Nicholas Stone
Encyclopedia
Nicholas Stone was an English
sculptor
and architect
. In 1619 he was appointed master-mason to James I
, and in 1626 to Charles I
.
During his career he was the mason responsible for not only the building of Inigo Jones
' Banqueting House, Whitehall
, but the execution of avant-garde
funerary monuments for some of the most prominent of his era. As an architect he worked in the Baroque style providing England with some of its earliest examples of the style that was not to find favour in the country for another sixty years, and then only fleetingly.
, near Exeter
. He was first apprenticed to Isaac James, a Dutch-born London mason working in Southwark
, London. When the sculptor Hendrik de Keyser (1567–1621), master mason to the City of Amsterdam, visited London in 1606, Stone was introduced to him and contracted to work for him in Holland, where he married de Keyser's daughter and worked with his son Pieter. Stone is thought to have made the portico to the Westerkerk
in Amsterdam
. In 1613 he returned to London
with Bernard Janssens, a fellow pupil of de Keyser and settled in Long Acre
, St Martin-in-the-Fields
, where he established a large practice and workshops and soon became the leading English sculptor of funeral monuments.
, Edinburgh, in 1616, which led to the spectacular contract, for building Jones's Banqueting House, that placed him in the forefront of London builders.
Throughout his life, Stone recorded his work in two journals; These are his autograph notebook (covering the years 1614–1641) and his accounts book (covering 1631-1642). These journals record all his works and patrons, and provide in unequalled detail documentation of the career of an architect (then known as a surveyor) of the period. A list of works by Stone's relative John Stoakes includes some work known not to have been designed by Stone, including Inigo Jones' Banqueting House, Whitehall, but permits some attributions, noted below. This amount of information available concerning Stone has led to his importance to English architecture often being overstated. However, the documentation does clearly prove that by 1629 he was England's foremost sculptor and that by the end of his life he held comparable status in architecture. His first appointment in the royal Office of Works
was as "master mason and architect" to Windsor Castle
in April 1626; in 1632 he succeeded William Cure as Master Mason to the Crown.
, Norfolk. Paston commissioned from Stone the monument to his mother (died 1629) in the church at Paston, the family's ancient seat; in Stone's note-book, the price came to £340, and Stone remarks that in setting it up he was "very extreordenerly entertayned thar" by the genial Paston. The simpler monument by Stone of Sir Edmund Paston (died 1633), without the effigy and achievement of arms, stands beside his wife's. Oxnead was emptied of its treasures, sold off and all but demolished, but in 1809 its long-term tenant, John Adey Repton
, made a conjectural drawing of it, based on the foundations and recollections of local inhabitants, which was illustrated in W.H. Bartlett and John Britten's Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain 1809, following p. 98. his view is centered on the terraced parterre
s, in the lowest of which, he says, stood the fountain of two tiers of bold opposed scrolls supporting a shallow basin, re-erected after the Oxnead sale at the rival Norfolk house, Blickling Hall
. Repton's drawing showed the banqueting house
constructed as a wing; its style was so advanced for its date in the 1630s that the younger Repton concluded that it had been "erected by the first Earl of Yarmouth, to receive King Charles II. and his attendants, who visited Oxnead in 1676; it was a lofty building, with sash-windows, called the Banquetting-room. Underneath this was a vaulted apartment, which was called the Frisketting room, probably from the Italian 'frescati', a cool grotto." Repton's drawing shows a building of three bays articulated by a giant order, with large rectangular windows over the basement windows and oval windows, recalled by local people, in a mezzanine above. Stone provided a magnificent chimneypiece that cost £80 and another for the banqueting house, a balcony with two door surrounds and an architrave in Portland stone
, a "copper branch"— probably a cast bronze candelabrum— weighing 166 pounds, and an achievement of the Paston arms. There were many miscellaneous carved furnishings, picture frames and stands for tables, balustrades and paving-stones, and busts of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina. For the gardens he provided figures of Venus and Cupid, Jupiter, Flora, and, to guard the garden front door, a large figure of Cerberus
on a pedestal, all long gone, but Stone's Hercules— and perhaps others— are preserved in the gardens at Blickling. In the garden Stone erected a large iron pergola
painted green, surmounted by eight gilded balls. In 1638, he sent his son, Nicholas Stone the younger, to Italy, whence there returned an elevation of a new garden house just built in the Villa Ludovisi
, Rome, "for Mr Paston", and marbles, architectural books (Vignola, Vitruvius, and Maggi's Le fontane di Roma), and plaster casts sent home from Livorno. With the onset of the Civil War
, commissions from Sir William abruptly ceased in 1642; five years later, his outstanding account was settled, for £24.
, almost twice as big as life" and "one head carved in stone of Marcus Aurelius" still preserved set in the north front above the loggia (each £4).
While Stone's London workshop received commissions for garden statuary, perhaps including the sculptures in Isaac de Caus
' grotto at Woburn Abbey
, recently attributed to Nicholas Stone, and for domestic items such as door-cases and chimneypieces, the vast majority of Stone's surviving sculptures are funerary monuments, and it is by these that the quality of his sculpture is today judged. Stone was greatly influenced by the new classicizing fashion for art derived from the Italian Renaissance and the Roman Arundel marbles
, and this is reflected in two of his works, both in Westminster Abbey
, the memorial to Sir John Holles and his brother Francis both dressed Roman armour reflecting classical influence, something new to England. It has been said that until this time English sculpture resembled that described by the Duchess of Malfi
: "the figure cut in alabaster kneels at my husband's tomb."
