously chosen’ but applauded Repton’s work, remarking that the terrace and shrubbery were ‘tastefully laid out’. For his proposed schemes Repton mimiced the Gothic style of the house and suggested the use of wood ‘painted and sanded in imitation stone, or rather in the artificial stone of “Code’s manufactory”’.

Gilbert further commented on the house itself ‘The modern buildings, are in the castle style, and contain an excellent suite of apartments on the first floor’ while Ackermann illustrated the ‘castle style’ house with the two battlemented towers at either end of the facade with three central bays in-between. Built into a hill the ground storey on the façade cleverly becomes the second storey on the side elevation. The son of Francis (1797-1881), another Francis who married Anabel, daughter of Reginald Pole-Carew of Antony House in 1821 inherited in 1846.The house was reduced in size and altered during the 19th-century when the battlements were removed. The Glanville’s still lived in the house until the 1930s by which time its fortunes were on a down-turn. The house is now residential.

Mount Edgcumbe

As Henry VIIIs tyrannical reign came to an end, Richard Edgcumbe (1499-1562), son of Piers Edgcumbe of Cotehele, commissioned one of the most audacious houses of the Tudor period. Mount Edgcumbe, on the western shores of the Plymouth Sound overlooking The Hoe, along with its pleasure grounds laid out during the second half of the 18th-century has become one of the most visited country house parks in the south-west capturing the fertile imagination of generations of writers, artists and photographers. The boundary changes of 1844 saw the estate change authorities from Devon to Cornwall where it continued to flourish as the home of successive Earls of Mount Edgcumbe until 1941 when it was tragically gutted by fire after a direct hit by an incendiary bomb.

William Edgcumbe (d.1380) married the wealthy heiress Hilaria de Cotehele in 1353 and it was their great-grandson Richard Edgcumbe (d.1489) who extended the family’s prosperity through his close affinity with the Lancastrian cause. He resided at, and improved, Cotehele but barely escaped with his life after supporters of the Yorkist Richard III tracked him down to Cornwall ─ later, he was rewarded with a knighthood from Henry VII for his loyal support. His son Piers (1469-1539) married Joan Durnford whose dowry included land on both sides of the river Tamar and in 1539 he received a licence from Henry VIII to enclose a deer-park comprising of 60 acres of wood, 300 acres of ‘land’, 50 acres of pasture and 100 acres of heath. The date of this emparkment coincides with the earliest map reference of Mount Edgcumbe dating to 1540 which shows the deer-park and the Edgcumbes fortified ancestral home across the river at Stonehouse.

Mount Edgcumbe was devised in 1547 by the mason Roger Palmer of North Buckland in Devon ‘and hys company [to] make or cause to be made all the walles, dowres, wyndoes, chimneys , steares, garrettes, turrettes and arches of a new house or lodge in the grounde of the seyd Sir Richard Eggecombes callyd West Stonehouse’. The house inspired a new era of architecture being far-removed from the regional style of low, inward-looking courtyard houses built from granite as, for example, the Edgcumbes ancestral seat at Cotehele. So advanced was the plan that Robert Smythson, the foremost Elizabethan architect and designer, has often been credited as its architect however as he was not born until 1537, the year that Richard Edgcumbe was created a Knight of the Bath, the attribution would be impossible. A c.1591 water supply map shows the earliest image of the house as having a squared plan with four drum towers, one at each corner. The influences behind, what is actually, a rectangular plan we can only speculate. Richard Edgcumbe (below) was certainly a prominent courtier who would have been aware of London fashions and contemporary influences such as illustrations from Sebastiano Serlio’s De Architectura Libri Quinque (1537) and the slightly earlier Royal Palace of Nonsuch inSurrey (1538-47). While these influences can be noted the house also has a retrospective element in that it visually resembles a medieval castle, comparable to the tower house that was once at Boconnoc.

Sir Richard’s rejection of the provincial building palette came at a cost and in 1559 he was forced to sell the Manor and Honour of Totnes under threat of bankruptcy. His achievement however was inspired in particular the prominent central clerestory hall which towered above the outer walls ─ a feature that Smythson developed for Wollaton Hall in 1581. The spectacle of the new house from the sea was considered so impressive that the commander of the Spanish Armada, Medina Sidonia was ‘affected at the sight of this house (though but beholding it at a distance, from the sea) that he resolved it for his own possession in the partage of this kingdom’. It is perhaps Mount Edgcumbe that Richard Carew refers to in his 1602 Survey when he describes a generic modern Tudor house as ‘nowadays they seat their dwellings high, built their walls thinne, lay them with earthen mortar, raise them to three or foure stoaries [sic], mould their lights larger and outward, coveting chiefly prospect and pleasure’. Carew, from neighbouring Antony House adds

The house is builded square, with a round turret at each end, garrotted on the top, and a hall rising in the midst above the rest, which yeildeth a stately sound as you enter the same. In the summer the open casements admit a refreshing coolness, in the winter the two closed doors exclude all offensive coldness; the parlour and dining chamber give you a large and diversified prospect of land and sea.

So much was his admiration that he commissioned Sir Arthur Champernowne to design a wooden banqueting hall for Antony‘with four rounded corners, like Mount Edgcumbe’.

The Edgcumbes, considered the wealthiest family in Cornwall, assumed senior government and court positions with Sir Richard’s grandson, Richard (1571-1639) being created a Knight in 1603 at the coronation of James I. During the Civil War, Colonel Piers Edgcumbe (1609-1666) held Mount Edgcumbe for the king but eventually surrendered to the Parliamentarians in 1646. Other than the outbuildings and Banqueting Hall being set on fire the house avoided damaged. Sir Piers retreated to Cotehele where he stayed until his death surviving to see his son Richard (1640-88) Knighted at the Restoration. Sir Richard favoured the opulence of Mount Edgcumbe and twice entertained the monarch there in July 1671 and August 1677. In 1675 he and his wife Lady Anne Montagu forged connections with fashionable London architect Robert Hooke who was simultaneously building Montagu House for Sir Richard’s wife’s family. Hooke recorded in his diary

Tues 27 July 1675 – ‘Sir R. Edgecomb desired designe of house’

Fri 30 July 1675 – ‘Drew Sir R. Edgcomb’s House shewd it him and his Lady. They liked it but to have it a little alterd’

Mon 2 August 1675 – ‘Finish second Draught for Sir Richard Edgecomb’

Tues 3 August 1675 – ‘Finisht Sir R. Edgecomb’s draught. To Sir R. Edgecomes with Fitch’ (John Fitch, master carpenter who was one of Hooke’s most frequently used contractors)

Wed 1 September 1675 ─ ‘With Sir R. Edgcomb and Mr. Austen (perhaps Ralph Austin, a writer on gardening and an acquaintance of Hooke’s) viewing house inLeicesterfields, and inAir Street’.

Quite what this last entry refers to we cannot be sure but Hooke often took architectural clients to see existing houses in Londonto get some idea of what they wanted. These entries may associate with a London residence but the indication of John Fitch being present creates an interesting tie with the Fitchs work for the Grenvilles on the north coast of Cornwall at Stowe.

It may be more than mere co-incidence to see alterations at Mount Edgcumbe, perhaps from Hooke, from the latter decades of the 17th-century. The central clerestory hall was elevated further, the windows enlarged, the old Tudor doorway was replaced with a granite classical frame and a pedimented, red-brick Banqueting Hall replaced the fire damaged timber framed building alongside the house and linked by a corridor range. To celebrate the completion of this phase of building works two artists were commissioned to produce paintings. A pair by W. du Busc dates to before 1692 when works had started on the naval dockyard across the river near Plymouthand show a Gatehouse building at the bottom of a well-wooded avenue leading down to the waterfront. Another painting by Gerald van Edema illustrates several buildings around Cremyll where the ferry delivered the Edgcumbes from Plymouth to the bottom of the drive. The 17th-century traveller Celia Fiennes gave us the most comprehensive description of Mount Edgcumbe

…it stands on the side of a hill all bedecked with woods, which are divided into several rows of trees in walks, the house being all of this white marble; its built round as Court so the four sides are alike, at the corners of it are towers which with the Lanthorne (lantern) or Cupilow (cupola) in the middle looks well; the house is not very lofty nor the windows high but it looked like a very uniforme neate building and pretty large; there is a long walke from one part of the front down to the waterside…there is a fine terrass walled in at the water side with open gates in the middle, and summer house at each end from whence a wall is drawn round the house and gardens, and a large parck the walls of which I rode by a good while; so that altogether and its situation makes it esteemed by me the finest seat I have seen , and might be more rightly named Mount Pleaseant.

A 1729 estate map which was later transcribed into a ‘birds-eye’ illustration by Thomas Badeslade shows Richard Edgcumbe’s (1680-1758) flourishing gardens that Celia Fiennes was so enamoured with. By this time a new walled garden, not mentioned by Fiennes, had been built on the riverbank. When John Loveday visited the house in 1736 he found it underwhelming

The house is old, built castle-wise of rough Stone plastered; it is not very large – the front is handsome, round towers at the extremity. The house is in bad repair and wants furniture. In the hall (among other paintings) are those by Prince Rupert in a black wig with truncheon…of William, Prince of Orange (afterwards King) in his own hair, armed, a handsome likeness…Opposite to one another out of this Room are two very plain Stair-cases; the pleasantest Rooms are those angular ones in the towers which also take-in a View of Plimouth-town in a Valley.

