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Church of St Mary, Coleorton, Leicestershire, c.1804 (5)

Notes

The Church of St Mary with its tall, slender tower, finely sited in the grounds of Coleorton in a landscape of grass and trees, is only a few hundred yards from the house on which Dance had been working since 1802. It was natural for Sir George Beaumont to consult his architect on improvements for what has always been a parish church, its interior full of reminders of the Beaumont family who had been at Coleorton since 1424. Parts of the church are perhaps a hundred years earlier though all now much restored but whether Dance had a hand is uncertain. Some repairs were certainly done by 1812 for Dance's friend Joseph Farington stayed at Coleorton and recorded in his diary (17 October 1812) 'went into the Church which is situated very near the House in an inclosure of trees. It had lately been completely repaired by Sir George. Divine Service is performed every Sunday at Half past Eleven in the morning and at four o'Clock in the afternoon when prayers only are read. The Curate who performs the duty has two other churches to attend to and rides from one to the other as expeditiously as He can. This, Sir George remarked, causes the service to be read in something of a rapid manner which should not be.'

LITERATURE. Revd. P.E. Hunt, Parish church of St Mary the Virgin, Cole Orton, 1976.

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Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.

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Contents of Church of St Mary, Coleorton, Leicestershire, c.1804 (5)