A taste for realism, in part the product of his training in the Netherlands, informs the floor tomb of Sir William Curle (died 1617) in the church at Hatfield, Herefordshire
; Sir William is sculpted lying in his grave coat, his knees drawn up in his last agonies: "in its sad and poignant realism," observes Colin Platt, "it was as much a culture shock as the Whitehall Banqueting House".
Two prominent funeral monuments, Stone's box tombs in Westminster Abbey
served as influential models far into the 18th century for many monuments in the metropolis and in the country: they were for Sir George Villiers and his wife, the Countess of Buckingham (c 1631), and for Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, and his wife (after 1638).
Stone's 1631 monument to Dr John Donne
, at St Pauls Cathedral is considered to be among his most remarkable. It depicts the poet, standing upon an urn, dressed in a winding cloth
, rising for the moment of judgement. This depiction, Donne's own idea, was sculpted from a painting for which the Poet posed.
Another of Stone's finest works is the effigy
of Elizabeth, Lady Carey in the parish church at Stowe Nine Churches
, Northamptonshire, is considered one of his masterpieces. While other surviving examples of his monuments to the dead include those to: Sir Francis Vere, Earl of Middlesex
; Sir Dudley Digges
at Chilham church, Kent
; Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton
, in Dover Castle
(removed to Greenwich); Sir Thomas Sutton
, at the London Charterhouse
(with Janssens); Sir Robert Drury at Hawstead church, Suffolk
; Sir William Stonhouse at Radley
church, Berkshire(now Oxfordshire); Sir Thomas Bodley
at Merton College, Oxford (1612-May 1615), with his bust in an oval niche flanked by pilasters of stacked books; Thomas, Lord Knivett
, at Stanwell
, Middlesex (1623); Sir William Pope
, in Wroxton
church, near Banbury; Sir Nicholas Bacon, in Redgrave church
, Suffolk (with Janssens), the composer Orlando Gibbons
, in Canterbury Cathedral
(1626); and Sir Julius Caesar
, in St Helens, Bishopsgate.
Of Stone's non-sepulchre sculpture precious little remains: a chimneypiece, from 1616, at Newburgh Priory
depicting mythological standing deities in bas-relief; two crumbling garden statues at Blickling Hall
and a collection of statues in good repair at Wilton House
. The Wilton House statues, as at Woburn, indicate the close working relationship that Stone had with both Inigo Jones and Isaac de Caus
both of whom worked on the design of Wilton.
York House, London, was one of the great houses of the aristocracy which lined the Thames during the 17th century. During the 1620s it was acquired by the royal favourite George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
. The Duke rebuilt and modernised the house and, in 1623,commissioned the building of a warergate to give access to the Thames from the gardens, at this time the river being a favoured method of transport on London. With the Banqueting House
it is one of the few surviving reminders in London of the Italianate court style of Charles I
. The water gate is believed to have been designed by Stone. However, like the Banqueting House the design of the water gate has been attributed to Inigo Jones, with Stone only being credited with the building. It has also been attributed to the to the diplomat and painter Sir Balthazar Gerbier
The similarity of the architecture to the Danby Gate (below) and its bold vermicelli rusticated design
in a confident Serlian manner
indicate that it is by the same hand as the Danby Gate itself.
Today, of the York House complex, only the water gate survives, the house was demolished in 1670 and the site redeveloped as Villiers Street. The creation of the Thames embankment in the 19th century caused the gate to be marooned 150 yards (137 m) from the river.
The water gate was restored during the 1950s.
is one of three entrances to the garden designed by Nicholas Stone between 1632 and 1633. In this highly ornate arch, Stone ignored the new simple classical Palladian style currently fashionable, which had just been introduced to England from Italy by Inigo Jones
, and drew his inspiration from an illustration in Serlio's book of archways.
The gateway consists of three bays, each with a pediment
. The largest and central bay, containing the segmented arch is recessed, causing its larger pediment to be partially hidden by the flanking smaller pediments of the projecting lateral bays.
The stone work is heavily decorated being bands of alternating vermicelli rustication
and plain dressed stone. The pediments of the lateral bays are seemingly supported by circular columns which frame niches containing statues of Charles I and Charles II in classical pose. The tympanum
of the central pediment contains a segmented niche containing a bust of The 1st Earl of Danby
, who founded the garden in 1621 and commissioned the gateways.
In 1637, Stone designed a new entrance porch for the University Church of St Mary the Virgin
, Oxford, this was one of his most spectacular works, in a European baroque design. The porch's heavy Baroque is quite unlike the eventual form the style was later to take in England. A huge scrolled pediment is supported by a pair of massive solomonic column
s, an ancient architectural feature revived, in Italy, as a feature of the Baroque, and used most notably, as Stone would have been aware, for the baldacchino
at St. Peter's Basilica
in Rome, which has been completed by Bernini just four years earlier.
The obvious European, and thus Catholic, design of the porch was later to cause problems for the porch's patron Archbishop Laud
because at the centre of the scrolled pediment
was placed a statue of the Virgin and Child, a composition considered to be Roman Catholic idolatry
, and later used against the Archbishop at his trial for treason in 1641 following the grand Remonstrance
. Today, the statue is still bears the bullet holes cause when it was fired upon by Cromwellian soldiers.
Stone's appointment as surveyor in charge of all the workmen in the design and erection of the new hall, came after a committee of the Company had voted on competitive plans offered by ad hoc partnerships of workmen, appears to be the first instance outside the King's works in which a "surveyor", the predecessor of an architect, was engaged to oversee every detail, a process that seems to have been unfamiliar to the members of the Goldsmiths' Company. The Company's official minutes record the detailed designs, vetted by Inigo Jones, that he drew up, not merely the "plotts" or floor plan
s and street and courtyard elevations but the "Patterne of the greate gate" in Foster Lane and patterns for the ceiling, wainscoting and the screen in the Great Hall and wainscot panelling in the parlour and the great chamber above it. His surveillance over workmen who found themselves working in a new manner, to which their apprenticeships had not accustomed them, can be sensed in his notation concerning Cornbury Park, where he contracted to "dereckt all the workmen and mak all thar moldes", providing correctly classical profiles for moulding
s for carpenters and plasterers. His fee there of £1000 suggested to John Newman that he combined with the surveyorship considerable mason's work.
