Design and Practice in British Architecture: Studies in Architectural History Presented to Howard...

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Mount Clare, RoehamptonAuthor(s): Anne RichesSource: Architectural History, Vol. 27, Design and Practice in British Architecture: Studies inArchitectural History Presented to Howard Colvin (1984), pp. 255-262Published by: SAHGB Publications LimitedStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1568467 .

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Mount Clare, Roehampton by ANNE RICHES

The opening of Putney Bridge in 1729 and the attractions of Richmond Park combined to establish Roehampton as a favoured place for rural villas in the eighteenth century. By the 1770s its popularity was assured and land commanded high prices. In 1770 George Clive, cousin of Lord Clive, acquired a small estate and began building his country retreat. It has for some time been thought that the contract drawings for Lord Clive's house, Claremont, were lent to George when he was planning Mount Clare.' This assumption was based on the fact that the drawings survive in the possession of one of George Clive's descendants. The next step was to assume that Mount Clare was designed by Brown and Holland.2 Brown's and Clive's accounts agree that ?200 was paid to Brown in 1774; Clive's note a further ?129 in I775. The inference from these insignificant payments was that the real costs would have appeared in Henry Holland's (now lost) ledgers.4 The play on the name Claremont added further fuel to the fire. A closer look at the building chronology, George Clive's financial transactions and his business acquaintances does not corroborate this attribution. It is now clear that Mount Clare was designed in 1770, a year before Holland joined Brown. As both houses were building at the same time, it is unlikely that the contract drawings for Claremont would have been available to, much less remained with, George Clive.

George Clive did have a close relationship with his cousin, accompanying him to India in 1755 and becoming chief administrator of his financial affairs. To enable him to accomplish this task more effectively he was taken as partner of the bankers Francis and Robert Gosling in I764.s This connection brought him into the midst of the banking world. He also had architectural responsibilities, overseeing the extensive if unadven- turous building and remodelling at Styche and Walcot in Shropshire and the elaborate internal decorations at 45 Berkeley Square, all commissions entrusted to Chambers. By 1766 George Clive was sufficiently prosperous to leave 25 Bedford Row for Arlington Street where he became a neighbour of Horace Walpole.6 One of the witnesses to the lease of the new house was Robert Taylor, identified as the architect by his address in Spring Gardens. Taylor, it seems, was acting for Clive, since Goslings were instructed to pay him ?3,500 with which he secured the lease from Sambrooke Freeman.7 These two transactions confirm an association between Clive and Taylor as early as 1766; from that date for the rest of the decade Taylor received annual payments of?200oo-?30oo from Clive.8 By 1770 Clive was actively pursuing his ambitions for a rural estate close to the City and Westminster; Taylor was again acting for him. It is possibly George Clive who is referred to in a letter from Chambers to Taylor in 1770 in which he writes I forgot to mention to you that I saw Lord B [Bessborough for whom Chambers had built Parksted now Manresa] and told him you know of a chap for Rowhampton, he said that he had no intention of selling it but as he had heard that Mr Fordyce demanded ?400 per acre for his land he would be willing to dispose of all of his for half the money, if you know of any chap that will give the money I immagine it may be a bargain9



256 THE STUART AND GEORGIAN COUNTRY HOUSE

Could it be that Clive had admired Parksted? He was certainly no stranger to Chambers's work. In the end Clive purchased twenty-three acres of Alexander Fordyce's Putney Park estate. In October 1770 he paid Fordyce ?6,95010 for the land, twenty-five per cent below the asking price if Lord Bessborough was right, but nevertheless a prodigious sum which fifteen years later was still recalled as an enormous price for the privilege of acquiring 'the happy situations of the Ground which commands a most pleasing view of Richmond Park'. xx

Given his links with Taylor, it is probable that Clive knew the architect's own house in Spring Gardens described as 'a curiosity for the economy of space, fanciful shapes and multiplied accommodations: As a MODEL, and from its dimensions it is no more, there is scarcely anything so pretty in London - Foreigners should see it'.'2 Through his banking connections, or indeed through Robert Taylor himself, it is more than likely that he knew the banker, Sir Charles Asgill and the latter's delightful summer villa on the Thames at Richmond. Taylor's economy of planning and fascination for interweaving geometrical forms into his designs would have been familiar and, one must assume, attractive to Clive. Mount Clare was designed as a small, compact country villa for summer residence. The entrance front (Pl. Ia) bears a passing similarity to Manresa (1760), being raised on a rusticated basement with a curved perron and 'S' section wrought-iron balustrading, but more valuable precedents can be traced through Taylor's villas. If the later portico is ignored, the three central bays acquire a close resemblance to Danson Park, with a central door, two flanking windows (the cornice detailing and doorpiece altered when the portico was added), three almost square windows in the first floor and a pediment punctuated with an oculus. Mount Clare's basement is predictably rusticated but the rustication is pierced by prominently voussoired lunettes, as at Purbrook, which was begun in the same year as Mount Clare. Unlike the earlier villas of Asgill House, Chute Lodge, and Danson Park or the contemporary Sharpham, the boldly bracketed eaves are replaced at Mount Clare by an altogether more delicate cornice treatment. The canted bay, familiar in many Taylor designs, reappears at Mount Clare on the garden front (Pl. ib) which looks towards Richmond Park. The small scale of Clive's house made impracticable the similar bays on the side elevations found in some of his other villa designs.