His account of the house wanting furniture may suggest the dispersal of contents and indeed Mount Edgcumbe marble was to be found at Wilton House in 1751. The family continued to thrive at Mount Edgcumbe under Richard Edgcumbe, MP who was a great friend of Robert Walpole, twice Lord of the Treasury and created 1^st Baron Mount Edgcumbe

Dr Richard Pococke who had ‘the pleasure to be shown Mount Edgcumbe by the lord of it and his sons’ in 1750 considered the house ‘by far the finest situation I ever saw’ adding that he enjoyed the views and prospect of a ‘moveable camera obscura, made in a centry box, which shuts up’. Gilpin some years later in 1775, like Pococke, had little to say of the house other than ‘it pretends only to be a comfortable dwelling’. Curiously, neither mentions the extensive building works of 1749 when the round corner towers which were considered to be impractical were replaced with octagonal towers and the windows were further heightened. William Borlase’s 1756 illustration shows a curvilinear roof over the main hall and a Gibbsian style building at the rear. In 1759 the London Chronicle reported of Prince Edward’s visit to Mount Edgcumbe where the Prince, ‘Lord Edgcumbe and several other persons of distinction, in six or eight boats, as far as the water would bear them, towards the salmon weir at Calstock’. Once the salmon were caught ‘A cold collation was conveyed from the Mount to Cuthill (the ancient seat of the Edgcumbes on the Cornish side of the Tamar) to regale the company on their return’. At this time Sir Richard was a great patron of Joshua Reynolds and the oval Dining Room contained three generations of family portraits by the Devonian artist. Sadly only one survived the bombing of 1941.

During the 18th-century the gardens were much improved later stimulating William Beckford to ‘delight in the picturesque fragments’ when ‘breathing the soft air of Mount Edgcumbe’ In 1742 several garden buildings were constructed including an archaic Doric pavilion, based in part on the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli (as illustrated in Palladio’s Four Books of Architecture to which Edgcumbe was a subscriber to the Issac Ware edition of 1738), a Gothic ruin of 1747 created from architectural salvage from local churches and the circular Temple of 1755 inscribed with apt words from Milton’s Paradise Lost. Barretti, an Italian traveller, remarked of the gardens in 1760 ‘they speak of the Chartreuse atNaples, and they say it is the finest situation on the world. I believe it is: but Mount Edgcumbe is also the finest: and so you have two finest, one atNaples and the other in Devonshire’. The gardens were not so well received by all and perhaps tinged with jealousy in 1773 Lord Temple wrote to Lady Chatham from his Welsh holiday

….a most picturesque ruin of a Castle standing on a rocky eminence over the River Conway bedeck’d with mountains, a most beautiful wood on the side, lovely hills and a long reach of River to your left, the Sea on your Right, numberless enclosures constitute I think a more pleasing scene that any at Mount Edgcumbe.

Sir Richard’s second son George (1721-95), 3^rd Baron from 1761 was created 1^st Viscount Mount Edgcumbe and Valletort in 1781 and 1^st Earl of Mount Edgcumbe in 1789. He built the Orangery in the Italian garden which was designed by Thomas Pitt, Lord Camelford, in 1787. A later description tells of a party which ‘partook of a cold collation, intermixed with hot soups, in the orangery, a noble building of the Doric order, one hundred feet in length’. Lord George was a prominent antiquarian and as such had a great allure to Cotehele. By the turn of the century the Mount Edgucumbe gardens were a masterwork in the celebration of the arts. A visitor of 1805 described ‘all the beauties of nature collected together; Hill & Dale, most luxuriant woods, fine lawns with a Wilderness & variety of beautiful buildings’. Louis Simond, a French travel writer visited in 1810, saying little about the house but marvelled at the garden while Joseph Faringdon, landscape painter and diarist, visited in the same year remarking ‘ I only saw one instance of bad taste at Mount Edgcumbe, which was a building erected to appear as a ruin. The form of it is bad; and the situation of it is worse’,

Despite the 1788 ‘internal improvements’ for the anticipated visit of George III and Queen Charlotte and the addition of a west wing in 1800 the house and interiors were still considered by some to be unfashionable. A visitor from Berkshire, Mrs Price wrote in 1805

…did not go into Lord Mount Edgcumbe’s house as it is not esteemed worth seeing but is a large stone Gothic building & makes a good figure from the grounds & I apprehended would be much more respected were it not for the fine new modern house of Lord Borringdon’s which is so near it & is built in the Grecian style of architecture.

During the first half of the 19th-century a great deal of building activity was centred on Mount Edgcumbe. The 2^nd Earl, Lord Richard (1764-1839), commissioned James Adams, pupil of Sir John Soane and son of James Adams of Stonehouse, in 1818 to produce plans for an extension to the house which the architect exhibited at the Royal Academy under the title ‘addition made to Mount Edgcumbe House near Plymouth’. Across the river at Stonehouse, Sir John Rennie and Philip Richards built the huge Royal William Victualling Yard for the British Navy which changed the outlook from the park significantly. In 1839 the 3^rd Earl, Ernest Augustus (1797-1861), commissioned George Wightwick to carry out additions and alterations to the house. Wightwick’s drawings dated 1841 in the RIBA shows changes to the central hall tower, a turrett was added onto the east elevation and conservatory to the south, new bedchambers were proposed and improvements were to be made to the Gallery, Entrance Hall (using Corinthian ordered columns) and staircase. John Claudius Loudon commented on these works in September 1842, he wrote

We were sorry to see some alterations going on in the house, the object of which, as it appeared to us, was to change the entrance from the back, where it is at present, to the front where it will display the finest views from the place before entering the house.

Louden also remarked on the overgrown and abandoned gardens which he considered had an effect ‘on the mind [was] sublime in the highest degree, but yet blended with the beautiful. There was something to us unearthly in the feeling it created’. Wightwick’s additions were sensitive to the historical integrity of the building and several paintings of the completed works remain in the house today. The 3^rd Earl’s declining health pressed him to build a property more suitable for the winter months. In 1856 he commissioned the unknown builder Walter Roberts to built him a 50-room Winter Villa ‘peculiarly constructed throughout and admirably adapted for an invalid, and being built under his Lordship’s direction, arrangements have been made for his own especial accommodation which he could not obtain in any other residence’ across the river on Devil’s Point at Stonehouse. This magnificent property with a river frontage of 150 feet and a 4 feet wide balcony had full heating and humidity control systems powered by steam which was partially for his recuperation and partly to extend his social life nearer Plymouth to avoid an unpleasant river crossing late at night. The Earl got little use out of the Winter Villa dying soon after its completion. His son William (1833-1917) as aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria, travelled extensively becoming a Conservative MP until his father’s death when, as 4^th Earl, he became Lord Chamberlain of the Royal Household. The Winter Villa was by the 1870s ‘inhabited from time to time by noblemen and others who may be making a brief term of residence in this locality’. After a time as a nursing home the villa was purchased by the Sisters of Nazareth who continued the building’s use as a nursing home until it was abandoned and eventually demolished in 1975.

Lord Ernest’s widow favoured Cotehele and executed significant building works that rendered it a home. Mount Edgcumbe however thrived under the ownership of the 4^th and 5^th Earls and remained largely as the Torpoint artist Nicholas Condy had painted it in c. 1850, until 1941 when, along with its important collection, the house was severely damaged by an incendiary bomb during enemy action. The 5^th Earl, Lord Piers (1865-1944) died soon after and with him the direct male line died out. The house remained a shell until 1958 when the War Damage Commission supported by the Ancient Monuments Department commissioned the architect Adrian Gilbert Scott to rebuild the house along the old plan. Scott deployed the Georgian style, introducing the main staircase in the hall surmounted by a first floor continuous Gallery around the top-lit hall. The family moved back in 1960 after spending a reported £100, 000 on its restoration. The 7^th Earl whose branch of the family had moved toNew Zealand during the 19th-century returned to Mount Edgcumbe to make it once again the family home. His son, Lord Robert (b.1939), moved out of the house in 1987 and leased it back to Cornwall County Council and Plymouth City Council who have restored much of the park and provide access to the historic house and its collections.

No 76 South Audley Street and Mrs Mary Hunt (1740-1824)

Paper Presented to the Women’s History Network Conference, ‘Women, Art and Culture: Historical Perspectives’, Southampton University 2-4 September 2005

Mary Bold (below) was one of six daughters born to Peter Bold MP (1705-62) of Bold Hall near Liverpool and his wife Anna Maria. In 1765 she married Thomas Hunt MP and moved into the newly refurbished Mollington Hall in Cheshire.[1] Mrs Mary Hunt immediately sat for two portraits: the first illustrated here, was by Joseph Wright of Derby and the second,

this – a more striking three-quarter length portrait by George Romney.[2] Thomas Hunt’s elder brother George (1720-1798) had relinquished all rights to Mollington Hall once he had succeeded to his mother’s estate of Lanhydrock in Cornwall; therefore in 1788 at the time of Thomas Hunt’s death, Mollington Hall, the Hunt’s town houses and his Cambridgeshire estate were bequeathed to his wife Mary.[3] Furthermore, she was appointed the sole guardian of their only surviving child, Anna Maria, controlling unlimited funds for her ‘Maintenance’.[4]  Mrs Hunt devoted the next nine years of her life to Mollington Hall before it was sold in 1796 to John Feilden of WhittonPark, Blackburn. The sale enforced a permanent moved to herLondon town house at No 76 South Audley Street in the parish of St George, Middlesex.