The placement of windows in the Hall's main facade show that Stone was ahead of his time in plans, smaller windows indicate the existence of mezzanine floors, such as those that exist at Easton Neston
and Kinross
, these housed small informal rooms, servant's rooms and rooms for housing closestools all features which were not common place until the advent of England's brief Baroque period which began in the 1690s. When servant's became confined out of sight to their own designated areas rather than sharing rooms with their employers. This was an important milestone in English domestic design. Another strong Baroque feature of Goldsmith's Hall was the massive porch, rather than a more Palladian portico, similar, but more restrained in design than that of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford, it is crowned by a broken segmented pediment - again, a strong Baroque feature.
Stone's Goldsmith's Hall was burnt to a standing shell in the Great Fire of London
, rebuilt, and eventually demolished in 1829.
to contain his monument to Lady Digges (1631, demolished); Cornbury House, Oxfordshire, partly rebuilt by Stone 1632-33 (altered); Copt Hall, Essex, 1638-39 (demolished in 1748).
, Westminster, where they remained throughout their lives. The marriage produced three sons: John (1620–1667), a sculptor; Henry Stone
(1616–1653) an artist most notable for his copies of Van Dyck and Nicholas (1618–1647), a sculptor, who worked under Bernini in Rome.
The outbreak of the civil war put an end to Stone's career, and he was to personally suffer. Like Inigo Jones, he was seen by the Puritans as a royal architect; his son, John, fought for the Royalists during the civil war. According to a presentation to King Charles II, in 1690 after the restoration, Stone had been ‘sequestered, plundered and imprisoned’ because of his loyalty to the crown.
Ironically, despite being Master Mason to the Crown, and his revolutionary works being for and commemorating the most eminent in the land and being displayed in the country's most prominent buildings, Stone was always thought of as a craftsman, and accorded that status. It was to be his contemporary and less accomplished rival, the French sculptor Hubert Le Sueur
, working in bronze, who was to cause the status of a sculptor to be elevated to that of an artist.
Evaluated today, Stone's architecture combines the sophisticated classicism of Jones with an uncouth artisan Mannerism popular at the time. The architectural historian, Howard Colvin
's assessment of Stone's architecture is that he "partly absorbed the new classicism of Inigo Jones, but without accepting its full discipline and without rejecting some of the mannerist
or baroque
features that he had learned in London and Amsterdam. The result was a vernacular classical architecture, of which regrettably little remains today." Stone, as an architect, was at the cutting edge of modernity, his work in the Baroque style while Inigo Jones' was still promoting Palladianism was at odds with contemporary fashion, it was to be almost fifty years from Stone's death before William Talman's
Chatsworth House
, completed in 1696, was to be hailed as England's first Baroque house, while England's truest Baroque house, Castle Howard
, was not completed until 1712.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
and architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
. In 1619 he was appointed master-mason to James I
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
, and in 1626 to Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
.
During his career he was the mason responsible for not only the building of Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones is the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England...
' Banqueting House, Whitehall
Banqueting House, Whitehall
The Banqueting House, Whitehall, London, is the grandest and best known survivor of the architectural genre of banqueting house, and the only remaining component of the Palace of Whitehall...
, but the execution of avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
funerary monuments for some of the most prominent of his era. As an architect he worked in the Baroque style providing England with some of its earliest examples of the style that was not to find favour in the country for another sixty years, and then only fleetingly.
Early life
Nicholas Stone was born in 1586, the son of a quarryman of WoodburyWoodbury, Devon
Woodbury is a village and civil parish in East Devon in the English county of Devon, south east of the city of Exeter. It is a commuter village and is primarily residential, since the majority of the workforce commute to Exeter. It has a population of 3,466....
, near Exeter
Exeter
Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...
. He was first apprenticed to Isaac James, a Dutch-born London mason working in Southwark
Southwark
Southwark is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north...
, London. When the sculptor Hendrik de Keyser (1567–1621), master mason to the City of Amsterdam, visited London in 1606, Stone was introduced to him and contracted to work for him in Holland, where he married de Keyser's daughter and worked with his son Pieter. Stone is thought to have made the portico to the Westerkerk
Westerkerk
The Westerkerk is a church of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands denomination in Amsterdam, built in 1620-1631 after a design by Hendrick de Keyser. It is next to Amsterdam's Jordaan district, on the bank of the Prinsengracht canal....
in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
. In 1613 he returned to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
with Bernard Janssens, a fellow pupil of de Keyser and settled in Long Acre
Long Acre
Long Acre is a street in central London, England. Starting from St. Martin's Lane it runs from west to east just north of Covent Garden piazza, one block north of Floral Street. The street was completed in the early 17th century. It was once known for its coach-makers, and later for its car dealers...
, St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Martin-in-the-Fields is an Anglican church at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, London. Its patron is Saint Martin of Tours.-Roman era:Excavations at the site in 2006 led to the discovery of a grave dated about 410...
, where he established a large practice and workshops and soon became the leading English sculptor of funeral monuments.
Works
Stone owed his early success in London in part to Inigo Jones, the King's Surveyor, under whom he first worked at Holyrood PalaceHolyrood Palace
The Palace of Holyroodhouse, commonly referred to as Holyrood Palace, is the official residence of the monarch in Scotland. The palace stands at the bottom of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, at the opposite end to Edinburgh Castle...
