Nuthall Temple in Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...

, one of England's lost houses, was one of five houses built in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 generally said to have been inspired by Palladio's Villa Capra in Vicenza

Vicenza

Vicenza , a city in north-eastern Italy, is the capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, straddling the Bacchiglione...

.

Only two 18th century examples remain: Mereworth Castle

Mereworth Castle

Mereworth Castle is a grade I listed Palladian country house in Mereworth, Kent, England.Originally the site of a fortified manor licensed in 1332, the present building is not actually a castle, but was built in the 1720s as an almost exact copy of Palladio's Villa Rotunda. It was designed in 1723...

 and Chiswick House

Chiswick House

Chiswick House is a Palladian villa in Burlington Lane, Chiswick, in the London Borough of Hounslow in England. Set in , the house was completed in 1729 during the reign of George II and designed by Lord Burlington. William Kent , who took a leading role in designing the gardens, created one of the...

. Both are today conserved as Grade 1 listed buildings. The fourth, Foots Cray Place, was demolished in 1950 after a fire in 1949, while the fifth, Henbury Hall, was built in the 1980s.

History

Nuthall Temple was completed in 1757 towards the end of the Palladian fashion in England. Nuthall Temple does not follow the imitation of Villa Capra as closely as its earlier prototypes, although the homage to Palladio's concepts is strongly pronounced. In fact the house bears a closer resemblance to Rocca Pisana

Rocca Pisana

Rocca Pisana is a sixteenth-century villa which was designed by the architect Vincenzo Scamozzi for the Pisani family.In Italy there are several villas called Villa Pisani, which take their name from this powerful Venetian family. This villa is also known as La Rocca or La Rocca Pisana...

 (1578) by Palladio's follower Vincenzo Scamozzi

Vincenzo Scamozzi

thumb|250px|Portrait of Vincenzo Scamozzi by [[Paolo Veronese]]Vincenzo Scamozzi was a Venetian architect and a writer on architecture, active mainly in Vicenza and Republic of Venice area in the second half of the 16th century...

. This similarity makes the architecture of Nuthall extremely interesting as Scamozzi's building, like Nuthall, has a recessed portico rather than prostyle

Prostyle

Prostyle is an architectural term defining free standing columns across the front of a building, as often in a portico. The term is often used as an adjective when referring to the portico of a classical building which projects from the main structure...

 inserted within the facade. This was to become a strong feature of the neoclassical architecture

Neoclassical architecture

Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...

  which was to follow Palladianism in the United Kingdom and makes Nuthall avant-garde in its late Palladianism.

The design is attributed to Thomas Wright

Thomas Wright (astronomer)

Thomas Wright was an English astronomer, mathematician, instrument maker, architect and garden designer. He was the first to describe the shape of the Milky Way and speculate that faint nebulae were distant galaxies....

  whose patron was a country landowner, Sir Charles Sedley. The house was designed around a 58 ft high hall beneath the central dome. The hall was decorated with rococo

Rococo

Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...

 plaster-work of a standard easily equal to that at Claydon House

Claydon House

Claydon House is a country house in the Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire, England, close to the village of Middle Claydon. It was built between 1757 and 1771 and is now owned by the National Trust....

. In 1778 Sedley commissioned James Wyatt to undertake a number of alterations. Externally these included the installation of Venetian windows on the garden front and the lowering of balustrades below some others. Internally the redesign of the music room in a neo-Classical style illustrated how much taste had changed within a short period of time

The final residential owner of Nuthall Temple was the Reverend Robert Holden, Rector of the Parish, whose family had owned the estate since Robert Holden purchased it in 1819 at auction for his second son. The Holdens were an established Derbyshire family who had both invested heavily in the purchase of land and through marriage ties had connections with many of the neighbouring
landowning families. In the early nineteenth century Nuthall was the home of a junior branch of the Holden family and although briefly let between 1844 and 1853 was well maintained including various improvements to both the
interior and exterior of the property.

When the Reverend Robert Holden died in 1926 his son Robert Millington Holden succeeded to the estate. Owing to falling agricultural rents and outstanding estate duties owed to the state he was forced to consider selling the property. Initially at
auction on the 2 November 1927 the Temple and parkland of 650 acres was left unsold. By the inter-war period, high taxation, agricultural decline and decreasing social and political control meant that landowners now focused increasingly upon financial survival over social splendours. Nuthall and its remaining land were subsequently sold privately. Fittings sold at auction in 529 lots on 23 and 24 May 1929.

Demolition

The remaining shell was sold for £800 to J.H. Brough and Co. of Beeston, who later that summer presided over the public demolition.

On 31 July 1929 the west wing was loaded with firelighters, sprinkled with paraffin and set alight to the delight of a large expectant crowd. The weakened structure was then pulled down wall by wall

The ruined shell of Nuthall remained, once all of saleable value including much of the building material had been claimed, until 1966 when this too was finally pulled down in order to make way for the extension of the M1 motorway. The site of the former house is now under one of the slip roads at Junction 26 within the remnants of its parkland landscape.The State and the Country House in Nottinghamshire, 1937-1967. Matthew Kempson, BSc. MA. 2006

Some features of the house were incorporated into Temple Wood House in Frogshall

Frogshall

Frogshall is a small hamlet within the civil parish of Northrepps in the English county of Norfolk . The hamlet is southeast of Cromer, north of Norwich and north of London. Craft Lane runs through the hamlet between Northrepps and Southrepps. The nearest railway station is at Gunton on the...

, Northrepps

Northrepps

Northrepps is a village and a civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The village is southeast of Cromer, north of Norwich and north of London. The village lies west of the A149 which runs between Kings Lynn and Great Yarmouth. The nearest railway station is at Cromer for the Bittern...

.

Sources and external links

• dal Lago, Adalbert (1969): Villas and Palaces of Europe. Paul Hamlyn. ISBN 600012352
• Broxtowe Borough Council website: Nuthall Parish, with information on the Temple retrieved 22 March 2009
• Nuthall Temple by Mrs Holden retrieved 23 March 2007