Mary Bold 1761 -1824 by George Romney

This paper will portray Mrs Mary Hunt as a consumer of taste and elegance in both life and death. First, we will look at her London townhouse and its interiors fulfilling, in part, the Georgian model of propriety and affluence. Second, primary source material held at Lanhydrock House permits us a rare insight into the last months of Mrs Hunt’s life experiencing, through her private and public financial  transactions, her declining heath, anguished death and lavish funeral.[5]

Mrs Hunt was an extremely dedicated mother. Illustrated below is a portrait of  her daughter Anna Maria (1771-1861) painted in seven sittings between 30 March and 1 June 1792by George Romney at his studio in Cavendish Square– the picture was commissioned by her uncle George Hunt and was paid for and delivered to Seymour Placeon 20 June 1793.[6] In 1799, George Hunt conferred the Cornish estate of Lanhydrock with huge mineral reserves, an impressive mansion and an estate encompassing a third of Cornwall onto his niece. Both mother and daughter were regular visitors to Lanhydrock, a property they affectionately called their  ‘country cottage’. Well travelled, the couple also took summer seasons in Brighton, Tunbridge Wells and Ramsgate as well as excursions to the family home of Bold Hall in Lancashire.[7] On 2 November 1804 Anna Maria married the successful London barrister Charles Bagenal Agar (1769-1811), the youngest son of the Viscount Clifden. The marriage licence records that the ceremony was held ‘in the dwelling house of Mrs Mary Hunt in South Audley Street’.[8] The couple soon sought a marital home near to South Audley Street looking first at property on the south side of Upper Brook Street but eventually taking 19 Hereford Street, St Marylebone.[9] In 1807, Anna Maria returned to the parish of St George, to be near her ailing mother, taking the lease of No 1 Dean Street the house immediately adjoining No 76 South Audley Street.[10] Anna Maria’s life went on to be somewhat tragic. Of her three children two died young, Charles, aged 4 and Edward, aged 9.[11] Furthermore, her husband died prematurely in 1811 after only 7 years of marriage – she out lived him by fifty-years. In the will of Charles Agar both Anna Maria and Mary Hunt were named as guardians to his children Thomas James (1808-82) and, the then unborn, Edward.[12]

Anna Maria Hunt 1771-1861) by George Romney

When No 76 South Audley Street was built the area south of Grosvenor Chapel was no more than fields and parkland.[13] By 1746 when Rocque’s Map of London was published the neighbourhood had developed substantially, particularly the 100 acres to the north where the Grosvenor estate was laid out. Despite making the locality so much more sophisticated both in architecture and culture the well-rutted road still infamously harboured lawless gangs and desperate delinquents.[14] Mrs Hunt’s house was positioned on the corner of South Audley Street and Dean Street (now Deanery Street), looking across towards Audley Square and Issac Ware’s Palladian masterwork – Chesterfield House. It was notably the first house outside of the southern extent of the Grosvenor Estate, the ground lease being owned by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. This five-storey corner townhouse with polygonal bay windows on each street frontage was built, no later than 1740, by ‘one of the most successful builder / architects of his time’-Edward Shepherd. Architecturally the house remains uncharacteristic of Shepherd’s work especially when compared to his more prestigious houses at No’s 71-75 South Audley Street situated immediately to the north on the Grosvenor estate. As Shepherd was paying the rates on No.76 in 1740, it is likely, as The Survey of London notes, that Shepherd himself lived there while he continued his architectural commissions in the Mayfair area.[15] Thomas Hunt paid the rates on this house from 1768 until his death in 1788 when Mrs Hunt took over payments until her own death in 1824. The only break in this schedule was in 1793-4 when Lady Williams Wynne paid as the property’s tenant.[16].

No 76 was an impressive property. It retained a spacious frontage of ‘40 feet and 8 inches’ along two streets and, to the rear, a diminutive forty-seven feet four inches square garden looked beyond to what an 1803 London Guide referred to as the ‘refreshing sward’ of Hyde Park where ‘people of fashion often go in their carriages…and send their servants with jugs for its [spring] water’.[17]  The window tax accrued in 1824 was for 37 windows amounting to £6 7s 8d while the house tax was £14 3s 4d.[18] Photographic evidence confirms that the terraced houses between Dean Street and Tilney Street were largely built in darkened brick although No.76, it would appear, was had a stuccowork finish. Indeed, a recipe for green stucco wash addressed to Mrs Hunt survives in the Lanhydrock archive and seems to be redolent of a similar desire to render the exterior of Lanhydrock House in a yellow wash during the late eighteenth century.[19]

On 20 May 1824, four weeks after Mrs Hunt’s death, a probate inventory was taken recording the ‘Household Furniture, Plate, Linen, China, Glass, Books, Wine and other Effects of the late Mrs Hunt.[20] The appraisers listed the house from top to bottom; therefore each room on each floor can be identified with some certainty. At the very top was three attic rooms, two at the front and one to the rear while the second floor comprised of two front rooms with a larger back chamber, all being bedrooms. Overlooking the road on the first floor was a front drawing room with adjoining anti room and at the rear was the back drawing room. The front of the house can be identified as being on Dean Street where the front door was positioned. This led into a ground floor hall with an impressive staircase leading into a Dining Room with a large Library to the rear overlooking the garden. The service areas in the basement consisted of a Housekeeper’s Room, Pantry and large kitchen.

Architecturally Mrs Hunt’s interiors were impressive although not overly ostentatious. The Survey of London records that ‘some of the ceilings strikingly resembled those at No.74’ and indeed photographic evidence from No.76 prior to demolition in 1970, now housed the London Metropolitan Archive, shows Shepherd’s typical heavy plasterwork style on display on both houses. Nowhere was this more recognisable than in the ground floor Library where the heavy, coffered ceiling overwhelms the rest of the room’s decoration indeed resembling that of the Portuguese Embassy at No.74 South Audley Street.[21] In 1824, due to Mrs Hunt’s incapibilities, this Library housed her ‘4 poster bedstead and furniture’. The reason for moving the bed downstairs would appear to be as much for convenience as for comfort – in particular any heat transfer from the main kitchen below would have been a major benefit. Other than the bed, few items are mentioned in this room, and those that are mentioned remain austere as, for example, ‘green morine curtains’, 4 painted rush seats and a wainscot bureau.

The Dining Room too, had modest architectural embellishment but remained the most comprehensively furnished room in the house. A ‘6ft mah.y dining table on pillar and claw’ and ‘2 flap dining table’ graced the centre of the room alongside a mahogany sideboard, a painted deal pillar and claw table with green cover, 12 mahogany chairs, a Pembroke table, brass wine cooler, pot cupboard, a six leaved screen and a plate warmer.

The crimson Front Drawing Room with its sophisticated domed ceiling had simple furnishings as aKidderminstercarpet, 12 japanned cane seat chairs and a matching sofa, card tables, girandole and bronze candelabra with marble pedestals and a single portrait in gilt frame. The back Drawing Room showed little in the way of ceiling decoration although the walls displayed some simple, yet elegant stuccoed panels. Again, the crimson curtains, a Kidderminster carpet and unadorned furnishings as a pier glass, 12 rush chairs, 2 glass candelabra, 2 small tables, a drawing in a frame and the only named portrait – that of Soame Jenyns MP. These two Drawing rooms occupied the bay windowed areas. To complete the first floor was a small room adjoining the Front Drawing Room. Only a spinning wheel, deal bookshelves, 6 rush chairs and some gaming cards and counters were identified as being in this room.

The second floor bedrooms were all functional and tastefully furnished. Unfortunately no photographs were taken of these rooms prior to demolition. One bedroom had ‘a stained beech tent bedstead with painted cotton furniture’ and, in the main Back Chamber there was a mahogany 4 post bedstead with green morine furniture. This master bedroom also contained an oval and swing pier glass between the two windows both draped with cotton curtains, a Watmanteau chest of drawers, two mahogany tables, night convenience and a wainscot cupboard and bureau. All of the bedrooms had aKidderminstercarpet; many of the carpets in the house were underlain with Brussels carpet. Of the uncarpeted Attic rooms, all three were sparsely furnished although two of the rooms contained 4 post bedsteads. The inventory indicates that the house furnishings were practical rather than opulent, demonstrating that, although influenced by contemporary fashions there was reluctance for extravagant spending in her senior years. There were no high status carpets, chintz and cotton curtains were mixed with heavy morine fabrics and there appears to be a distinct lack of beautification. Yet, the colour schemes of crimson and green were popular by the standards of the day and advocated by the likes of contemporary stylists as D.R. Hay. The  rooms did contained elements of Regency comfort, defined by the poet John Keats as ‘fireside joys’ as, for example, pole fire screens, carved and gilt girandole, a reading stand, tea caddies, a spinning wheel and card tables. The complete contents of the house were ‘valued and appraised at the sum of £409 15s 6d’ which included listed items of copperware, the contents of the wine cellar, china and glass, linen, plate, books and finally ‘the whole of the wearing apparel’.

 Although entertaining, it would seem, was a thing of the past the wine cellar boasted 70 bottles of port, 98 of sherry, 151 of Madeira, 71 of Buccllas, 32 of Lisbon, 32 of Vidonia and 3 of rum along with 37 dozen empty bottles ready for collection. Beer was also delivered frequently from the nearby Swan Brewhouse with the last delivery being on the 15 April.  Mrs Hunt’s reading materials were listed separately being predominately published sermons by the likes of Blair, Carr and Gilpen, and contemporary literature as Eveline, Ceceilia, Tom Jones, Mysteries of Udolpho and the Vicar of Wakefield. Her regular newspaper was the Herald and her £1 1s annual subscription to the Philanthropic Society’s Manufactory in St George’s Field ensured that repairs of all kinds, from bookbinding to shoe repairs, tailors work to the supply of rope were taken into account.[22]

A collection of invoices and receipts dating from New Year 1824 shows that despite Mrs Hunt’s state of debility, her life continued to have some semblance of normality. In the house itself maintenance work was carried out on the kitchen range, the copperware was repaired and tinned, the glazier inserted some green glass into a stained panel, the chimney sweep and draper called and kitchen utensils were purchased.[23] Stoddart &Co repaired a mahogany table in January, the plumbers repaired the water pump in March and Glossop, the oilman, delivered 2 gallon of spurn oil every fortnight.[24]  As for the staff, the butler, John Tyrell, received a new striped waistcoat, a pair of black velveteen breeches, a light blue livery second cloth coat and a hat costing in total over £13.[25]

Many of the invoices correlate to the cost of living in London. Tax was a costly outgoing. Mrs Hunt’s two resident staff accrued a male servant’s tax of £1 11s plus hair powder tax at £1 3s 6d.  Interestingly enough the servants wages were often listed and paid through Anna Maria’s household accounts although the money was always recompensed by her mother.[26] Mrs Hunt’s four wheeled carriage, which was on hire from a T Barnes, cost £67 8s per annum complete with fitments with a further expense of £3 tax per annum. As the invoice was dated for the year commencing 2 May 1824, it would appear that Anna Maria had the use of it throughout that year, she continued to pay the tax of £3 for 1825.[27]  Other excises incurred included amorial bearing tax at £1 4s, Parish tax comprising of church rate, poor and highways rate, watch rate and paving, repairing, cleansing and lighting rate, combined totalled £9 7s for 2 quarters.[28]  The pew rent for Grosvenor Chapel amounted to £6 16s 6d per annum, this was paid 6 days before Mrs Hunt’s death. Lastly, to the Office of Grand Junction Water Works,Brook Street, water rates were due to the sum of £3 3s and a receipt from a Mr James London for £1 1s was paid for the watering ofSouth Audley Street.