, Edinburgh, in 1616, which led to the spectacular contract, for building Jones's Banqueting House, that placed him in the forefront of London builders.
Throughout his life, Stone recorded his work in two journals; These are his autograph notebook (covering the years 1614–1641) and his accounts book (covering 1631-1642). These journals record all his works and patrons, and provide in unequalled detail documentation of the career of an architect (then known as a surveyor) of the period. A list of works by Stone's relative John Stoakes includes some work known not to have been designed by Stone, including Inigo Jones' Banqueting House, Whitehall, but permits some attributions, noted below. This amount of information available concerning Stone has led to his importance to English architecture often being overstated. However, the documentation does clearly prove that by 1629 he was England's foremost sculptor and that by the end of his life he held comparable status in architecture. His first appointment in the royal Office of Works
Office of Works
The Office of Works was established in the English Royal household in 1378 to oversee the building of the royal castles and residences. In 1832 it became the Works Department within the Office of Woods, Forests, Land Revenues, Works and Buildings...
was as "master mason and architect" to Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...
in April 1626; in 1632 he succeeded William Cure as Master Mason to the Crown.
Sir William Paston at Oxnead
A consistent private patron over a period of many years was Sir William Paston, who was modernizing his Elizabethan seat at OxneadOxnead
Oxnead is a lost settlement in Norfolk, England, roughly three miles south-east of Aylsham. It now consists mostly of St Michael’s Church and Oxnead Hall. It was the principal residence of the Paston family from 1597 until the death of William Paston, 2nd Earl of Yarmouth in 1732...
, Norfolk. Paston commissioned from Stone the monument to his mother (died 1629) in the church at Paston, the family's ancient seat; in Stone's note-book, the price came to £340, and Stone remarks that in setting it up he was "very extreordenerly entertayned thar" by the genial Paston. The simpler monument by Stone of Sir Edmund Paston (died 1633), without the effigy and achievement of arms, stands beside his wife's. Oxnead was emptied of its treasures, sold off and all but demolished, but in 1809 its long-term tenant, John Adey Repton
John Adey Repton
John Adey Repton was an English architect.-Biography:John Repton was the son of Humphry Repton, born at Norwich on 29 March 1775, and educated at Aylsham grammar school and in a Norwich architect's office...
, made a conjectural drawing of it, based on the foundations and recollections of local inhabitants, which was illustrated in W.H. Bartlett and John Britten's Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain 1809, following p. 98. his view is centered on the terraced parterre
Parterre
A parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging, and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing, usually symmetrical pattern. Parterres need not have any flowers at all...
s, in the lowest of which, he says, stood the fountain of two tiers of bold opposed scrolls supporting a shallow basin, re-erected after the Oxnead sale at the rival Norfolk house, Blickling Hall
Blickling Hall
Blickling Hall is a stately home in the village of Blickling north of Aylsham in Norfolk, England, that has been in the care of the National Trust since 1940.-History:...
. Repton's drawing showed the banqueting house
Banqueting House
In Tudor and Early Stuart English architecture a banqueting house is a separate building reached through pleasure gardens from the main residence, whose use is purely for entertaining. It may be raised for additional air or a vista, and it may be richly decorated, but it contains no bedrooms or...
constructed as a wing; its style was so advanced for its date in the 1630s that the younger Repton concluded that it had been "erected by the first Earl of Yarmouth, to receive King Charles II. and his attendants, who visited Oxnead in 1676; it was a lofty building, with sash-windows, called the Banquetting-room. Underneath this was a vaulted apartment, which was called the Frisketting room, probably from the Italian 'frescati', a cool grotto." Repton's drawing shows a building of three bays articulated by a giant order, with large rectangular windows over the basement windows and oval windows, recalled by local people, in a mezzanine above. Stone provided a magnificent chimneypiece that cost £80 and another for the banqueting house, a balcony with two door surrounds and an architrave in Portland stone
Portland stone
Portland stone is a limestone from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. The quarries consist of beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds. It has been used extensively as a building stone throughout the British Isles, notably in major...
, a "copper branch"— probably a cast bronze candelabrum— weighing 166 pounds, and an achievement of the Paston arms. There were many miscellaneous carved furnishings, picture frames and stands for tables, balustrades and paving-stones, and busts of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina. For the gardens he provided figures of Venus and Cupid, Jupiter, Flora, and, to guard the garden front door, a large figure of Cerberus
Cerberus
Cerberus , or Kerberos, in Greek and Roman mythology, is a multi-headed hound which guards the gates of the Underworld, to prevent those who have crossed the river Styx from ever escaping...
on a pedestal, all long gone, but Stone's Hercules— and perhaps others— are preserved in the gardens at Blickling. In the garden Stone erected a large iron pergola
Pergola
A pergola, arbor or arbour is a garden feature forming a shaded walkway, passageway or sitting area of vertical posts or pillars that usually support cross-beams and a sturdy open lattice, often upon which woody vines are trained...
painted green, surmounted by eight gilded balls. In 1638, he sent his son, Nicholas Stone the younger, to Italy, whence there returned an elevation of a new garden house just built in the Villa Ludovisi
Villa Ludovisi
The Villa Ludovisi was a suburban villa in Rome, built in the 17th century on the area once occupied by the Gardens of Sallust near the Porta Salaria...
, Rome, "for Mr Paston", and marbles, architectural books (Vignola, Vitruvius, and Maggi's Le fontane di Roma), and plaster casts sent home from Livorno. With the onset of the Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
, commissions from Sir William abruptly ceased in 1642; five years later, his outstanding account was settled, for £24.
