Burlington House

BURLINGTON HOUSE

HOME OF THE ROYA L AC A D E M Y O F AR TS

NICHOLAS S AVAG E

BURLINGTON HOUSE H O M E OF T H E

BURLINGTON HOUSE HOME OF THE ROYA L AC A D E M Y O F AR TS N I C H O L A S S AVAG E

ROYA L AC A D E M Y O F AR TS N I C H O L A S S AVAG E

Bu r l i ngton Hou s e, an aristocratic mansion begun by Sir John Denham and completed in 1668 by the 1st Earl and Countess of Burlington, on what was then the westernmost fringe of the City of Westminster, takes its name from the hereditary title of Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (1694–1753). On coming of age in 1715, Burlington and his architect Colen Campbell transformed the house into an Italian renaissance palazzo, establishing the neo-Palladian ‘rule of taste’ that was to dominate British architecture for much of the eighteenth century.

This book unpicks the complex architectural evolution of the Burlington House site – and its equally complex political and social context – including the Burlington Gardens headquarters built by James Pennethorne for the University of London in the 1860s and only now fully integrated with Burlington House itself. It demonstrates how a long line of distinguished architects – Colen Campbell in 1717, Samuel Ware in 1815, Sydney Smirke in 1868, Richard Norman Shaw in 1883, and more recently Norman Foster and David Chipperfield – have all honoured and perpetuated what Sir John Soane called ‘the Architectural Beauties of this Classical spot’.

Nicholas Savage reveals that Burlington’s cultural and architectural legacy has constantly informed the history of the site’s adaptation to changing needs and purposes, and indeed that his genius lives on at Burlington House through the combined presence of the Royal Academy of Arts and five of Britain’s oldest learned societies.

nicholas savage joined the Collections Department of the Royal Academy of Arts as Deputy Librarian in 1987 and worked subsequently as its Librarian and Director of Collections between 1995 and 2015.

UK £60 US $75

jacket Samuel Ware, Unexecuted design for remodelling the south front of Burlington House: elevation, c. 1815.

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Fig. 98 (left)

Samuel Ware, Unexecuted design for the Great Staircase with cupola in Burlington House: ground- and first-floor plans and sections looking west and north through the full height of the building, c. 1816, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/4707

Fig. 99 (below) Samuel Ware, Great Staircase, design for cast-iron support and S-scroll balusters, c. 1816 Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/4829

Fig. 100 (right) Samuel Ware, Great Staircase, as executed: section looking west, 27 March 1817.

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/4835

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The final, executed design must have particularly pleased both client and architect since Ware made a point of dating a magnificent presentation drawing of its west elevation ‘March 27, 1817’ (Fig. 100). The outcome was a new ceremonial heart to the house: a monumental, technically advanced, modern staircase, the long, gently sloping, sixteen-tread central flight of which was supported on a pair of giant parabolic cast-iron arches weighing well over a ton each (Figs 101–103). The expense was prodigious: William Mears & Son’s bill for the ironwork alone came to £576 6s. 8d. (equivalent to over £24,000 in 2005), almost the same as it cost to gild the new ball room (today’s Reynolds Room).81 Ware’s great staircase, which he probably began to design towards the middle of 1816, impacted directly on the design of the new north front since, to allow sufficient depth for the stairs to rise on a properly gradual incline, this now had to break forward more in the centre than in the wings. By now, Ware’s earlier design for an Ionic palace front had been superseded by a more frankly ‘modern’ (i.e. Regency) interpretation of neoPalladianism, largely composed of elements that he also

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Fig. 101 (above) Samuel Ware, Design, almost as executed, for the ceiling of the Great Staircase, c. 1816.

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/4534 (recto)

Fig. 102 (left) Samuel Ware, Window on the Great Staircase: north-wall elevation, c. 1816.

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/4590

Fig. 103 (right)

John Wykeham Archer, Staircase from the Hall, Burlington House, 1855.

British Museum, London 1874,0314.324

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Fig. 104

Samuel Ware, Design for a ground-floor tripartite window, proposed for the south front but executed on the north front, c. 1816.

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/5071

Fig. 105

Samuel Ware, Design for first-floor tripartite window with segmental pedimented head, proposed for the south front but executed without enrichments on the north front, c. 1816.

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/4597

Fig. 106 (right) Samuel Ware, North front of Burlington House as executed: elevation, c. 1816–20.

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/5835

proposed unsuccessfully for altering the south front (Figs 104, 105). As built, Ware’s design echoed the bland seriality of Campbell’s façade but not its austere harmony (Fig. 106). Although he was extremely wealthy, Lord George’s purse was not bottomless, and it is probable, at least early on in the project, that Ware was under pressure to reduce projected costs. This would account for the major economy of facing the north front almost wholly in stucco (stone was used only for major horizontal external elements such as cornices and copings), and may well have been a factor in determining the comparatively plain detailing of the overall design as built (Figs 107, 108). Ware’s use of stucco is a reminder also that for him ‘restoration’ did not mean avoiding new building materials or techniques if these were more economical or improved on those that had been used in the past.