It has been thought that the house was not completed by Clive and that the interior fittings were the work of the second owner, Sir John Dick, and his architect Placido Columbani;'3 both the documentary and stylistic evidence would now seem to militate against this assumption. In a letter written in 1775 Clive recorded that his wife, Sidney, had broached ideas of parting with Roehampton. I have given it to her in my Will; for her pleasure and the health of my Children are the motives for laying out so much money. However all that expense is over and I made it easy to myself, though between you and I, it hath cost me nearer 16 than 15000 ? and unless to a Gentleman of easy fortune who is pleased with the situation, I would never communicate a wish for parting with it.14

This does not suggest a shell but a completed house. If the exterior bears Taylor's hallmark, the interior casts the die. The compact planning, so striking at Asgill, Chute, and Danson, is reproduced at Mount Clare (Fig. i). As in all these villa designs, the service accommodation is found in the basement, the reception rooms on the piano nobile and the bedrooms on the upper floor. Mount Clare is a small house; there are only



MOUNT CLARE, ROEHAMPTON 257

Fig. I Mount Clare, plan (drawn by Robert Weston)

0 10 20 ft. L T._L TJ-LJ I . I 100 cm, 0 5m.

OCTAGON SALOON

STUDY INING ROOM

HALL

two sizeable rooms on the ground floor, but a sense of spaciousness is created by the elegant entrance hall (Pl. 2a). It occupies the three central bays on the north front and is a beautifully balanced composition with doors in the centre of each wall. On the short walls these are flanked by niches, on the north wall by windows and on the south by glazed cupboards carefully detailed to balance the door to the saloon. All is bound together by the shallow, coffered barrel vault, a treatment found in the vestibule at 6 Grafton Street. 15The design in the lunettes, particularly the lightness of the foliage scrolls, is very close in spirit to the saloon ceiling and it may not be coincidence that gryphons, supporters of the Clive family arms, are used here supporting delicate tripods. The possibility of all five of the plaster wall medallions belonging to the original scheme is more doubtful and will be discussed in relation to the Shubin bas- reliefs introduced by Dick. The results of the generous use of space in the entrance hall is that the typical Taylorian central stair was not possible. Despite this, Taylor still employed a favourite conceit to give the illusion of greater space. The cantilevered stair curves elegantly up the east wall, the use of the curve camouflaging the right-angles of the structural walls. The impression of lightness is increased by the simple 'S'-scrolled balusters, identical to those found on the perron. To the south of the stair is a small library, which subtly uses the available dimensions to considerable effect. The propor- tions of the room dictated a lower ceiling but instead of a false ceiling a cove was introduced rising from a much deeper cornice than found elsewhere in the house but paralleling the main exterior cornice mould. The low-relief detailing on the chimney-piece is mirrored in the doorcase and to either side of it there are mahogany bookcases, the upper doors glazed, the lower inlaid and serpentine fronted. To the east

18




of the hall was the original dining room, the largest room on the ground floor which again would seem to be part of the original scheme. It has a boldly detailed marble chimney-piece related stylistically to that in the saloon and there is no reason to suppose that it was inserted after the original building. The walls are divided into panels, using mouldings found elsewhere in the house and echoing work by Taylor for Alderman Boyd, at Danson and 33 Upper Brook Street. The panel over the chimney-piece has a deeper frame and the plaque within it, wreathed around by entwined olive branches, is an off-the-peg model found in the 1760s at Claydon and in the late 1770s at 25 Bedford Square. It could have been inserted later but a comparison with a similar arrangement at Sharpham suggests Taylor's hand.