Christopher Hatton at Kirby Hall
Christopher Hatton was rebuilding Kirby Hall in the same decade. For him Stone provided "6 Emperors heads, with their pedestals cast in Plaster, moulded from the Antiques" (£7 10s), a "head of Apollo, fairly carved in Portland stonePortland stone
Portland stone is a limestone from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. The quarries consist of beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds. It has been used extensively as a building stone throughout the British Isles, notably in major...
, almost twice as big as life" and "one head carved in stone of Marcus Aurelius" still preserved set in the north front above the loggia (each £4).
Sculpture
Isaac de Caus
Isaac de Caus was a French landscaper, and architect. He arrived in England in 1612 to carry on the work that his brother Salomon de Caus had left behind. He is noted for his work at Wilton House, and Lincoln's Inn....
' grotto at Woburn Abbey
Woburn Abbey
Woburn Abbey , near Woburn, Bedfordshire, England, is a country house, the seat of the Duke of Bedford and the location of the Woburn Safari Park.- Pre-20th century :...
, recently attributed to Nicholas Stone, and for domestic items such as door-cases and chimneypieces, the vast majority of Stone's surviving sculptures are funerary monuments, and it is by these that the quality of his sculpture is today judged. Stone was greatly influenced by the new classicizing fashion for art derived from the Italian Renaissance and the Roman Arundel marbles
Arundel marbles
The Arundelian Marbles are a collection of Greek marbles collected by Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel in the early seventeenth century, the first such comprehensive collection of its kind in England...
, and this is reflected in two of his works, both in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
, the memorial to Sir John Holles and his brother Francis both dressed Roman armour reflecting classical influence, something new to England. It has been said that until this time English sculpture resembled that described by the Duchess of Malfi
The Duchess of Malfi
The Duchess of Malfi is a macabre, tragic play written by the English dramatist John Webster in 1612–13. It was first performed privately at the Blackfriars Theatre, then before a more general audience at The Globe, in 1613-14...
: "the figure cut in alabaster kneels at my husband's tomb."
A taste for realism, in part the product of his training in the Netherlands, informs the floor tomb of Sir William Curle (died 1617) in the church at Hatfield, Herefordshire
Hatfield, Herefordshire
Hatfield is a small village near Leominster in Herefordshire, England. In the village is a caravan site called Fair View caravan site. It also has a small church. There are also several other small hamlets nearby including Bockleton. Larger nearby towns include Tenbury Wells and Bromyard, as well...
; Sir William is sculpted lying in his grave coat, his knees drawn up in his last agonies: "in its sad and poignant realism," observes Colin Platt, "it was as much a culture shock as the Whitehall Banqueting House".
Two prominent funeral monuments, Stone's box tombs in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
served as influential models far into the 18th century for many monuments in the metropolis and in the country: they were for Sir George Villiers and his wife, the Countess of Buckingham (c 1631), and for Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, and his wife (after 1638).
Stone's 1631 monument to Dr John Donne
John Donne
John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
, at St Pauls Cathedral is considered to be among his most remarkable. It depicts the poet, standing upon an urn, dressed in a winding cloth
Shroud
Shroud usually refers to an item, such as a cloth, that covers or protects some other object. The term is most often used in reference to burial sheets, winding-cloths or winding-sheets, such as the famous Shroud of Turin or Tachrichim that Jews are dressed in for burial...
, rising for the moment of judgement. This depiction, Donne's own idea, was sculpted from a painting for which the Poet posed.
Another of Stone's finest works is the effigy
Effigy
An effigy is a representation of a person, especially in the form of sculpture or some other three-dimensional form.The term is usually associated with full-length figures of a deceased person depicted in stone or wood on church monuments. These most often lie supine with hands together in prayer,...
of Elizabeth, Lady Carey in the parish church at Stowe Nine Churches
Stowe Nine Churches
Stowe Nine Churches is a civil parish incorporating the settlements of Church Stowe and Upper Stowe in the English county of Northamptonshire.-Name:...
, Northamptonshire, is considered one of his masterpieces. While other surviving examples of his monuments to the dead include those to: Sir Francis Vere, Earl of Middlesex
Francis Vere
Sir Francis Vere was an English soldier, famous for his career in Dutch service.He was the son of Geoffrey Vere of Crepping Hall, Essex, and nephew of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford.-Military career:...
; Sir Dudley Digges
Dudley Digges
Sir Dudley Digges , of Chilham Castle, Kent , was a Member of Parliament, elected to the Parliament of 1614 and that of 1621, and also a "Virginia adventurer," an investor who ventured his capital in the Virginia Company of London...
at Chilham church, Kent
Chilham
Chilham is a parish in the English county of Kent. Visited by tourists worldwide, it is known for its beauty. Chilham has been a location for a number of films and television dramas...
; Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton
Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton
Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton was a significant English aristocrat and courtier. He was suspect as a crypto-Catholic throughout his life, and went through periods of royal disfavour, in which his reputation suffered greatly. He was distinguished for learning, artistic culture and his...
, in Dover Castle
Dover Castle
Dover Castle is a medieval castle in the town of the same name in the English county of Kent. It was founded in the 12th century and has been described as the "Key to England" due to its defensive significance throughout history...
(removed to Greenwich); Sir Thomas Sutton
Thomas Sutton
Thomas Sutton was an English civil servant and businessman as well as being the founder of Charterhouse School. He was the son of an official of the city of Lincoln, and was educated at Eton College and probably at Cambridge...
, at the London Charterhouse
London Charterhouse
The London Charterhouse is a historic complex of buildings in Smithfield, London dating back to the 14th century. It occupies land to the north of Charterhouse Square. The Charterhouse began as a Carthusian priory, founded in 1371 and dissolved in 1537...