For instance, he eschewed James Parker’s patent ‘Roman’ cement as producing in his opinion ‘a very inferior stucco’ and decided instead to follow a recipe for rough-casting that had recently been trialled on a warehouse at Troon in Ayrshire.82 Similarly, he was quite happy to specify the insertion of two 14 × 12-inch girders to support the new floor in the ‘Small’ or ‘South Drawing Room’ (now the Richard Sharp Council Room) formed from the upper part of the former main staircase compartment.83 Evidence of some retrenchment as the project progressed is apparent also from the scaling-down of Ware’s penultimate design for regularising Portland’s ill-assorted annexes on the east and west sides of the house. Though enlarged at basement and ground-floor

levels as Ware had proposed, and roofed with lead cisterns for the collection of rainwater, at first-floor level these extensions were reduced in size to no more than what was needed to accommodate service stairs up to the ball room on the east side of the house and, on the west, the successor to Portland’s water-closet and similar stairs leading to Lord and Lady George’s bedroom and the new State Dining Room (Fig. 109).

While moving the west service staircase into the annexe could be justified at basement and ground-floor level by the need to create a self-contained three-room apartment for Lord George’s daughters Anne and Caroline, it was not thought necessary to reroute the existing stairs from the first floor to the attic just for the sake of enlarging the lobby to the east of Lord and Lady George’s bedroom.

Similar pragmatism lay behind Ware’s painstaking stripping out of every room (apart from the Saloon and Slaughter Room to its west) and his careful storage of salvaged architectural fragments in the attic along with wooden bucks for casting new plaster ornament on site (Fig. 110).84 Some of the Adam-style ornament that can also be glimpsed in Nattes’s drawing of 1816 were no doubt destined for sale to builders’ merchants; others may have been similar to the ‘12 Pieces of old Cleaned Moulding’ that James Millbourne included in his bill for ‘Carving 1030 Feet of Large Grass Leaf on Door and Window Architraves … at 6d pr. ft.’, presumably because he had incorporated these old sections in new work; and a few could have been important interior

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Fig. 107 (below left)

Samuel Ware, First-floor windows on the north front, as executed, c. 1815–18.

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/4007

Fig. 108 (below right)

Samuel Ware, Entablature to common windows on the north front: section, c. 1817.

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/5070

features for which new positions in the house might be found, such as the ‘4 Corinthian Columns Capitals & Bases for Marble Chimney pieces’ and ‘2 Large Corinthian Capitals (Circular) and 6 Half Do’ that Millbourne charged £11 16s. to repair at some point during 1817.85 Apart from the removal of chimneypieces throughout and of the original glazing bars on the south front windows; the replacement of twin doorcases (the western one was a dummy) by a central doorway in the north wall

of the State Dining Room (now the Academy’s General Assembly Room) and the recent installation of two replica dummy doorcases in this room’s west wall; the removal of a dummy door to the west of the fireplace in the south drawing room; the revelation of parts of the painted cove in the Saloon; and the incomplete (but otherwise accurate) detailing of the recent reinstatement of Lady Cavendish’s drawing room in the north front (now the Tennant Gallery); apart from these relatively minor differences, the John Madejski Fine Rooms that

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Fig. 109

Samuel Ware, Burlington House: first-floor plan showing the alterations as executed, c. 1820.

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/4955

Fig. 110

J. C. Nattes (attrib.), Room in the roof of Burlington House, showing moulds for casting plaster ornament, 1816.

London Metropolitan Archives (City of London)

we see today are how Samuel Ware handed them over to his client at the conclusion of the works in May 1819.

Unlike Julian Harrap in 2004–05, whose restoration of these self-same rooms was founded on modern principles of architectural conservation, almost two hundred years earlier Ware had had to rely wholly on his own skill as a designer to recreate the out-dated style of interior associated with William Kent and the 3rd Earl of Burlington (Figs 111, 113).

One of the clearest demonstrations of Ware’s approach is a pair of drawings he made for Lord George comparing the friezes and enriched mouldings of doorcases found in Burlington House with their equivalents in Devonshire House (see Fig. 111). The purpose of this comparison was to establish the appropriateness of three surviving friezes found in Burlington House as models for the new doorheads needed to replace modern interpolations. It is a measure of Lord George’s confidence in his

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proposed economy of reducing the number of variant doorheads from three to two was, however, acted upon, to the extent that the intermediate doorcase in Lady Cavendish’s drawing room (i.e. the Tennant Gallery), the need for which arose from its position between the Great Stairs and the ball room, was formed by replacing the highly enriched cornice of the ‘Corinthian’ doorhead with a plainer pediment.

Unlike a conservation-minded architect today, Ware was free to reuse historic fabric salvaged or copied from other parts of the house, and to introduce new work designed in an appropriate style as and where needed.

Apart from doorheads, examples of the latter approach include, most obviously, the complex Kent-style ceilings (Figs 117, 118) and (probably) the convincingly period chimneypieces that Ware designed for the ball room, State Dining Room and elsewhere (Figs 119, 120).