Mrs Hunt’s physical deterioration was also well documented. By the age of 51 her teeth and gums were particularly painful, she accordingly took Crews Tincture, a mixture of myrrh and bark to alleviate the pain.[29] Another prescription for Spence’s bark Tincture was given by ‘Jones the Chemist of Covent Garden opposite Bridges Street’.[30] There appears to have been some adverse affects from this dubious concoction as a subsequent piece of correspondence records ‘Mr Spence would have you see Jones himself I believe there is something more than bark in the bottle’.[31] Soon after she was applying camphorated julep to her aching teeth and using Farquhar’s water dock medicine for ‘decoction’. However, her health was worsening by 1804 when she was considered ‘…too ill to execute’ Anna Maria’s marriage settlement.[32] In 1813, while at Bedford Square in Brighton, Mrs Hunt was receiving prescriptions from London for senna laxatives, a jaundice cure, emetic and a mixture to alleviate pain in the bowel.[33] Thereafter movements of the bowel seemed to take some prominence in letters to her daughter. The amount of draughts prescribed in her last two weeks had increased from three to six and there was a regular application of leeches. Bedsores too were a problem, cold creams and blister dressings were recommend. She had heat in the windpipe, her eyes and mouth had developed sores which were treated relatively effectively and Mr Fordham, surgeon and apothecary has also visited prescribing further sleeping pills and fever powders.[34] In the last three and a half months of her life Mr Andrews the apothecary had supplied in total  a considerable £56 5s 6d of medicines and cures.[35]

Mrs Mary Hunt died two days after a visit by Mr Andrews on 19 April 1824. The day after Mrs Hunt’s death Jonathon Jones removed ‘the feather bed & bolster of the best bed’ for cleaning, stuffing and pressing.[36] On 21 April Mrs Hunt’s death notice was inserted into the Herald, the Times, the Carrier and the Chronicle at a cost of £1 17s. The announcement ran

 

On the 19^th inst., at her house, in South Audley- Street, loved and respected by all that knew her, Mary, relict of the late Thomas Hunt, Esq., aged 85.[37]

The Stamp office recorded that she had £194 7s 6d cash in the house, £4,548 16s 2d in the bank and her estate was valued at £55,742 6s 7d on which 1% stamp duty was charged.[38] Her only surviving daughter Anna Maria Agar was the sole beneficiary of the will although her most loyal servants Mary Jones, Phillippa Sleep and John Tyrell, were given very generous bequests of £600, £500 and £400 respectively. On 2 June 1824 the same staff received outstanding wages for the period up to and including 19 April. Two staff, Sarah Tyrell and Dorothy Shipman also received outstanding wages with lesser legacies of £10 each. John Tyrell, Mrs Hunt’s Butler, helped sort out her estate paying many of the bills.[39]

Mrs Hunt’s funeral was, as expected, a lavish affair. The undertaker Mr Jones of 29 Duke Street, Grosvenor Square, presented his bill on the 28 May 1824for £99 15s 6d.[40] By comparison when Mrs Hunt’s grandson died 6 years prior, his funeral amounted to £38 7s 6d.[41] On 20 April mourning hats were commissioned from Joseph Slack for the Butler and 2 footmen and four days later Ann Hird made mourning livery for the butler comprising of black second cloth coat, waistcoat and breeches with epaulet.[42] A further invoice also dated 24 April for Ann Hird itemises some higher status mourning clothing being a superfine black cloth coat and a black kerseymere waistcoat and breeches.[43] Amongst the funeral accoutrements were the best black ‘ostridge’ feathers, a hearse and 2 mourning coaches with 6 horses and 10 horses respectively and a funeral hatchment. Of the personnel required for such a grand affair, 4 coach pages, 8 horse pages, 3 coach men, 2 porters, 4 manservant’s and 3 feather men were employed with an allowance for their refreshment given at £1 13s. Another major expense were the dues presented to ‘St Georges new ground for new longer vault’. On 14 June 1824 Mrs Agar paid 40 guineas for ‘a space in No 3 New Burial Vault in St Georges Row 6ft 6in long and 2ft 6in wide’.[44] On the 28 July the bodies of Anna Maria’s husband, two children and mother were removed from various parts of the burial vault into the private vault at a cost of 15s.  Two days later William Parker, Furnishing Ironmonger, was paid £22 4s for ‘ironwork to enclose a private burial vault and inscription plate on the gate in vault under the chapel in St Georges Row’ the ‘large brass plate’ read ‘The family Burial Vault of Mrs A.M.Agar’.[45]

As for No76 South Audley Streetthe marriage settlement of Anna Maria and Charles Bagenal Agar from 1804 states that

…upon the death of her mother [Anna Maria] will become entitled by virtue of her said father’s will to have two dwelling houses situate in South Audley Street aforesaid of the yearly value of £300.[46]

After the irksome task of winding up her mother’s estate Anna Maria took a well deserved thirteen week break in Ramsgate. Before visiting family in Chesterin December she had to sort out the future of No.76 South Audley Street. [47] An agreement of lease was drawn up in August 1824 ‘by Joseph Slack of South Audley Street on the part of Mrs Agar of 1 Dean Street and Robert Jerrad of Oxford Street on the part of Lady Maria Cotes of 37 Charles Street Berkley Square’.[48] Slack was evidently a trusted friend of Mrs Hunt and Anna Maria Agar as in June 1815 he witnessed a promissory note between the two for seven thousand pounds.[49] In September 1824 Dame Maria Cotes occupied the house complete with all fixtures at a rent of £290 per annum.[50] Finally, as an incidental footnote to this paper maybe the cosmopolitan nature of theSouth Audley Street area was portrayed by an interesting clause added to the lease

…a further yearly rent or sum of £50 in case the dwelling be used or occupied as for a Butchers House or shops or Slaughter House Brewhouse or Coffee  House or shall be used by a Tallow Chandler or Melter of Tallow, Soapmaker, tobacco pipe maker victualler distiller farrier pewterer working brazier or blacksmith or in for or about any other noisy noxious or offensive trade or business whatsoever.[51]

---

[1] J.W. Clarke, Mollington Hall,

[2] Alex Kidson, George Romney (1734-1802), National Portrait Gallery, 2002, p78

[3] George and Thomas Hunt were the first and third born of Mary Vere Robartes (d.1758) of Lanhydrock and Thomas Hunt (1684-1739). Will of Thomas Hunt dated4 June 1788.Cornwall Record Office CL 1307. Thomas Hunt was buried ‘near the remains of my Dear Child in thechurch ofSt Mary’s in the City ofChester’, his eldest daughter Mary Vere died in 1780 aged 14.

[4] Will of Thomas Hunt

[5] Housed in a small jewellery case are numerous outstanding invoices and settled receipts carefully gathered together by her dedicated daughter, Mrs Anna Maria Agar in the weeks after her mother’s death.

[6] Thanks to Alex Kidson for this information. George Hunt lived at6 Seymour Street

[7] LAN/2/JLE/19 & 21 letters dated6/1/1804 &6/10/1804. CRO CL416

[8] CL303. (CL416). Mary Hunt and Elizabeth Lewis were witnesses to the marriage.

[9] There subsequent homes were at11 Great Cumberland Street and in 1808 they moved out of town toKingston-on-Thames.

[10] CRO CL 416

[11] CRO CL416, Baptism registers

[12] Charles Agar probate

[13]WestminsterCity Archives

[14] For an excellent background to this area ofMayfair in the eighteenth century refer to Tara Draper, ‘No 10 Hertford Street, Georgian Group Journal, Volume IX, 1999, pp116-17E. Beresford Chancellor p208, Tim Mowl and Brian Earnshaw, An Insular Rococo, 1999, p174

[15]Westminster Archives Centre, St George,Hanover Square Ratebooks, 1740. For details of Shepherd’s career see Colvin, pp.864-5. Survey ofLondon, Chapter XVI, p 290

[16]Westminster Archives Centre, St George,Hanover Square Ratebooks, 1795-1824. Mrs Hunt also paid rates fore her tenants between 1789-1792. I would like to thank John Greenacombe of the Survey of London for his help.

[17] CL303. The Picture of London  for 1803,London, 1803, pp63-4. CL303

[18] Payments made to ‘Mortlock, Collector, 19,New Norfolk Street’.

[19] Paul Holden. Lanhydrock House, (National Trust, 2008)

[20] Taken by H. Mathews, 16 Bridge Row, Walbrook and Jonathan Jones,29 Duke Street,Grosvenor Square.

[21] In particular compare LMA 69/1267 (No 76 Library) to NMR 75/12/23698 (No 74)

[22] Appraisal was dated19 May 1824 the day before the inventory date. The invoice of £12 was received by Jonathan Jones on28 May 1824.

[23] W & C Feetham, Patent Stove makers and Furnishing Ironmongers No 9 Ludgate Hill andNo296 Oxford Street. Invoice for purchases between 9 January and 15 April. Geo Watts painter and plumber £11 3s 6d

[24] Messrs Stoddart & Elgin, 13 South Street, Joseph Sear, Plumber 35 Mount Street, Francis Glossop 180 Piccadilly opp Burlington House,

[25] See note – hat bought from Joseph Slack, Hatter and Hosier of 62 South Audley Street costing £1 11s

[26] LAN.MS.2128

[27] The bill was paid on26 May 1824. Tax paid on Lady Day 1825.

[28] The water works office was on the Corner of South Molton Street.

[29] Recipe for ‘Tincture for the Teeth’ 1791

[30] Undated recipe being ‘1 pint Tincture of bark, 1 pint arquabesade’ once mixed with 4 times the quantity of water.