(with Janssens); Sir Robert Drury at Hawstead church, Suffolk
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
; Sir William Stonhouse at Radley
Radley
Radley is a village and civil parish about northwest of the centre of Abingdon, Oxfordshire. The parish includes the hamlet of Lower Radley on the River Thames. It was part of Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes transferred it to Oxfordshire....
church, Berkshire(now Oxfordshire); Sir Thomas Bodley
Thomas Bodley
Sir Thomas Bodley was an English diplomat and scholar, founder of the Bodleian Library, Oxford.-Biography:...
at Merton College, Oxford (1612-May 1615), with his bust in an oval niche flanked by pilasters of stacked books; Thomas, Lord Knivett
Thomas Knyvet, 1st Baron Knyvet
Thomas James Knyvet, 1st Baron Knyvet was the second son of Sir Henry Knyvet of Charlton, Wiltshire and Anne Pickering, daughter of Sir Christopher Pickering of Killington, Westmoreland. His half-sister Catherine Knyvet was married to Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk...
, at Stanwell
Stanwell
Stanwell is a suburban village in the Surrey borough of Spelthorne. It is located 15.7 miles west south-west of Charing Cross and half a mile from the southern boundary of London Heathrow Airport and the London Borough of Hillingdon...
, Middlesex (1623); Sir William Pope
William Pope
William Pope may refer to:* William Henry Pope , Texas state senator* William Henry Pope * William Hayes Pope , U.S...
, in Wroxton
Wroxton
Wroxton is a village and civil parish in the north of Oxfordshire about west of Banbury.-History:Wroxton is recorded as having a church in 1217, but the present Church of England parish church of All Saints is early 14th century. A Perpendicular Gothic clerestory and porch were added early in the...
church, near Banbury; Sir Nicholas Bacon, in Redgrave church
Redgrave, Suffolk
Redgrave is a civil parish and a small village in the Rickinghall and Walsham ward in the Mid Suffolk district in Suffolk county in eastern England....
, Suffolk (with Janssens), the composer Orlando Gibbons
Orlando Gibbons
Orlando Gibbons was an English composer, virginalist and organist of the late Tudor and early Jacobean periods...
, in Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England and forms part of a World Heritage Site....
(1626); and Sir Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar (judge)
Sir Julius Caesar was an English judge and politician. He was born near Tottenham in Middlesex. His father was Giulio Cesare Adelmare, an Italian physician to Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, descended by the female line from the dukes of Cesarini.Caesar was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford,...
, in St Helens, Bishopsgate.
Of Stone's non-sepulchre sculpture precious little remains: a chimneypiece, from 1616, at Newburgh Priory
Newburgh Priory
Newburgh Priory is a large house near Coxwold, North Yorkshire, England. Standing on the site of an Augustinian priory, founded in 1145, it is a stately home in a rural setting with views to the Kilburn White Horse in the distance...
depicting mythological standing deities in bas-relief; two crumbling garden statues at Blickling Hall
Blickling Hall
Blickling Hall is a stately home in the village of Blickling north of Aylsham in Norfolk, England, that has been in the care of the National Trust since 1940.-History:...
and a collection of statues in good repair at Wilton House
Wilton House
Wilton House is an English country house situated at Wilton near Salisbury in Wiltshire. It has been the country seat of the Earls of Pembroke for over 400 years....
. The Wilton House statues, as at Woburn, indicate the close working relationship that Stone had with both Inigo Jones and Isaac de Caus
Isaac de Caus
Isaac de Caus was a French landscaper, and architect. He arrived in England in 1612 to carry on the work that his brother Salomon de Caus had left behind. He is noted for his work at Wilton House, and Lincoln's Inn....
both of whom worked on the design of Wilton.
York House water gate
York House, London, was one of the great houses of the aristocracy which lined the Thames during the 17th century. During the 1620s it was acquired by the royal favourite George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham KG was the favourite, claimed by some to be the lover, of King James I of England. Despite a very patchy political and military record, he remained at the height of royal favour for the first two years of the reign of Charles I, until he was assassinated...
. The Duke rebuilt and modernised the house and, in 1623,commissioned the building of a warergate to give access to the Thames from the gardens, at this time the river being a favoured method of transport on London. With the Banqueting House
Banqueting House
In Tudor and Early Stuart English architecture a banqueting house is a separate building reached through pleasure gardens from the main residence, whose use is purely for entertaining. It may be raised for additional air or a vista, and it may be richly decorated, but it contains no bedrooms or...
it is one of the few surviving reminders in London of the Italianate court style of Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
. The water gate is believed to have been designed by Stone. However, like the Banqueting House the design of the water gate has been attributed to Inigo Jones, with Stone only being credited with the building. It has also been attributed to the to the diplomat and painter Sir Balthazar Gerbier
Balthazar Gerbier
Sir Balthazar Gerbier , was an Anglo-Dutch courtier, diplomat, art advisor, miniaturist and architectural designer, in his own words fluent in "several languages" with "a good hand in writing, skill in sciences as mathematics, architecture, drawing, painting, contriving of scenes, masques, shows...
The similarity of the architecture to the Danby Gate (below) and its bold vermicelli rusticated design
Rustication (architecture)
thumb|upright|Two different styles of rustication in the [[Palazzo Medici-Riccardi]] in [[Florence]].In classical architecture rustication is an architectural feature that contrasts in texture with the smoothly finished, squared block masonry surfaces called ashlar...
in a confident Serlian manner
Sebastiano Serlio
Sebastiano Serlio was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Palace of Fontainebleau...
indicate that it is by the same hand as the Danby Gate itself.
