A touch of Robert Adam

Pair of late-eighteenth-century cutlery urns with a provenance from Chirk Castle and Bowood House. ©Christie's

We have just managed to buy a pair of urn-shaped cutlery boxes for Chirk Castle, near Wrexham, Wales, that may have been designed by Robert Adam. The urns were originally made for Bowood House, in Wiltshire, the country house of the first Marquess of Lansdowne, which Adam helped to build and decorate.

The boxes came to Chirk Castle in the twentieth century through Lady Margaret Nairne, who had connections with the Lansdowne family and who married Lieutenant-Colonel Ririd Myddelton of Chirk in 1931. They were sold by the Myddelton family in 2004, and we bought them back at auction at Christie’s in New York on 14 April.

The east front of Chirk Castle. ©NTPL/Matthew Antrobus

Chirk Castle still clearly shows it medieval origins. It was built around 1300 as part of a string of castles consolidating the Welsh conquests of the English King Edward I. In 1595 Chirk was purchased by the Elizabethan merchant adventurer Thomas Myddelton, whose descendants inhabited it for the next four hundred years.

The State Dining Room at Chirk. ©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

The State Dining Room at Chirk, where the cutlery boxes will soon be put back, was redecorated in the neo-classical manner for Richard Myddelton, MP, in the late 1770s. This late eighteenth-century layer of taste at Chirk was followed by a Victorian phase of decoration, designed by A.W. Pugin.

The reacquired cutlery urns, in turn, represent the era of Lieutenant-Colonel Ririd Myddelton and his wife Lady Margaret, who cared for the castle after the Second World War. In 1978 they sold Chirk to the government, which conveyed it to the National Trust in 1981.

Almost Easter

'El Espolio' or the disrobing of Christ by El Greco (1541-1614), at Upton House, Warwickshire. ©NTPL/John Hammond

Traces of the Bachelor Duke

The Long Gallery at Hardwick ©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

Hardwick Hall is one of those places that look deceptively unchanged. In a previous post I referred to the building of the house by Bess of Hardwick in the late sixteenth century. In fact, a huge amount of change took place there subsequently, particularly during the time of William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire (1790-1858).

The canopy in the Long Gallery, from a bed made by Francis Lapierre for Chatsworth in 1697. ©NTPL/Nick Guttridge

The ‘Bachelor Duke’, as he was known, inherited the title and the huge Cavendish estates in 1811, at the age of 21. He was spoilt and extravagant, but also lively and loveable, and he greatly enjoyed entertaining, in spite of his increasing deafness.

Early-eighteenth-century bed in the Green Velvet Room. ©NTPL/Nadia Mackenzie

The Bachelor Duke combined an abiding interest in the past with a Regency love of splendour. At Hardwick he restored the fabric and the interiors of the house, but he didn’t hesitate to move things around and add furnishings from some of his other properties.

Bed from about 1740 in the Cut Velvet Bedroom. ©NTPL/Nadia Mackenzie

He greatly increased the number of paintings hung on the tapestries in the Long Gallery, for instance, effectively making it into an art gallery. He also added the tester and head of a 1697 state bed brought from Chatsworth halfway down the Gallery, in a romantic recreation of the state canopies of Bess of Hardwick’s day.

Cupboard in the style of Jean Goujon set against Flemish tapestries in the Withdrawing Chamber.©NTPL/Nick Guttridge

The early eighteenth-century green velvet bed at Hardwick was brought by the Bachelor Duke from Londesborough Hall in Yorkshire, which the Cavendishes had inherited from the Earl of Burlington in 1753. The cut velvet bed in another room, by Thomas Hardy and dating from about 1740, came from Chatsworth.

Conservation work being done on one of the Gideon tapestries from the Long Gallery at Hardwick, part of a long-term programme of conservation being undertaken at the textile conservation workshop at Blickling Hall. ©NTPL/John Hammond

The Bachelor Duke was also responsible for adding more tapestries to the walls of Hardwick, using it almost like wallpaper. It appealed to his romantic eye, as well as providing some protection against the perishingly cold Derbyshire winters.

A Japanese garden in Cheshire

The Japanese garden at Tatton Park, with a 'flying goose' bridge crossing a stream near the tea house. The metal cranes, though Japanese, were particularly popular among westerners in the Edwardian era. ©NTPL/Stephen Robson

My recent attendance at the ‘eastern’-themed Ashridge Garden History Summer Course has inspired me to feature the Japanese garden at Tatton Park, Cheshire.

Cover of the guidebook to the Japan-British Exhibition. Image: Wikimedia Commons

The garden was inspired by the Japan-British exhibition held at White City in London in 1910. Japan was keen to emphasize its status as an emerging power, and the exhibition in London was partly intended to cement the strong commercial and military ties with Britain.

Miniature mountains, such as this snow-capped 'Mt Fuji', and stone lanterns were two more traditional Japanese design elements that were used more in the west than they would have been in Japan. ©NTPL/Stephen Robson

The exhibiton showed many aspects of Japanese manufacturing, society and culture, including gardens constructed with materials brought over for the occasion. This seems to have stimulated the creation of a number of relatively authentic Japanese gardens in Britain.

A pocket-handkerchief tree (Davidia Involucrata) in the Japanese garden at Tatton. ©NTPL/Stephen Robson

Following the exhibition Allan de Tatton Egerton, third Baron Egerton, commissioned his own Japanese garden and had a Japanese team brought over with plants and materials to construct it at Tatton.

The Shinto shrine seen from the tea house. ©NTPL/Stephen Robson

It includes a Shinto shrine and a tea house. Parts of the garden are based on the Japanese stroll garden, where the visitor is carefully guided past a variety of framed views.

The tea house. ©NTPL/Stephen Robson

The garden also contains elements of the traditonal Japanese tea garden, which is self-consciously ‘rustic’ and is designed to heighten the guest’s anticipation as he or she follows a convoluted route towards a tea pavilion.

©NTPL/Stephen Robson

Paths and bridges are deliberately designed to slow the visitor down and to create an awareness of one’s surroundings. The artifice in Japanese gardens is intended to bring out the essential nature of the plants and rocks – something reminiscent of the western concept of the ’genius of the place’.

©NTPL/Stephen Robson

Tatton Park was bequeathed to the National Trust by the last Lord Egerton in 1958 and is managed by Cheshire East Council. The Japanese garden was restored in 2000-2001, once again with advice from Japanese experts.