[31] Note marked ‘Mrs Hunt Spence for teeth’

[32] LAN.EP.393 & 4. Her concern over health issues extended to her daughter pregnancy when a Mary Sawbridge and Mrs Barnes recommended a ‘plaister’ applied to the back to prevent miscarriage Her concern over health issues extended to her daughter pregnancy when a Mary Sawbridge and Mrs Barnes recommended a ‘plaister’ applied to the back to prevent miscarriage. LAN.EP.388. Dated 19 May and delivered to Mrs Hunt by a faithful servant

[33] Draughts numbered 1-4 from Mr Brande cover datedOct 17 1813

[34] A letter from C. Berers, dated May 6^th states ‘I hope you will find as much good, as I have, and is very pleasant and cool to ones throat – I recommend it to all that have heat in the wind-pipe’. E.P. Fordham, Surgeon invoice for  7 February to10 April 1824 amounted to £2 3s 6d

[35] Letter C Berers to Mrs Hunt, Audley Street, Thursday May 6^th.

[36] Invoice dated20 April 1824. J Jones of 29 Duke Street,Grosvenor Square charged £2 5s..

[37] The Times,Wednesday, April  21, 1824.

[38] Stamp Office Register HY No.2 Fol. 430 dated15 July 1825

[39] In July 1824 John Tyrell received the annual ground rent of £1 11s of John Bridges

[40] Full itinerary of expenses dated19 April 1824 ‘The Hon Mrs Agar (to J Jones ) for the Funeral of Mrs Mary Hunt’. The money was paid to Jonathon Jones on28 May 1824

[41] Bill from Bruneton Shinger,10 Marshall St,Golden Square.  DatedJuly 25 1818.

[42] Invoiced dated15 April 1824 from Ann Hird, seamstress.  With two further second cloth jackets, pair of cord breeches and waistcoat the invoice amounted to £11 6s 6d.

[43] total £7 4s

[44] Paid to the Parish of St George Hanover Square received by Mr Parker. The agreement says that the enclosure will be surrounded by ‘iron railing at the expense of the said Mrs Agar’ and that the ‘regular burial fee to be paid on each corpse being brought into the vault – the sum now paid being to secure the place – £42.

[45] Invoice dated 27 July William Parker, no185 Oxford Street.  Receipt dated 30 July.

[46] Courtney Library HJ/1977/44

[47] LAN.MS.2128

[48] CL303

[49] Written on29 June 1815 and signed by Mary Hunt.

[50] CL303

[51] CL303

Antony House, near Torpoint

Antony House has been the home of the Carew family since the early 15^th-century when Sir Nicholas Carew of Haccombe in Devon married Joan Courtenay of Boconnoc. At the time of her death in 1465 she bestowed the manor of East Antony onto her fourth son, Alexander (d.1492) whose house stood a half a mile to the east of its present position close to the picturesque peninsula formed by the rivers Lynher and Tamar near Torpoint. All that remains of this earlier dwelling are the remnants of Tudor panelling in the hall of the present Georgian house. Alexander’s grandson, Wymond (d.1549) held a senior position at the court of King Henry VIII and served as receiver-general in the household’s of three of the king’s wives Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves and Catherine Parr.

Carew’s position as one of the foremost Cornish families was ensured through marriages into powerful local families ─ Thomas Carew (d.1564), one of Sir Wymond’s fourteen children, married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Richard Edgcumbe in 1554 while Thomas’ sons Richard and George married the daughter’s of John Arundell of Trerice and Sir Francis Godolphin of Godolphin respectively.

The Oxford and Middle Temple educated Richard Carew (d.1620) (below) ran the Antony estate from 1577 and spent a considerable time writing his Survey of Cornwall which was first published in 1602 and is still in print today. In this work he describes Antony as ‘our cold harbour…the poor home of mine ancestors’ adding ‘My fish-pond is my delight’. His ambitious dyked fish-pond was to have included a lodge or banqueting house designed ‘by that perfectly accomplished gentleman, the late Sir Arthur Champernowne’ of Dartington ─ although never built the two storey wooden pavilion with balconies and corner round towers was perhaps inspired by nearby Mount Edgcumbe.

John Norden commented on the house as ‘…profitable and pleasantly seated’ and gave us a further description of the fish-pond which was ‘upon the creek of the sea [a] very artificially contrive a pond of Salt water, and that stored with much and great variety of good sea-fish’. Antony at this time would have been considered a modest house, Richard Carew judged his own social class as ‘…keep[ing] Liberal, but not costly builded or furnished houses…’. An exceptional scholar he died in his library at Antony leaving the estates to his son Richard (1579-c.1643) a staunch Puritan who, despite being created a Baronet by Charles I in 1641, supported the Parliamentarian cause in Cornwall. Challenging the Carews overwhelming support for the Royalist cause Sir Richard alongside his son Alexander (1609-44), later 2^nd Baronet, attempted to raise the Cornish Militia against the Crown. Sir Alexander questioned his loyalties just as the success of his forces in the south-west looked dubious; Clarendon wrote ‘he was so sottishly and dangerously wary of his own security…that he would not proceed till he was sufficiently assured that his pardon was passed by the Great Seal of England’. He was exposed of treachery and was executed in December 1644. Sir John (d.1692), the 3^rd Baronet, re-established the family’s Royalist links in 1660 when he formed part of the Convention Parliament that returned the king to power.

Some work was carried out on the old manor house in 1710 soon after the inheritance of Sir William Carew, the 5^th Baronet. The yearning for a much grander house appears to have come from the dowry and a £500 per annum jointure from his marriage in 1713 to the wealthy heiress Lady Anne Coventry who was related to the Edgcumbe’s of Mount Edgcumbe. In July 1713, the year Sir William was elected as MP for Cornwall, work on an impressive new garden commenced. The Lambeth nurseryman Humphrey Bowen presented expenses of £116 3s 2d for plants, £118 5s 0d for making the garden, £32 5s 0d for the building of a ‘canall’ and he further itemises costs for two ponds, a meadow, a wilderness garden and an orchard comprising of 500 apple trees. Building works were undertaken by theExeter based master mason John Moyle who erected extensive new walls measuring 575 by 254 feet, using some 400,000 bricks which were fired on site. Plans for a new house were temporarily delayed when, in 1715, Sir William was arrested as Jacobite sympathiser and imprisoned in Plymouth Citadel. Between 1718 and 1724 Sir William commissioned what must have been perceived as the most fashionable house inCornwall at the time. Moyle was again employed this time to build the ‘shell of a house and finding all materials, [and] finding all labour…according to a draft agreed upon in a good workman like manner, and to the satisfaction of Sir William Carew’.

Moyle had very little freedom of design in the contract which implies that the design was the work a third-party. Despite doubts surrounding the architect James Gibbs has often been cited, largely due to an attributation in Lyson’s Magna Britannia of 1814 which still divides academics. In his monograph, Terry Friedman considers that

Gibbs seems to have considered remodelling the entrance front by facing the three centre bays with rusticated stonework the corners are unembellished and a substantial attic replaces the dormer roof. His forecourt wings, penetrated by arcades and pavilions, recall Greenwich.

Sir Howard Colvin disagrees maintaining that Gibbs ‘cannot have designed the main block, which is not in his style’ although he does concede that as the width of the house in plate 57 ‘a house designed for a gentleman in the country’ in Gibbs’s Book of Architecture (1728) was identical to that of the house as built it could be that Gibbs was involved to some degree. More recently Tim Mowl considers the house ‘intensely stiff’ compared to the more relaxed garden, attributing the work to ‘a first ranking architect [who] was employed here and Cornwall has, in all probability, if not in documented evidence, a garden here by James Gibbs’. Sir William Carew was certainly eligible to be a patron of Gibbs being an influential Tory landowner and thereby moving in the same cultural and social circles. Helen Jacobsen’s research has concluded that the wings were not part of the original design and has put forward another plausible theory that Antony House had two architects. The contention here is that as the width between the wings in both the completed house and Gibbs’ plate 57 are identical at 101 feet and as the plate is signed ‘Jacobo Gibbs Architecto’ it would appear inconceivable that the architect could illustrate a house that he was not involved with at some stage of the design. Gibbs, therefore, may well have been illustrating his design for the wings only which were built identical with those in his drawings. Despite the dearth of primary evidence a fair conclusion would be that the house was perhaps built to designs made by an, as yet, unknown Plymouth dockyard surveyor as was the case with several other Cornish houses built at this time. As Sir William was one of the few Cornish subscribers to Gibbs’ book (along with Richard Edgcumbe Esq., Philip Hawkins Esq. and Sir John St Aubyn) it would be reasonable to suggest that Gibbs had a hand in the design of the wings. Christopher Hussey rationally concludes ‘…if the attributation [to Gibbs] can be substantiated, the design adds considerably to the reputation of the architect of Ditchley, the Radcliffe Camera and St. Mary-le-Strand’.

The instructions to the builder was to construct a south-east facing house 101 feet wide by 55 feet deep, ‘the middle part where the pediment comes to project two foot of a side more according as expresst in the Draught’. The cellar storey was to be ‘sunck under ground…and paved with Purbick’. John Moyle, specified as the ‘bricklayer’ was paid £1,260 although it would seem that he was effectively the chief contractor supervising a team of local labour. In 1721, the date carved above the north front door, Pentewan stone arrived by sea from St Austell to clad the brick carcass. The contract specifies that Moyle undertook some responsibility for the interiors, of note were ‘two staircases one of solid oak from top to bottom of the house, the other of clean deal, to go from the cellars’ and ‘two doorcases of the Doric order, one to each front’. The Hall, Dining Room and passages were to be ‘paved with what stone Sr William pleases; either in square Purbick or in octagon with little squares of marble’ By 1724 the painter had completed his work, the glazier was installing the windows and the staircase was installed and paid for.