Today, of the York House complex, only the water gate survives, the house was demolished in 1670 and the site redeveloped as Villiers Street. The creation of the Thames embankment in the 19th century caused the gate to be marooned 150 yards (137 m) from the river.
The water gate was restored during the 1950s.
The Danby Gateway, Oxford
The Danby gateway to the University of Oxford Botanic GardenUniversity of Oxford Botanic Garden
The University of Oxford Botanic Garden is an historic botanic garden in Oxford, England. It is the oldest botanic garden in Great Britain and one of the oldest scientific gardens in the world. The garden was founded in 1621 as a physic garden growing plants for medicinal research. Today it...
is one of three entrances to the garden designed by Nicholas Stone between 1632 and 1633. In this highly ornate arch, Stone ignored the new simple classical Palladian style currently fashionable, which had just been introduced to England from Italy by Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones is the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England...
, and drew his inspiration from an illustration in Serlio's book of archways.
The gateway consists of three bays, each with a pediment
Pediment
A pediment is a classical architectural element consisting of the triangular section found above the horizontal structure , typically supported by columns. The gable end of the pediment is surrounded by the cornice moulding...
. The largest and central bay, containing the segmented arch is recessed, causing its larger pediment to be partially hidden by the flanking smaller pediments of the projecting lateral bays.
The stone work is heavily decorated being bands of alternating vermicelli rustication
Rustication (architecture)
thumb|upright|Two different styles of rustication in the [[Palazzo Medici-Riccardi]] in [[Florence]].In classical architecture rustication is an architectural feature that contrasts in texture with the smoothly finished, squared block masonry surfaces called ashlar...
and plain dressed stone. The pediments of the lateral bays are seemingly supported by circular columns which frame niches containing statues of Charles I and Charles II in classical pose. The tympanum
Tympanum (architecture)
In architecture, a tympanum is the semi-circular or triangular decorative wall surface over an entrance, bounded by a lintel and arch. It often contains sculpture or other imagery or ornaments. Most architectural styles include this element....
of the central pediment contains a segmented niche containing a bust of The 1st Earl of Danby
Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby
Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby, KG was an English soldier. Outlawed after a killing, he regained favour and became a Knight of the Garter.-Life:...
, who founded the garden in 1621 and commissioned the gateways.
Porch of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford
University Church of St Mary the Virgin
The University Church of St Mary the Virgin is the largest of Oxford's parish churches and the centre from which the University of Oxford grew...
, Oxford, this was one of his most spectacular works, in a European baroque design. The porch's heavy Baroque is quite unlike the eventual form the style was later to take in England. A huge scrolled pediment is supported by a pair of massive solomonic column
Solomonic column
The Solomonic column, also called Barley-sugar column, is a helical column, characterized by a spiraling twisting shaft like a corkscrew...
s, an ancient architectural feature revived, in Italy, as a feature of the Baroque, and used most notably, as Stone would have been aware, for the baldacchino
St. Peter's baldachin
Saint Peter's baldachin is a large Baroque sculpted bronze canopy, technically called a ciborium or baldachin, over the high altar of Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City, Rome, which is at the centre of the crossing and directly under the dome...
at St. Peter's Basilica
St. Peter's Basilica
The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter , officially known in Italian as ' and commonly known as Saint Peter's Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within the Vatican City. Saint Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world...
in Rome, which has been completed by Bernini just four years earlier.
The obvious European, and thus Catholic, design of the porch was later to cause problems for the porch's patron Archbishop Laud
William Laud
William Laud was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633 to 1645. One of the High Church Caroline divines, he opposed radical forms of Puritanism...
because at the centre of the scrolled pediment
Pediment
A pediment is a classical architectural element consisting of the triangular section found above the horizontal structure , typically supported by columns. The gable end of the pediment is surrounded by the cornice moulding...
was placed a statue of the Virgin and Child, a composition considered to be Roman Catholic idolatry
Idolatry
Idolatry is a pejorative term for the worship of an idol, a physical object such as a cult image, as a god, or practices believed to verge on worship, such as giving undue honour and regard to created forms other than God. In all the Abrahamic religions idolatry is strongly forbidden, although...
, and later used against the Archbishop at his trial for treason in 1641 following the grand Remonstrance
Grand Remonstrance
The Grand Remonstrance was a list of grievances presented to King Charles I of England by the English Parliament on 1 December 1641, but passed by the House of Commons on the 22nd of November 1641, during the Long Parliament; it was one of the chief events which were to precipitate the English...
. Today, the statue is still bears the bullet holes cause when it was fired upon by Cromwellian soldiers.
Goldsmith's Hall
Stone designed and built Goldsmiths' Hall, Foster Lane, in 1635-38, which has provided an example of the manner in which Inigo Jones' ideas on architecture were disseminated in England. Jones himself advised the Goldsmiths' Company not to further patch its medieval fabric but build it anew.Floor plan
In architecture and building engineering, a floor plan, or floorplan, is a diagram, usually to scale, showing a view from above of the relationships between rooms, spaces and other physical features at one level of a structure....
s and street and courtyard elevations but the "Patterne of the greate gate" in Foster Lane and patterns for the ceiling, wainscoting and the screen in the Great Hall and wainscot panelling in the parlour and the great chamber above it. His surveillance over workmen who found themselves working in a new manner, to which their apprenticeships had not accustomed them, can be sensed in his notation concerning Cornbury Park, where he contracted to "dereckt all the workmen and mak all thar moldes", providing correctly classical profiles for moulding
Molding (process)
Molding or moulding is the process of manufacturing by shaping pliable raw material using a rigid frame or model called a pattern....
s for carpenters and plasterers. His fee there of £1000 suggested to John Newman that he combined with the surveyorship considerable mason's work.
