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James Wyatt and John Penn: architect and patron at Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Frances Fergusson
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Extract

James Wyatt (1746–1813), architect to George III, was the most celebrated English architect of his day, but his fame was not based on a strongly personal manner. Wyatt’s use of a wide variety of historical styles baffled contemporaries and posterity alike. The architect William Porden sniffed that ‘Wyatt had no principles in his art’ ; nineteenth-century writers excoriated his lack of historical accuracy. Both attitudes fail to understand that scenic effect and innovation within historicism were crucial to James Wyatt’s work. His approach was pragmatic, not aligned solely with archaeology or the Picturesque, although deeply aware of both. Wyatt’s work for one patron in particular, John Penn, demonstrates the complexity of his attitudes toward historical styles and toward the process of design.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 20 , 1977 , pp. 45 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1977 

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References

Notes

1 British Museum, Department of Prints & Drawings, typescript of the Diary of Joseph Farington, 19 October 1806, p. 3477.

2 Pugin called him ‘Wyatt the destructive’ for his restorations of English cathedrals and churches (Pugin, A. W., The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (London 1841), p.53Google Scholar).

3 Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Penn’s MS Journal, f. 34.

4 The house is now in Fairmount Park at 34th Street below Girard Avenue and is used as offices for the zoo. The plans are in Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, John Penn’s MS Commonplace Book.

5 Farington, Diary, 2 February 1795, pp. 294-295. Also Dictionary of National Biography, xv, 1895-96 &c, p. 750.

6 [Penn, John], An Historical and Descriptive Account of Stoke Park in Buckinghamshire, i (London 1813), p. 59.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., quoting from Wharton’s Essay on Gothic Architecture.

8 Ibid., p. 60.

9 Ibid.

10 Hakewill, James, The History of Windsor and its Neighbourhood(London 1813), p. 244.Google Scholar

11 Penn, , Account, pp. 59–60.Google Scholar

12 Farington, Diary, 22 August 1797, p. 1082.

13 Penn, , Account, pp. 60–61Google Scholar, and Hakewill, , Windsor, p. 244.Google Scholar

14 Farington, Diary, 22 August 1797, p. 1082.

15 Penn, , Account, p. 61Google Scholar, and Hakewill, , Windsor, p. 244.Google Scholar

16 Hakewill, , Windsor, p. 244.Google Scholar

17 Farington, Diary, 2 February 1795, pp. 294–295.

18 Ibid., 22 August 1797, p. 1082.

19 Ibid., 22 August 1797, p. 1082, and 8 November 1797, p. 1123.

20 Hakewill, Windsor, p. 253.

21 Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Penn MSS Vol. Ill, Accounts. Bill from Henry Westmacott, countersigned by James Wyatt, 1811, for ‘richly moulded pedestals to design of James Wyatt for library for warm air, with stoves…’

22 Penn, , Account, p. 60.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., p.69.

24 Ibid. Edward Wedlake Bray ley & Britton, John (The Beauties of England and Wales, i (London 1801), p. 396)Google Scholar report that the library was not yet finished in 1801. Finishing to Wyatt’s design continued until 1811. See note 21.

25 Brayley, & Britton, , Beauties, p. 396.Google Scholar

26 The dome appears in this specific form in Penn’s own Account, 1813, and in Rudolph Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures, etc., III, xviii (3rd series), 1 June 1824. The distant view in Brayley & Britton’s Beauties of 1801 suggests a squat observatory with a pitched roof; it may represent the earlier observatory or the point when the new one was being built. Hakewill (Windsor, pi. facing p. 254) leaves out the divisions of the Palladian windows and the second segmental lunettes, but agrees in other details and proportions. Only John Preston Neale (Views of the Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, i (London 1818), No. 20) depicts a very different dome, with the porticos dwarfing a tall, thin cylinder with no windows. The result is very much an observatory, but not a dome.

27 Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Dreer Collection, letter from John Penn to the Rev. J. Nichols, 9 December 1800.