Surviving pictorial evidence of the house and grounds dating from the 1720s depicts a simple, yet elegant, nine-bay front with pediments on both the north and south sides which would have been considered the embodiment of taste during the early-18^th century. A painting of the completed house and forecourt by an unknown English school artist reinforces the similarity to Gibbs’s style ─ the stables are positioned to the left of the main block and service rooms are to the right. However the four ‘courts’ as shown in Gibbs’ plate 57, positioned symmetrically at end corner of the extension ranges, are not illustrated. Moyle was again employed at Antony over a two year period from 1727 when the wings were most likely built. The roof level and pediment as illustrated by Gibbs was unlike the completed house which incorporated a third principal dormered storey and a lower pediment creating a much more balanced appearance. The appeal ofAntony is in its proportion and poise rather that its embellishments. The external, locally quarried, Pentewan stonework is plain and without decoration, the north front central door pilasters are in the Tuscan order, the pediments lack any cartouches, the cornices are naive and the windows are without entablatures, however, this deters little from it timeless quality. Little is known of theAntony interiors at this time although it is fair to say that although lavish they remain very un-Gibbsian in style. A list of paintings survives that Sir William’s wife brought fromCroome Court in Worcestershire. The interior plan of Antony relates to the double cube pro-forma with two symmetrical ranges set back-to-back with a grand entrance hall and saloon beyond split by a corridor running through the spine of the house (as indicated in Gibbs’ plate).

The second illustrator was Edmund Prideaux who visited on 19 October 1727. His three drawings show the entrance front quite different from that in the 1720 painting and he excludes the entrance gates, perimeter wall and sculpture on a plinth on the circular lawn. As his drawings are generally perceived to be reliable it would suggest that the earlier painting showed the building as it was intended and Prideaux’s drawings as the house was executed. Both illustrations however capture the brick built forecourt buildings with their arcaded passages and pagoda-like cupolas which terminate the east and west walls. The second of Prideaux’s drawings shows the north or garden front with tree-lined avenues and a walled formal garden, compete with terraced parterres harmonising with the landscape between the high ground to the south and the river Lynher to the north. Tonkin later wrote of the fine river and country views from ‘thebowling green’. The third drawing shows the view from the gardens towardsTrematonCastle(q.v) in the distance.

The 5^th Baronet died in 1744 and was succeeded by his only son Sir Coventry who died without heir in 1748. The house briefly transferred to the cousins before passing to the great-great-grandson of Sir John, 3^rd Baronet, Reginald Pole (d.1835) who assumed the name Carew as specified in the terms of Sir Coventry’s will. In 1758 William Borlase sketched the south front just as further alterations were planned while the 1775 estate map by Thomas Pride shows the development of the gardens with the wilderness garden of 1713 being fully matured and the pleasure grounds situated towards the river having a large rabbit warren bordering the waters edge. Soon after, in 1788, Thomas Parlby designed a Bath House with arched windows and doors, a changing room with fireplace and lunge pool measuring 18 feet long and 5 feet deep which was filled by river water.

In 1792 Reginald Pole Carew MP, a Privy Councillor under William Pitt, employed Humphrey Repton to produce a ‘Red Book’ for Antony. Repton wrote in the presentation volume ‘I have had the honour of being consulted by few Gentlemen, who so well understand the true principles of taste’. Pole Carew was overwhelmed with excitement pronouncing on 20 December 1792 that he ‘could not go to sleep until I thoroughly examined the treasure you put in my hands’. As with the majority of Repton’s commissions the mansion, particularly its position and appearance, featured strongly in the landscape plan. Of the house itself Repton wanted to remove the parterre garden to the north and the enclosure wall, he wrote ‘The arcade and pavilions beyond the office wings, will of course become useless in this new approach’. He also considered adding an extra storey to the arcades ‘to connect the house with the offices and give a communication on the upper floor’. On the painting of the wings he instructed it to be ‘the same colour as the house’. It remains generally unclear what work he oversaw himself. Although his advice for the house and terrace was not used it has been considered that the ‘lodge at AntonyPassage and the lodge at the main gate bear a strong resemblance to Repton’s drawings’. As they appear on the 1840 estate map by the land surveyor T. Eastcott it is likely that Repton himself, or his eldest son John Adey Repton, oversaw the construction.

Repton also illustrated a ‘new kitchen garden’ positioned to the west of the house which if the scale is to be believed was envisaged as being 400 feet by 200 feet. In 1793 the Milanese architect Placido Columbani, who had a brief but fruitful association with the family, designed a more modest 209 square feet walled garden. He also produced working drawings from Repton’s designs for a lodge building atAntonyand later, in 1801, made plans for the Pole Carew’sLondonhouse at7 New Cavendish Streeton the Portland Estate. George Repton’s notebook also mentions a lodge in the Classical style designed by John Nash which may well have been for theAntonyestate. The forecourt was still under discussion in 1804 while the line of the drive was only agreed one year later but regardless of the slow progression Reginald Pole Carew turned his thoughts to his second marriage in 1808 to Caroline Anne, daughter of Lord Lyttleton and alterations to Antony’s interiors.

Changes to the ground floor plan were made in c.1808-9. Charles Hutchens who practiced architecture within the parish ofAntony may well have overseen these alterations which saw the central passage removed, a new staircase built and extensions made to the Dining Parlour and Library. In 1828 Reginald Pole Carew had ‘no hesitation in recommending Mr Hutchens’ to Sarah Gregor for works at Trewartenick concluding with ‘As I have been perfectly satisfied with him. I trust that he will give satisfaction should you think fit to employ him’. In 1848 the eldest son from this second marriage William Henry Pole Carew (Joseph, the only son from the first marriage, predeceased his father) commissioned William White to build a Tudor Gothic schoolhouse for the children of the Antony estate. After his inheritance in 1852 he and his son Reginald (1849-1924), made further changes. The Twycross drawing of the entrance front shows William’s weighty porte-cochere and glazed outer hall on the south front. He was also responsible for moving the kitchen garden. In a visit to Antony in 1876 Richard Phillimore wrote

The house is surrounded by a brick wall nearly covered with creepers. Passing through the wall gate across a small space to the porch, which is new; we entered the house. The rooms in the old part of the house are high, & large, & wainscoted with oak. There is some very fine tapestry supposed to be Flemish. Also some very fine paintings. The garden which is laid out in the Italian style is very pretty…The hot houses and kitchen garden are very large and full of plants and fruit of all description.

In 1900 an architectural garden was planned by F. Inigo Thomas but remained unexecuted. Sir Reginald in his desire for space extended the house eastwards in 1905 in what the architect Philip Tilden later called ‘a towering red brick wing on one end of the main range in the Pont Street, or Dutch-Victorian-Jacobean manner’ destroying the Georgian mansion’s character in both symmetry and materials. Furthermore the gardens were improved, a new walled garden was built to the north of the house and a fine set of gates, a copy of those at the Carews Surrey home Beddington House, were installed in the park on the south side of the house. Reginald’s son, John, was created Baronet Pole of Shute in 1926 (changing the order of his names to Carew Pole) and with Shute inherited an impressive library, collection of portraiture and, through marriage, a notable collection of 18^th-century china and furniture. After a successful military career during the Second World War Sir John Carew Pole commissioned Philip Tilden to remove the east wing. Tilden recalled

It was a pleasure to organise the amputation of this disfigurement and restore the house to its former symmetry. The red bricks from the demolition I had buried in a quarry lest anyone should be tempted to re-use them in this district of grey stone and granite. I also re-planned the kitchens and simplified the gardens so that both could be run with less labour, and converted the service wings into self-contained flats for employees and relatives.

Tilden also removed the walled garden on the north side. The house was presented to the National Trust in 1961 and has continued to be the principal residence of the Carew Pole family. Sir Richard (b.1938), 13^th Baronet, and his wife Lady Mary moved into Antony in 1983 and have made their own mark on the formal garden design introducing contemporary sculpture by Stephen Cox, William Pye and Simon Thomas and a new gateway to the summer garden by James Horrabin.

Bosloe, near Mawnan Smith

Bosloe is a wonderful Victorian villa overlooking the picturesque Helford river. Although the house is little over a century old the Bosveal estate, as it was once called, has a much older history as part of the medieval manor of Trerose. During the seventeenth-century it was acquired by the Ley family who kept the manor intact until the nineteenth-century when it was broken-up by the Reverend Robert Hoblyn. A cottage known as Chatham was built in c. 1835 on part of the estate presumably named to commemorate the death of John Pitt, 2^nd Earl of Chatham. It was most likely similar in style to the gothic thatched cottage built by Alfred Fox (1794-1874) at nearby Glendurgan (since gone).

In 1837 James Gillett, a retired army captain, was listed as owner of Chatham cottage and two years later the tithe map shows 60 acres of farmland attached to the house. From 1839 James Treweek, a Gwennap mine agent and railway proprietor who had spent some time working in Cuba, took possession. He was listed as tenant farmer of ‘Chatham Cottage and Bosveal’. The 1861 census return shows that he worked five and a half acres of farmland, employed six men and had three live-in servants. His operations however were soon down-scaled. In 1871 he only retained the services of a single dairymaid and ten years later, by then aged 74, he was still living and farming with his wife Elizabeth and a single servant. Both husband and wife died soon after. During the early nineteenth-century the Fox family transformed the banks of the Helford by laying out numerous well-stocked exotic gardens,themost notable being Glendurgan, Rosehill, Trebah and Tregedna. Another nearby property, Penjerrick, the home of Robert Were Fox (1768-1848) was said to have ‘grown by many an irregular addition from a cottage into a good sized house’. Here, it was said, that Fox held host to some of the infamous romantic poets such as Byron, Carlyle, Tennyson and Wordsworth.

Chatham cottage was acquired in 1882 by the Bristol solicitor William Welsford Ward (1854-1932). Nicknamed ‘bouncer’ (a reference to a character in a comic novel) whilst a student at Magdalen college, Oxford, Ward was one of Oscar Wilde’s closest friend’s and was much featured in the author’s early letters. Wilde playfully regarded Ward as ‘…the only man in the world I am afraid of’ and, along with another close friend Reginald Harding, presented him with an inscribed 18 carat-gold ring. On leaving university in 1876 Ward travelled the continent and took up a position in his father’s Bristol based solicitors office. He maintained some contact with Wilde until 1881 and later, in 1954, posthumously published a short ‘Oxford Reminiscence’.

