Following publication in The Antiquaries Journal volume 96 (2016) of ‘Moor Park in the Seventeenth Century’, by Drury, Jeffery and Wrightson, this article presents the results of research by the present four authors on another house by Hugh May – Eltham Lodge, Kent – which survives rather better. Its exterior is often referred to as being relatively unaltered, but analysis of the surviving fabric and much new documentary evidence have nevertheless revealed many interventions, both inside and out, permitting a clearer understanding of the original appearance, layout and setting of this important Restoration house.
Despite an extensive literature on Castle Howard and its innovative landscape, few details have been known about the important naturalistic garden at Wray Wood. This article identifies four drawings attributed to Nicholas Hawksmoor as designs for the wood's rockwork and watercourses. Although these features have long since disappeared, building records, letters and visitor accounts confirm their existence and show that Hawksmoor was also involved in the display of the sculpture and fountains, with subjects drawn from classical myths and legends. His later designs for the two temples on the east wall of the wood further illustrate his personal vision of the woodland garden and of the sources that inspired its mythological theme. This article draws together all the evidence relating to the wood and considers it in the context of innovative European garden design and its transfer to England in the first years of the eighteenth century. The wood has usually been attributed in more or less equal measure to Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh and their patron Lord Carlisle, but the evidence indicates that it was Hawksmoor who took the lead in carrying out Carlisle's wishes.
During a recent search through the Portland papers at Nottingham University for a project completely unconnected with John James, an item in the catalogue caught my eye. It was a letter written by John James which provides information on a previously unknown example of his work at the parish church of Chalfont St Peter in Buckinghamshire. This church on a very modest scale was designed by James to replace the badly damaged earlier church and built from about 1712 to 1714.
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