The finest room in the house is the octagon saloon which occupies the centre of the garden front. Deep, plain niches set into the spaces lost by the splays contrast with the enriched doorcases and window architraves; otherwise the walls are undecorated except for a stiffly regimented anthemion cornice. There is a handsome two-tone marble chimney-piece with Ionic columns and a classical scene on the central panel. The tour deforce is the plaster ceiling (Pl. 2b) which provides the final stylistic link with Taylor. It is divided into eight segments each with either a figural medallion or an urn, festooned with scrolling tendrils of foliage and divided by interlocking wreaths of olive leaves, which link with a series of central concentric patterns. This overall design bears close comparison with the octagon ceiling at Danson Park,16 and ceilings at Chute Lodge'7 and Asgill House,'8 all now satisfactorily proved to have been designed by Taylor.19 In November 1770 Taylor received ?i,000 from Clive, the first of a series of substantial payments which continued until the completion of the house in 1773 and amounted to a sum in excess of ?6,250.20 Nowhere is there a document which states categorically that Taylor designed Mount Clare but given all the circumstantial and stylistic evidence the authorship must be determined in his favour.

Sidney Clive inherited Mount Clare on George's death in 1779 and the bequest suggests that the house was habitable.1 She put it on the market in 1780 and it was advertised as 'an elegant new-built villa beautifully situated in Roehampton Park with about 9 acres of land laid out in pleasure ground [presumably Brown's work of 1774 and 1775] and kitchen garden'.22 The purchaser, SirJohn Dick, in a letter of 18 April to John Strange, the British Resident in Venice, commented

I don't recollect that I told you that I have bought and am settled in an excellent house quite to our satisfaction. . . I havejust bought a compleat villa which I conclude you must know, it was built by Mr Clive the banker between Lord Bessborough's and the Roehampton Gate of Richmond Park a most delightful situation. Mr Clive contrived to lay out twenty thousand pounds there althou' there is but 23 acres ofland - but I hope to be able to get a few more acres of land adjoining to it. I mean to make some alterations to it and hope to have it ready by the beginning ofJune.23

The house was advertised to be sold on 4 April 1780; if Dick was in residence by mid April it cannot have required any major fitting up. If the planned alterations were to have been completed by June they cannot have been substantial.

Dick24 was British consul in Leghorn from 1754 to 1776 during which time he amassed a considerable fortune and made a number of influential friends. Among these were the Duke of Gloucester and two Russians, Counts Alexis and Fyodor Orlov,



MOUNT CLARE, ROEHAMPTON 259

whom he met as a result of securing the lucrative contract for revictualling the Russian fleet after the battle of Chesmen. In the hall at Mount Clare there are two marble bas- reliefs of the brothers' heads signed in cyrillic script 'F Shubin at Rome 1772'. Alison Kelly offers a convincing explanation for the plaques being at Mount Clare given the fact that there is no evidence that Dick commissioned them from the Russian sculptor.25 Since it is known that the Duke of Gloucester did place just such a commission, the proposition is that the Mount Clare marbles were either given to Dick by the Duke or that Dick acquired them from the Duke when he left Leghorn. Once he was back in England Dick remained aloof from Society life. 'As to friendship' he wrote 'I do assure you that no Nation has less of it than the present race of English . . . As I continue to be quite independant I have nothing to do with them'.26 Given his antipathy to his fellow Englishmen and his affection for Italy is is not surprising that he turned to an Italian for advice on the alterations he wished to make at Mount Clare. Placido Columbani27 was a Milanese architect who had settled in England. By 1780 he had published a variety of designs for decorative interior work but his architectural output is not so obvious. The evidence to date indicates that he was essentially a decorator who could oversee architectural work but who was not an initiator of architectural schemes himself.

At Mount Clare he was commissioned to design a portico and produced an elegant Doric frontispiece, which entailed breaking the wrought-iron balustrade to insert the timber columns. The three compartments created in the soffits have delicately deco- rated plaster coves, the central one introducing more intricate patterns into the garland of olive leaves, a motif already found inside the house. The treatment reflects the elaborate detail found in his printed examples. His work at Mount Clare is recorded by a single payment of?63 in September 1780;28 his presence at Mount Clare is also noted by William Watts who published an engraving of the house in 1784. Dick had, he wrote, 'with the assistance of Signor Placido Columbani, a Milanese Architect, added a Doric portico to it and many architectural ornaments which render it a complete Italian villa. Every attention has been paid to the improvement of the Plantations and the Grounds which together form a ferme ornee'.29 What were the many architectural ornaments for which Columbani was responsible? The Shubin bas-reliefs are an obvious starting point: they had to be displayed and the hall was the most suitable place. The heads were designed to face each other and the most striking of the possible positions was above the glazed cupboards. It is quite probable that the medallions over the three doors leading from the hall were part of Taylor's original scheme. The addition of the marbles disrupted the balance of the room and to counter this two further plaster medallions were inserted between the windows and the door. These two medallions are different in character from the remaining three and they were possibly provided by John Flaxman to whom Dick made payments in 1780.3o Columbani was probably responsible for the transformation of the first-floor octagon room into a library to house Dick's considerable collection of books. This was achieved by projecting the cornice into the room and articulating the angles with engaged Corin- thian columns. It is tempting to attribute the rise in rates soon after Dick's acquisition of the estate not simply to the purchase of additional land but to the construction of the ferme orn~e mentioned by Watts. Christopher Hussey illustrated two charming