Ward married Charlotte Rogers from the neighbouring estate of Carwinion in 1886. The couple were captivated by Mawnan’s natural beauty ─ a beauty that Beatrix Potter regarded as ‘…being almost too picturesque’. Chatham cottage was soon demolished and work began on a new home whichthey named Boslow, (later Bosloe) meaning ‘the dwelling by the pool’. In 1901 the villa was inhabited by Charlotte Ward, their 11 year-old daughter and two domestic servants whilst in the lodge lived Reuben Smith, a gardener and domestic servant, and his housekeeper, a 72 year-old lady called Mary Eady. The date 1903 on the rainwater head would suggest that date that west-wing was completed. The gardens were landscaped soon after and a stone and slate gardener’s bothy was built some 100 metres from the main house. This picturesque bothy commands fine views over the Helford river.

Ward retired in 1902 yet maintained his position as a prominent public figure in Bristol. He was listed in 1910 as a member of the council of Cornwall and in 1914 a county magistrate ─ both times described as resident of Bosloe. Much of the original character of Ward’s house survives today. In the holiday cottage called Bosveal the ‘back to front’ mock Tudor staircase is a reminder of the house’s grandeur, while a green baize door still separates the reception room in Bosveal with the servants quarters which now form Court. Unfortunately Bosloe’s most impressive feature, a spectacular stone fireplace with heraldic crests surrounded by wood panelling in what wasthe Ballroom, later Billiard Room, was removed and sold inthe 1980s. Its whereabouts is now unknown.

Bosloe was acquired by the Gage family who, in 1919, leased the property to the prominent banker Frederick Archibald Charles Thellusson, 6th Lord Rendlesham of Rendlesham (1868-1938). Both he and wife were particularly benevolent to the local area building a memorial hall in 1923, a children’s playground in 1928 and establishing, what is now, the Lady Rendledsham Trust which was set up originally to supply a district nurse to the Mawnan area. Garden parties in aid of the Women’s Institute were regular features in the well manicured Bosloe gardens by kind invitation of Lady Rendlesham, their president. After the death of his wife in 1931 Lord Rendlesham stayed at Bosloe for the next seven years with his second wife Dolores Olga Salusbury-Trelawny, widow of Henry Harcourt Williams, of Pencalenick near Truro. The Gage family eventually sold Bosloe to Colonel Tuckett in 1951. He made the house a family home for his five children, employing six house-staff with six gardeners and six more to tend his yachts. Colonel Tucket bequeathed the property to the National Trust at the time of his death in 1978 and the house and gardener’s bothy was converted into holiday cottages by 1979.

Boconnoc, near Lostwithiel in Cornwall

The Boconnoc estate, four miles east of Lostwithiel, was mentioned in the Domesday survey as belonging to Osferth. Subsequently it was owned by the De Cants until 1320 when it passed through several generations of Sir John Carminow’s family. During the 15th-century the powerful Courtneys acquired the estate and created a deer-park which was listed in 1583 as being ‘3 miles in compass’. In 1538 Henry Courtney, Marquis of Exeter, was executed for treason and the estate passed to John Russell, Earl of Bedford who almost immediately sold it to the Mohuns, an ancient family who, it was reported in the Heralds Visitations, came to England with William the Conqueror. The medieval fortified tower house known as the ‘Tower of Boconnoc’ was shown on a Tudor map (now held in the Cornwall Record Office) as having a castellated circular tower with arrow loops on the left side with a larger domed angular tower to the right. A large cupola ascended between the two towers while beneath was the front door within a four-centred arch and set within a slightly forward projection. The map also shows its situation as being at the end of a long driveway branching off of the Braddock Hill road (with Braddock church just to the north) which eventually joins the ‘Queenes high waye from Foye to Lanceston’. Surrounding Boconnoc was a patchwork of fields with bee hives, a gallows and the nearby Penventon house.

Sir Reginald Mohun was an esquire of the body to Elizabeth I and was twice High Sheriff of Cornwall in 1553 and 1560 while his son and heir Sir William (d.1588) was knighted in 1588 and became a significant landowner in the south-west. Sir William replaced the medieval tower house with a new house and further developed the deer-park however the family appear to have favoured Hall, their home at Bodinnick near Fowey. Hall was mentioned in Carew’s Survey in 1602 but was demolished soon-after, partially a result of the family selecting the wrong side to support during the civil war, although to some extent the reputed attempt on the life of King Charles I in 1644 whilst out walking near the property would not have helped

The Mohun’s became a prominent Cornish family both in property and wealth. Sir William’s son, Reginald (1564-1639), was created a Baronet in 1612 and elected MP first, for East Looe in 1614 and second, Lostwithiel in 1625 ─ the communion table in the nearby church bears his inscription ‘Made by me Sir Raynold Mohun 1621’. His three marriages produced ten children the eldest, John (c.1615-1640), was elevated to the peerage in 1628 as Baron Mohun of Okehampton but pre-deceased his father while his second son Warwick Mohun (1620-65), 2^nd Baron, withdrew to Boconnoc and, despite initially withdrawing from the political quarrel between King and Parliament, eventually raised a Royalist regiment in 1642. King Charles made his headquarters at Boconnoc in 1644 and a year later Prince Charles, later Charles II was also recorded as being at the ‘court of Boconnoc’. It was said that from Boconnoc the king visited neighbouring Lanhydrock, the recently completed home of the staunch Puritan Lord Robartes, which was captured along with hostages by Richard Grenville’s men. For such loyalty to the Crown huge fines were levied by Parliament. Little is known of the house at this time other than it would seem unaltered from the significantly sized S-shaped house built during the reign of Elizabeth I which was recorded as having 25 hearths during the 1664 hearth tax assessment.

In 1712 the 4^th Baron, Sir Charles, was killed in a duel with the Duke of Hamilton, indeed his father, the 3^rd Baron, also died in the same manner – both men were considered unconventional. To his widow Elizabeth, daughter of a physician at the court of Queen Anne, Sir Charles bequeathed all his estates and property which she sold in 1717 to Thomas Pitt (1653-1726), late Governor of Madras, for the ‘bargain’ price of £53,000. After the sale of their home the junior branch of the Mohun family relocated to Trencreke and dispersed from Cornwall soon after. In raising the capitol for the purchase of Boconnoc the celebrated Indian Pitt diamond was sold to the Regent of France for £135,000. Samuel Molyneaux wrote in his journal of 1712

…our good friend my Lord Pembroke he happened to speak of Mr Pitt’s his great diamond of which he has seen the model, he gave us his account of it that it was cut into a Brilliant of long square shape and weigh’d 138 ½ carats of perfect clear water…I could not but reflect with some surprise on the vast worth of the former artificial curiosity & on the much more immense value that vanity has sett on this natural ore which according to the common (sic) manner of valueing jewels will amount to about 2 million [pounds]. 

The diamond was said to have later been installed into Napoleon’s sword and today is in the Louvre in Paris.

Pitt commissioned the builder John Moyle, who had previously worked on Antony House and was concurrently carrying out works at Powderham Castle for the Earl of Devon, to remodel the east-side of the house in 1721. Despite modernising the house the isolation and tediousness of Cornwall did not fare well with the Pitt family. William Pitt ‘The Elder’ (1708-78) later 1^st Earl Chatham, a grandson of Thomas Pitt, hated much of his time at Boconnoc calling it ‘this cursed hiding place’ while Lord Chatham’s eldest son John spent what his mother called an ‘Idle life’ in Cornwall. Such was her concern that she wrote ‘he may get a habit and taste for Idleness and become a fine man about Town, wch is a sorrowful thing and much to be deprecated’. After the marriage break-up of Thomas Pitt (c. 1705-1761) and Christian Lyttleton, Boconnoc was abandoned and only reoccupied by the debt-ridden Thomas shortly before his death. The house was in a terrible state, the furniture had been sold and the estate plundered for its timber, yet it was his only son Thomas (1737-93), who had inherited his father’s Cornish property after returning from his extensive travels in Europe, who set about restoring Boconnoc’s fortunes. Thomas was a man cultured in matters of architecture and was an accomplished amateur architect himself carrying out internal works for Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill as well as at his own properties in London and Stowe. Horace Walpole remarked ‘He draws Gothic with taste’ whereas John Soane soon after their first meeting in the 1770s regarded him as a man of ‘classical taste and profound architectural taste’. An undated estate map by I. Black draws on his patron’s architectural discernment by depicting the five architectural orders within the cartouche. Moreover the map illustrates the S-shaped east-facing house with a circular drive terminating at a large stable court to the north surrounded by a rabbit warren. By March 1770 work on a new garden had commenced which, by the end of 1772, had cost £229 11s 2d with Pitt himself sketching a proposed entrance arch. In 1772 he commissioned the Lostwithiel carpenter Charles Rawlinson to replace the two interconnecting single storey service buildings at the rear with a new south facing wing which included a library and picture gallery.

Created Lord Camelford in 1784, Pitt was a great patron to John Soane introducing the fledgling architect to family members and political friends but not, it would seem, to his Cornish neighbours. Soane was busy in Cornwall during the mid-1780s extending the Boconnoc, carrying out roof repairs for ‘the new wing’ and adding a new parapet which Soane costed at £600 ‘if done in the most substantial and economical manner’. The work did not go well for Soane being mostly repairs of previous phases of shoddy workmanship and repairing the 123 feet in height obelisk after a lightning strike which had been built close to the house in 1771 in memory of his favourite uncle Sir Richard Lyttleton.  A mausoleum was planned but not built. Both men regarded the work as being financially unrewarding and personally frustrating however, Soane persisted and towards the end of the 1780s he had stuccoed the exterior and begun work on the interiors. When James Boswell visited in 1792, a year before Lord Camelford’s death, he remarked ‘we were conducted to the other end of the Gallery into my Lord’s Library, well stored with books but commonly used as an eating room’. Boswell was most likely reflecting on Soane’s new first floor picture gallery that extended across the whole 8 bay central section of the east façade linking at either end with a Drawing Room and Library. Soane’s work at Boconnoc did not extend beyond Lord Camelford’s death yet, the architect’s admiration for his patron was unceasing. As Professor of Architecture, Soane, between 1810 and 1820 delivered his annual lectures at the Royal Academy and in the third of the series he said ‘Until architecture has a Burlington, Pembroke or a Camelford to direct the public taste, we can have but little hope’.