28 Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Penn MSS, Private Corres pondence, VolV, p. 249, letter to John Penn from Robert Milligan, 1 May 1802. Stoke is not illustrated in Angus’s Views.

29 Brayley & Britton, Beauties, i, 1801, p. 396; Cooke, C., Topographical and Statistical Description of the County of Buckingham (London 1802), p. 144Google Scholar; Lipscomb, George, The History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham, iv (London 1847), p. 559Google Scholar; Burke, John Bernard, A Visitation of the Seats and Arms of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain, i (London 1852), p. 223.Google Scholar

30 London 1896. The house retained its original form until at least 1852 (Burke, , Visitations, p. 223Google Scholar). Stoke Park had several owners after it was sold by the Penns in 1848 to the politician Henry Labouchere. In 1869 Mr Edward Coleman acquired the property and it was finally purchased by Mr Wilberforce Bryant in 1887. It became a golf course at the beginning of the present century. Some further surface details, such as the aedicular surrounds and the Doric frieze of the south front, have since been shaved away.

31 Sir Nikolaus Pevsner noted the confusing evidence and suggested the dome might not have been built until after Wyatt’s death (Buildings of England: Buckinghamshire(Harmondsworth 1960), p. 247).Google Scholar

32 Farington, Diary, 23 July 1801, p. 1992.

33 The proportions of this space were radically changed in the nineteenth-century alterations, when the space of the dining-room (‘F’ on Penn’s plan) was joined to the staircase and the stair was completely reoriented and allowed to sprawl outward.

34 Hakewill (Windsor, p.257) noted that the intellectual division was according to Bacon’s threefold arrangement of Reason, Memory and Imagination.

35 Brayley & Britton, Beauties, i (1801). The view shows the completed colonnade.

36 Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Society Miscellaneous Collection.

37 Elmes, James, ‘History of Architecture in Great Britain’. The Civil Engineer & Architect’s Journal, x (1847), pp. 301–302.Google Scholar

38 Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Dreer Collection, letter from John Penn to the Rev. J. Nichols, 9 December 1800. Also Farington, Diary, 31 May 1798, p. 1249, and 23 December 1798, p. 1404.

39 Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Penn Private Correspondence, Vol.V, p. 245, letter from Robert Milligan to John Penn, 25 August 1791.

40 Farington, Diary, 9 August 1797, p. 1078. The ‘Paine’ in question might be James Paine Jnr (1745–1829), only son of the elder architect.

41 Penn, , Account, p. 61.Google Scholar However, in 1798, Wyatt, Penn and Farington ‘walked over grounds - Fixed situation for Grays Monument’ (Diary, 31 May 1798, p. 1249)

42 Farington, Diary, 27 August 1797, p. 1088.

43 Ibid., 1 July 1798, p. 1264.

44 Ibid., 25 July 1798, pp. 1278–1279.

45 Ibid., 23 December, 1798, p. 1404. The inscription on the monument gives the date 1799, but it was not completely finished until 1807 (Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Penn MSS, Private Correspondence, Vol.V, p. 257).

46 Farington, Diary, 8 December 1798, p. 1389.

47 The pillar was topped by a statue of Coke by Rossi. Farington, Diary, 5 June 1799. P–1574; 5 July 1799. P–1591; 2 August 1611, p. 1799; 15 October 1799, p. 1642.

48 Penn, , Account, p. 59.Google Scholar

49 Knight, Richard Payne, An Analytical Enquiry into the Principles of Taste, 3rd edn (London 1806), p. 325.Google Scholar

50 Penn, , Account, pp. 68–69.Google Scholar

51 Farington, Joseph (ed. Grieg, James), The Farington Diary (London 1925), v, p. 236Google Scholar (16 September 1809). The original of this section of the diary has been lost.

52 Details of the construction are given in the Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, xxxvii (1916), pp. 248–251Google Scholar, and Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Am 224, ‘List of Penn Relics at Pennsylvania Castle’.

53 Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Penn MSS, Private Corres pondence, Vol.V, p.253, letter from Robert Milligan to John Penn, 27 September 1803.