picturesque cottages,32 and other farm buildings, stables, and a coachhouse, all known to have existed in the 1840s,3 may well have been built at this time.

Mount Clare was sold to the London County Council in 1954, by which time its surrounding buildings and landscape design had given way to the Roehampton Estate. In the early i96os the LCC (later the Greater London Council) undertook a major restoration scheme removing later additions and returning the house to a dignified neo-classical villa for the use of the students of Garnett College. It still exerts great charm and offers another example of Taylor's ingenious development of the astylar villa only in part disguised by Columbani's Italian accoutrements.

NOTES

I Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland: his Life and Architecture (1966), p. 32. 2 Christopher Hussey, Country Life, 26January 1935, p- 92. While being careful not to give a definite attribution to Holland, Hussey says' there is nothing to contradict the view'. Dorothy Stroud, op. cit., p. 36 goes further and says the architect is highly likely to be Holland. 3 Barclays Bank, George Clive's account, 1774, 1775. 4 Dorothy Stroud, Capability Brown (1975), p. 169. 5 India Office Library: Clive papers, Box 32 Misc. letters 1764. 6 Middlesex Land Register 1766/8/705. 7 India Office Library: Clive papers, Box 8i1, Accounts 1766. 8 Barclays Bank, George Clive's account 1766-70. 9 British Library, Add MS 41133 fol. 21v. io Barclays Bank, George Clive's account 1770. II W. Watts, The Seats of the Nobility and Gentry (1786-87). 12 The World, 29 September 1788. 13 Christopher Hussey, Country Life, 2 February 1935, pp. 118-22. Alison Kelly, 'The Shubin Plaques'. Burlington Magazine, April 1970, pp. 224-28. 14 Christopher Hussey, Country Life, 26 January 1935, p. 92. 15 Marcus Binney, Country Life, I2 September 1981, p. 1635. 16 Roger White, 'Danson Park, Bexley', Archaeologia Cantiana, xcvill (1982), 51-66. White clarifies this decoration as a particular Taylorian treatment of octagon ceilings. 17 Christie's sale catalogue of architectural drawings, 30 November 1983, includes Taylor's interior designs for Chute. 18 The interior work at Mount Clare adds to the knowledge of Taylor's use of decorative designs. The detail of the hall at Mount Clare bears comparison with the Waggon Room at Heveningham; this and other decorative details suggest that the division of authorship at Heveningham deserves further attention. 19 Marcus Binney, 'The Villas of Sir Robert Taylor'. Country Life, 6 and 13July 1967. 20 Barclays Bank, George Clive's account 1770-73 21 PROB 11/1051/97. 22 Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser 1780, advertising sale for 4 April, British Library, Burney Collection i, 689.b. 23 British Library, Eglington MS 1970, fol. 34. 24 Sir John Dick descended from Sir William Dick of Braid not Alexander Dick of Prestonfield (see Hussey 26January 1935). Inherited title s15July 1768. Second son of Andrew Dick of West Newton, Northumberland. Married Anne Bragg 1720-81. 25 Alison Kelly, op. cit. 26 British Library, Eglington MS 1970, fol. I I, 22June 1778. 27 A letter from Lord Howard to Dick, 14 September 1796, indicates that Dick remained in touch with Columbani: 'I shall esteem it a particular favour of you to inform me if you have anything of our friend Columbani's engagements'. Papers in possession of Sir Ralph Carr-Ellison. 28 Drummond's Bank, Dick's account 1780. 29 W. Watts op. cit. 30 Drummond's Bank, Dick's account 1780. 31 Putney Poor Rates, 1779-83. 32 Christopher Hussey, Country Life, 26January 1935, p. 92. 33 GLC, Legal and Parliamentary Dept.



Pl. Ia Mount Clare, entrance front

P1. Ib Mount Clare, garden front



P1. 2a Mount Clare, entrance hall

P1. 2b Mount Clare, ceiling ofsaloon



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