In 1804 Lord Camelford’s only son, Thomas 2^nd Lord Camelford, was killed in a duel and the house was inherited by his sister Anne, who married the Prime Minister William Wyndham, Lord Grenville. The new owners decided to add to the property. First, an undated letter ‘To Mr Coode from Mulholland upon Phillips Contract for Bath Stone’ shows that a cold bath and Bath House was built to John Mulholland’s designs. Further correspondence suggests that this was underway in 1805 and that the work, using only the finest materials available, eventually cost £1,484. Mulholland, said to be a pupil of Wyatt (although which one is not clear), whose practice was based at 2 Hollybush Hill, Hampstead was, according to the Memoirs of Sir John Colman Rashleigh, Bart 1772-1847, ‘…resident at Boconnoc in the lifetime of the late Lord Camelford’. Second, in 1808 Thomas Rogers, Carpenter of 62 Princes Street, Plymouth Dock, presented an estimate of £505 for an ‘additional part to be built to the House’ ─ this work appears not to have been built.

From c.1816 John Bowen, engineer and an acknowledged expert in iron construction who had previously built lighthouses for Trinity House, was employed on the Boconnoc estate as surveyor and architect. It seems likely that this was the same Mr Bowen who was by 1840 the local valuer carrying out the local tithe apportionment survey and was described in 1847 (6 years before his death) as the steward and living in the old Parsonage near the house. Boconnoc in 1820 was illustrated by C.S. Gilbert who shows the house still as a S-shaped building on which he remarked ‘the intrusions of art were not only concealed, but they were so contrived as to give additional charms to the simple scenery, without betraying any symptoms of design’. It is uncertain quite, if anything, Bowen actually designed although in 1834 the north-east wing was demolished and a Palladian style window was inserted to match the one previously installed into the south-end of the east-front. In June 1836 Bowen wrote to George Fortesque (1791-1877), a nephew of Baroness Anne Grenville, reporting ‘on the new work at Boconnoc house’. Plans exist showing a proposed new building to the north side extending from the Billiard Room and creating a new hall in the north-west corner with side garden entrance and ‘room and bath’ with water closet. It would appear this was not completed prior to the Baroness Grenville’s death in 1864 as further plans dating to 1862 show a four storey tower proposed for the same position. Four years later in 1866 new lodges were built at several entrances to the estate from plans drawn up by the architect Joseph William R[signature illegible]. The house passed by indenture to George Fortesque who oversaw the completion of the tower and ten years later, with his son Cyril Fortesque (b.1847) a captain in the Coldstream Guards, a 50 feet long heated glasshouse was commissioned from T.G. Messenger of the Midlands Horticultural Works in Loughborough.. This large camellia house was ‘to be executed with speed’ ─ the final cost being £329 5s

In 1885 a Smoking Room with water closet and passage was added into the shell of the tower. His choice of Richard Coad for this work was perhaps more opportune than inspired as the London based architect had just completed the large scale refurbishment the neighbouring seat ofLanhydrockfor the Agar-Robartes family. Only two of Coad’s undated plans for the Smoking Room exist although detailed measured illustrations of the house were set out in a sketch book which, although watermarked 1850, appear to be in Coad’s hand. These drawings show the extensive service rooms arranged in the basement while on the ground floor the hall led into the Dining Room (with Billiard Room beyond) and Staircase (with study beyond). Servants accounts dating from between 1834 and 1880 held in the Hampshire Record Office show how often Boconnoc was used by the Fortesque family in relation their other properties at Dropmore in Hampshire and their London residence. The records show that the Fortesque’s country house staff was paid significantly less than those inLondon, sometimes by two shillings a week depending on status, and that staff numbers rose significantly from 1835 when they employed 9 regular staff to 16 staff ten years later. This latter figure was the consistent staffing level for the next thirty years. Boconnoc was used for 50% of the year during the winter months while Dropmore was used only in late summer (to Michaelmas) andLondonin the three month period to mid-summer. By the 1880s the family were spending less time in London and more time in the country.       

The focus of attention during the late 19^th century was alterations to the landscape with the West Briton reporting in 1884 that the deer park encompassed 230 acres with a herd of fallow-deer numbering 200. During the Second World War the house was occupied by American soldiers and abandoned soon after due to subsidence which affected the south-side of the house – Rawlinson’s south wing was finally demolished in 1972. In recent years the house has been returned to its former glory under the guidance Antony and Elizabeth Fortesque.

Place House and St Anthony Battery, Roseland Peninsula, Cornwall

St Anthony peninsula commands some of the most stunning views in Cornwall. Yet, regardless of its obvious picturesque qualities overlooking the southerly entrance to the stretch of water known as the Carrick Roads, with Falmouth to the west and Truro the north,there has been a long-held awareness towards its strategic position ─ indeed, recent archaeology suggests that this headland once boasted a Roman signalling station. The earliest records that show this headland as being fortified date to 1805 when a battery of 24-pounder guns were positioned close to where the lighthouse is now. In 1840 however,the tithe survey listed the site as merely an empty field called Mollunan (thebeach above the lighthouse is still known as Mollunan beach) with no indication of fortifications or gun emplacements suggesting that any remains of the Napoleonic battery had been dismantled. The land was leased to James Lawrey who declared the land as tithe-free, or agriculturally unproductive, which perhaps indicates that it was retained in some way for military use. Not surprisingly the landowner was Sir Samuel Spry of nearby Place house (above) ─ by far the biggest landlord in the area.

Sir Samuel Spry (1804-68), MP for Bodmin and later knighted by Queen Victoria, extended his already large estate on St Anthony-in-Roseland throughout the19^th-century. To celebrate his success he rebuilt his country seat inthe rather daring neo-Gothic style. Just behind the manor house is the church which, although of Celtic origins, was rededicated in 1259. Much of the surrounding land was once owned by the twelfth-century Augustinian Priory which was much in decline by the 1530s when John Leland described it as ‘a cell belonging to the house of Plympton called Saint Anthony’s having but 2 canons’. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Place was converted into a manor house by the Vyvyan family of Trelowarren who sold the lease to George Spry (1584-1658) when it was evocatively described as

…lying between the bee garden and green court, adjoining the North and South sides of the Church of St Anthony, with the willow beare or green plot adjoining the east side of the bee garden; dove house, garden and nursuries, wharfs, quays, cellars and fields.

Arthur Spry (1612-88), later MP for St Mawes, wisely favoured neither side during theEnglish Civil War. Consequently, in 1642, his preferred status allowed him to buy the freehold of Place house for a reputed £929 and extend his landed estate. The 18^th-century saw a further rise inthe family fortunes. Richard Spry (d.1774), Rear Admiral of the White, was knighted by George III and his nephew and benefactor Thomas Davy (d.1828) (who had assumed the name of Spry in 1779) was created Rear Admiral in 1795. He later served with distinction atthe battle of Trafalgar earning himself a promotion to Admiral.

St Anthony itself and the surrounding headlands have historically been closely associated with perceived threats to national security. In 1853 new gun batteries were positioned at nearby Pendennis and St Mawes. Two years later St Anthony followed with the installation of new heavier muzzle-loading gun emplacements. Guns of this type soon became obsolete due to changes in the nature of warfare. In 1898 new guns were positioned following improvements made to warship armour-plating and between 1900 and 1904 the guns were again upgraded to new pattern 6” calibre type which had a range of 12,000 yards. This latter phase also saw the construction of new modern magazine buildings with shell stores and lamp rooms,the installation of sea-bed minefields between Pendennis and St Mawes and electric searchlights to detect enemy ships. Such defences were declared vital during the First World War when some British ports were threatened by the German navy. In 1917 Winston Churchill stated to the War Office ‘…the coastline is fortified from end to end with powerful batteries at every port, and is still being strengthened’.

From 1868 the battery had been maintained by the non-residential Stannary Regiment. The 1901 census returns arethefirst to list army personnel from the105 Company Royal Garrison Artillery (Territorial Army) as residents in St Anthony-in-Roseland ─these were Thomas Bainbridge and his wife, both from Northumbria; a local couple, the Skillards; the French born Cecil Montague and his Indian-born wife; and Ernest Skinner. After hostilities had ceased in 1918 St Anthony battery continued to be maintained and was immediately re-commissioned when war declared in 1939. At this time the administration offices, a single storey building now split into separate units known as ‘Majors’, ‘Captains’ and ‘Lieutenants’, was converted into officers living accommodation. New concrete buildings, Nissen huts, an army camp, canteen, and recreational rooms were also installed as the site once again became strategically important tothenation’s defence strategies.

By 1956, like many coastal artillery sites, St Anthony was considered obsolete and the still fully operational guns (although never actually fired in anger) were decommissioned and scrapped. The 34-acre site was acquired by the National Trust in 1959 as part of its coastal acquisitions policy to provide public access. The temporary buildings, consideredthen to be eyesores, were demolished and some of what remained was turned into the first holiday cottage complex in Cornwall. Apart from the officers quarters a further holiday cottage, now known as ‘Tiffys’, was created from the fort armament workshop where the Armament Artificers Royal Artillery would have maintained and repaired the guns.

Today the major landmark on this headland remains the granite, octagonal lighthouse that guards the treacherous area of water known as the Manacles. Built in 1835 by the Trinity Board the base of the lighthouse sits 12-feet above high-watermark. The lantern is 35 feet high and contains eight lights creating 7,000 candle power, revolving every three minutes, causing flashes to recur at intervals of about 20 seconds. The highly polished concave mirrors, having parabolic curves, move in a circle with the lights and throws a cylinder of horizontal rays that can be seen from 15 miles distance. In the chamber beneath the lantern is a fixed ‘guiding’ light of 8,000 candle power for the purpose of directing vessels to a course clear of the Manacles rock, situated on the opposite side of the Falmouth bay. In 1871 two families lived inthelighthouse, presumably taking shifts in its operations. Thomas Hallam lived with his wife, father and two children under six years and Robert Chilton lived with his wife, elderly mother and three young children.

(below) Along Shore Fishermen (off St Anthony headland) by Charles Napier Hemy (1841 – 1917)