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Samuel Ware, Doors for Burlington House, examples for the consideration of Lord George Cavendish, c. 1817.

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/5054

architect’s skill and knowledge as a designer that he turned down all three. Instead, he commissioned two entirely original designs for use throughout the house, a ‘Corinthian’ one that emanates west from the ball room into the south drawing room (i.e. the Richard Sharp Council Room; Fig. 116) and an ‘Ionic’ one that migrates east from the State Dining Room into the anti-room to its east (i.e. the Slaughter Room; Fig. 115). Ware’s

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Samuel Ware, Angle leaf ornament for the State Dining Room and drawing room, c. 1817.

Samuel Ware, State Dining Room, design for a frieze, as executed, c. 1817.

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/5124

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/5118

Fig. 113

Samuel Ware, Ball Room, design for frieze, almost as executed, c. 1817.

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 06/5113

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Fig. 215

Robert Richardson Banks & Charles Barry Jr, Burlington House, proposed ground-floor plan for new buildings containing accommodation for the Learned Societies (Royal Society, Geological

Society, Chemical Society, Linnaean Society, Astronomical Society and Society of Antiquaries), early design, 17 January 1867.

The National Archives, Kew, T N A WO RK 30/543

Council meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on 6 November 1866 to present a comparison of what had been proposed for their accommodation in 1859 with the smaller and fewer rooms he could now offer them, their agreement to move to Burlington House was by no means a foregone conclusion. The Council’s decision – apparently reached only after long discussion as Barry waited outside the door – took the form of an elaborate 250-word ‘resolution’, which, after a long preamble, came to the reluctant conclusion that … they would … be prepared to accept this exchange of Apartments provided that the amount of accommodation contemplated in these plans be not in any manner curtailed or impaired, and provided also that the expense of the fittings be borne by Her Majesty’s Government.35 Much to the annoyance of the Treasury, the tacit acceptance of these conditions by the Office of Works enabled the Antiquaries to drive a harder bargain than the other societies when it came to defining the nature and extent of the interior fittings the government was obliged to pay for.

At around this time, if not somewhat earlier, Banks & Barry did what all architects do when faced with an impossible brief. Alongside the flawed design that adhered to it, they started to work on a patently better one that didn’t. The obvious solution was to return to the 1859 concept of a quadrangle enclosed by a full-height building on the Piccadilly front. Thus, it was probably at their meeting in Pennethorne’s office during the week of 12 November, ‘to settle a plan for submission to the Chief Commissioner’, that they hatched a plot with Smirke to obtain the Academy’s approval of a revised scheme, without which it had no chance of acceptance by the Office of Works.36 In case it should appear that the latter had already agreed to alter the brief without consulting the Academy, it was a situation in which Smirke’s role as Banks & Barry’s intermediary became critical, hence the conspiratorial tone of his letter to them on 6 December: In order to prevent the possibility of error I write to remind you that the arrangement between us was that your Plans for the building in Piccadilly should be sent to me, here [i.e. 80, Grosvenor Street], in

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the early part of the day tomorrow (Friday) to be submitted to the Building Committee of the ra in the afternoon, when I have no doubt whatever your plan will be fully approved.

I believe it was arranged that you would be in the way late in the afternoon at the ra in case the Building Committee should wish to have an interview with you.37

‘not to press their views on the subject of the proposed open arcade opposite Burlington House in preference to the continuous Façade facing Piccadilly’38 – a decision not in fact taken until the Committee’s subsequent meeting on 10 December – Banks & Barry wrote to him a week later to explain the reason for their long delay in submitting plans:

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… the Plans so carefully prepared are wasted and we are with all speed preparing another set which we hope to place in your Lordship’s hands in a week or 10 days and which will we believe be satisfactory to the Royal Academy to Mr Pennethorne and to ourselves.

We write these few lines to explain the seeming delay which has entirely arisen from the rather protracted negotiations with the Royal Academy.39

Fig. 217

Unfortunately, no records of the meetings of the Academy’s Building Committee are known to have survived. However, there can be little doubt that on this occasion Smirke impressed upon its members that it was in the Academy’s interests to resolve the difficulties that were preventing Banks & Barry from finalising the block plan of their forecourt building, the lack of which was causing a delay that might prove disastrous if there was a change of government before the Academy’s lease could be signed. Unaware that Grant had already informed Manners privately of the Building Committee’s decision

True to their word, Banks & Barry had a new set of plans ready for submission to Manners on 11 January 1867 and on the 17th of that month signed and dated a detailed ground- and first-floor plan of their revised scheme that,

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Robert Richardson Banks & Charles Barry Jr, Burlington House, ground-floor plan showing accommodation for the Learned Societies as executed, 1871.

The National Archives, Kew, WO RK 30/566

Robert Richardson Banks & Charles Barry Jr, Burlington House, first-floor plan showing accommodation for the Learned Societies as executed, 1871.

The National Archives, Kew, WO RK 30/567

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