The placement of windows in the Hall's main facade show that Stone was ahead of his time in plans, smaller windows indicate the existence of mezzanine floors, such as those that exist at Easton Neston
Easton Neston
Easton Neston is a country house near Towcester, Northamptonshire, England, and is part of the Easton Neston Parish. It was designed in the Baroque style by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. Easton Neston is thought to be the only mansion which was solely the work of Hawksmoor...
and Kinross
Kinross
Kinross is a burgh in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. It was formerly the county town of Kinross-shire.Kinross is a fairly small town, with some attractive buildings...
, these housed small informal rooms, servant's rooms and rooms for housing closestools all features which were not common place until the advent of England's brief Baroque period which began in the 1690s. When servant's became confined out of sight to their own designated areas rather than sharing rooms with their employers. This was an important milestone in English domestic design. Another strong Baroque feature of Goldsmith's Hall was the massive porch, rather than a more Palladian portico, similar, but more restrained in design than that of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford, it is crowned by a broken segmented pediment - again, a strong Baroque feature.
Stone's Goldsmith's Hall was burnt to a standing shell in the Great Fire of London
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...
, rebuilt, and eventually demolished in 1829.
Lesser architectural commissions
Stone also designed Digges chapel, Chilham church, Kent, for Sir Dudley DiggesDudley Digges
Sir Dudley Digges , of Chilham Castle, Kent , was a Member of Parliament, elected to the Parliament of 1614 and that of 1621, and also a "Virginia adventurer," an investor who ventured his capital in the Virginia Company of London...
to contain his monument to Lady Digges (1631, demolished); Cornbury House, Oxfordshire, partly rebuilt by Stone 1632-33 (altered); Copt Hall, Essex, 1638-39 (demolished in 1748).
Private and political life
Stone married Mayken de Keyser, the daughter of his former master, Hendrik de Keyser. The year after his marriage Stone returned to England with his wife, settling in the parish of St Martin-in-the-FieldsSt Martin-in-the-Fields
St Martin-in-the-Fields is an Anglican church at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, London. Its patron is Saint Martin of Tours.-Roman era:Excavations at the site in 2006 led to the discovery of a grave dated about 410...
, Westminster, where they remained throughout their lives. The marriage produced three sons: John (1620–1667), a sculptor; Henry Stone
Henry Stone (painter)
Henry Stone , known as "Old Stone", was an English painter and copyist of the works of Van Dyck.Henry was the eldest son of notable sculptor and architect Nicholas Stone ; his brothers Nicholas Stone Jr. and John Stone were sculptors and masons...
(1616–1653) an artist most notable for his copies of Van Dyck and Nicholas (1618–1647), a sculptor, who worked under Bernini in Rome.
The outbreak of the civil war put an end to Stone's career, and he was to personally suffer. Like Inigo Jones, he was seen by the Puritans as a royal architect; his son, John, fought for the Royalists during the civil war. According to a presentation to King Charles II, in 1690 after the restoration, Stone had been ‘sequestered, plundered and imprisoned’ because of his loyalty to the crown.
Legacy
Nicholas Stone died at Long Acre, London, on 24 August 1647, and was buried in the parish church at St Martin-in-the-Fields. The sculpted memorial tablet, to the man who had created so many memorials for others, has been lost; only a drawing of it (above) remains to indicate his likeness.Ironically, despite being Master Mason to the Crown, and his revolutionary works being for and commemorating the most eminent in the land and being displayed in the country's most prominent buildings, Stone was always thought of as a craftsman, and accorded that status. It was to be his contemporary and less accomplished rival, the French sculptor Hubert Le Sueur
Hubert Le Sueur
Hubert Le Sueur was a French sculptor with the contemporaneous reputation of having trained in Giambologna's Florentine workshop, who assisted Giambologna's foreman, Pietro Tacca, in Paris, finishing and erecting the equestrian statue of Henri IV on the Pont Neuf...
, working in bronze, who was to cause the status of a sculptor to be elevated to that of an artist.
Evaluated today, Stone's architecture combines the sophisticated classicism of Jones with an uncouth artisan Mannerism popular at the time. The architectural historian, Howard Colvin
Howard Colvin
Sir Howard Montagu Colvin, CVO, CBE , was a British architectural historian who produced two of the most outstanding works of scholarship in his field.-Life and works:...
's assessment of Stone's architecture is that he "partly absorbed the new classicism of Inigo Jones, but without accepting its full discipline and without rejecting some of the mannerist
Mannerism
Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...
or baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
features that he had learned in London and Amsterdam. The result was a vernacular classical architecture, of which regrettably little remains today." Stone, as an architect, was at the cutting edge of modernity, his work in the Baroque style while Inigo Jones' was still promoting Palladianism was at odds with contemporary fashion, it was to be almost fifty years from Stone's death before William Talman's
William Talman (architect)
William Talman was an English architect and landscape designer. A pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, in 1678 he and Thomas Apprice gained the office of King's Waiter in the Port of London...
Chatsworth House
Chatsworth House
Chatsworth House is a stately home in North Derbyshire, England, northeast of Bakewell and west of Chesterfield . It is the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, and has been home to his family, the Cavendish family, since Bess of Hardwick settled at Chatsworth in 1549.Standing on the east bank of the...
, completed in 1696, was to be hailed as England's first Baroque house, while England's truest Baroque house, Castle Howard
Castle Howard
Castle Howard is a stately home in North Yorkshire, England, north of York. One of the grandest private residences in Britain, most of it was built between 1699 and 1712 for the 3rd Earl of Carlisle, to a design by Sir John Vanbrugh...
, was not completed until 1712.