Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-fwgfc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-09T02:17:00.147Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Witham, Somerset: From Carthusian Monastery to Country House to Gothic Folly

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Robert Wilson-North  and
Stephen Porter
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Witham in Somerset was the site of the first Carthusian monastery in England. Following the Dissolution, the priory was replaced by a succession of great houses, incorporating parts of the monastic buildings. A recent survey and analysis have established for the first time the site and orientation of these houses, and confirmed the location of another house nearby, designed by Robert Adam. The work has also shown that, contrary to earlier thinking, an early eighteenth-century remodelling of the house by James Gibbs was in fact carried out, and that the Adam one, too, was substantially completed. The survey also revealed details of the gardens and lakes that accompanied one house, and aspects of an unfinished park which was planned as the setting for the Adam mansion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 40 , 1997 , pp. 81 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 Thompson, E. M., The Carthusian Order in England (London, 1930), pp. 133-47Google Scholar. Gough, J. W., The Mines of Mendip (Oxford, 1930), pp. 53–54 Google Scholar.

2 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer, J. S., Gardiner, J. and Brodie, R. H. (1862-1932), vol. XIX (1), 1035 (74); vol. xx (2), 1068 (27)Google Scholar.

3 Palmer, T. F., ‘The Site of Witham Priory or Charterhouse’, Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries, XVII (1923), pp. 90–92 Google Scholar.

4 Burrow, I. and Burrow, C. B., ‘Witham Priory: the First English Carthusian Monastery’, Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Sodety, 134 (1990), pp. 141-82Google Scholar.

5 The survey was part of a project carried out by RCHME in conjunction with Bristol University, to survey the sites of all the Carthusian houses in England. The project archive is in the National Monuments Record, RCHME, Swindon.

6 The geophysical survey was carried out by Geophysical Surveys of Bradford. See also Wilson-North, R., ‘Witham: from Carthusian monastery to Country House’ in Current Archaeology, No. 148 (1996)Google Scholar.

7 Everson, P., ‘The After-Life of Monastic Houses: The Earthwork Evidence’, in Lincolnshire People and Places: essays in memory of Terence R. Leach (1937-1994), ed. Sturman, C. (Lincoln, 1996), pp. 13–17 Google Scholar.

8 Howard, M., The Early Tudor Country House: Architecture and Politics 1490-1550 (London, 1987), pp. 136-62Google Scholar.

9 Quoted in Friedman, T., James Gibbs (London, 1984), p. 341 Google Scholar.

10 Campbell, Colen, Vitruvius Britannicus, 11 (1717), p. 5 Google Scholar.

11 Somerset Record Office (SRO), DD/SH.

12 SRO, DD/WYp, Box 1, p. 15 pt 3.

13 Friedman, James Gibbs, pp. 107-08.

14 Campbell, , Vitruvius Britannicus, II, pl. 91 Google Scholar.

15 Victoria and Albert Museum, E.118-1940, reproduced in Harris, J., William Talman: Maverick Architect (London, 1982)Google Scholar, fig. 41.

16 SRO, DD/SH.

17 Gafrhey, C., ‘Witham Carthusian Monastery’ (Geophysical Surveys of Bradford, 1994)Google Scholar.

18 Burrow and Burrow, ‘Witham Priory’, pp. 176-79.

19 Colvin, H. M., A Catalogue of Architectural Drawings of the 18th and 19th Centuries in the Library of Worcester College, Oxford (Oxford, 1964), p. 319, pls 119-21Google Scholar, where they are mistakenly assigned to Eastbury.

20 Drury, P. J., ‘No other place in the kingdom will compare with it: the evolution of Audley End’, Architectural History, 23 (1980), pp. 1–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Victoria and Albert Museum, E.118-1940.

22 National Portrait Gallery, sub Wyndham.

23 Harris, J., ‘The Transparent Portico’, Architectural Review, 123 (1958), pp. 108-09Google Scholar.

24 Harris, William Taiman, fig. 42.

25 Worsley, G., ‘William Taiman: Some Stylistic Suggestions’, The Georgian Group Journal (1992), pp. 15–17 Google Scholar.

26 Ashmolean Museum, Gibbs Collection, IV, 22. RIBA, CA.32, reproduced in Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects: Colen Campbell, comp. Harris, John (London, 1973), p. 16 Google Scholar, fig. 124.

27 Silcox-Crowe, N., ‘Sir Roger Pratt 1620-1685. The Ingenious Gendeman Architect’, in The Architectural Outsiders, ed. Brown, R. (London, 1985), p. 9 Google Scholar.

28 SRO, DD/WYp, Box 1, p. 15 pt 3.

29 SRO, DD/SH.

30 Thompson, Carthusian Order, p. 236.

31 SRO, DD/X/MGR no. 1.

32 Burrow and Burrow, ‘Witham Priory’, pp. 149, 166. Gaffney, ‘Witham Carthusian Priory’.

33 Burrow and Burrow, ‘Witham Priory’, p. 163.

34 SRO, DD/WYp, Box 1, p. 15 pt 3.

35 Collinson, John, The History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset, 3 vols (Bath, 1791), vol. 11, p. 234 Google Scholar.

36 SRO, DD/WYp, Box 1, p. 15 pt 3.

37 Lees-Milne, J., William Bedford (London, 1976), p. 3 Google Scholar.

38 The Travel-Diaries of William Bedford of Fonthill, ed. Chapman, G. (London, 1928), vol. 1, p. xvi Google Scholar.

39 Sir John Soane’s Museum, Adam archive, vol. 43/25-32, with a preliminary sketch at vol. 54/219. Plan and elevations are in Vitruvius Britannicus, vol. v, pls 38-42.

40 Bolton, A. T., The Architecture of Robert and James Adam (London, 1922), vol. 11, p. 6 Google Scholar.

41 Spiers, W. L., Catalogue of the Drawings and Designs of Robert and James Adam in Sir John Soane’s Museum (Cambridge, 1979), p. 31 Google Scholar.

42 Collinson, , Somerset, vol. 11, p. 235 Google Scholar.

43 DNB.

44 Collinson, , Somerset, vol. 11, p. 235 Google Scholar.

45 Ibid., vol. 11, p. 234.

46 Rowan, A., ‘The Adam Casde Style’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 122 (1974), p. 689 Google Scholar; Robert Adam (1988), p. 83.

47 Tait, A. A., Robert Adam: drawings and imagination (London, 1993), p. 131 Google Scholar.

48 Fleming, J., ‘Adam Gothic’, The Connoisseur, 142 (1958), p. 78 Google Scholar.

49 SirDugdale, William, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. Caley, John, Ellis, Henry and Bandinel, Bulkeley, 6 vols (London, 1817-30), vol. VI, pt I, p. 1 Google Scholar.

50 SRO, DD/X/MGR no. 1.

51 Harris, E., Osterley Park, Middlesex (London, 1994), pp. 26–27 Google Scholar.

52 Fleming, J., Robert Adam and his Circle in Edinburgh and Rome (London, 1978 edn), pp. 170-71, 179, 182, 204, 217, 354, 356, 362Google Scholar; ‘The Journey to Spalatro’, Architectural Review, 123 (1958), pp. 103, 105.