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Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, Middlesex (now London) 1768 (8). Survey drawings made by pupils in Soane's office, 1800
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Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, Middlesex (now London) 1768 (8). Survey drawings made by pupils in Soane's office, 1800
Notes
NOTES FOR [SM 30/3/14], [SM 30/3/13], [SM 30/3/15], [SM 30/3/16], [SM 30/3/18], [SM 30/3/17], [SM 30/3/20], [SM 30/3/19]
Soane's Day Book records for Monday, 20 October 1800 Mr Soane / about Plans of his House / Seward / Sword, that is, Henry Hake Seward (1778-1848) and Thomas Sword who measured and drew up the survey drawings, the inscribing hand seemingly that of Sword. A finished copy of [SM 30/3/14] was made by Francis Edwards (see [SM 30/3/13}.
These eight drawings are not from Dance's own collection but from Soane's. They are included here because they document Dance's work at Pitzhanger Manor for which there are no drawings at the Soane Museum and only two preliminary designs in the RIBA Drawings Collection ('Dance Leoni' Nos 83 and 107).
The commission for additions to Pitzhanger Manor in 1768 was Dance's first real venture in country house design. The client was Thomas Gurnell, a Quaker banker, City of London merchant and partner in Gurnell, Hoare & Harman. His town house was at Cateaton Street, later part of Gresham Street, and very near the Guildhall. Pitzhanger, nine miles from the City, was inherited from this father Jonathan Gurnell who had owned the house from 1721, acquiring it through his wife's father, John Wilmer who had owned it since 1685. In 1772, Dance married 20-year-old Mary Gurnell, daughter of Thomas.
To the five-bay, red brick house of two floors and an attic, Dance added a two-storey, four-bay south wing with a dining room on the ground floor and a drawing room on the first floor. On the north side, he added a three-bay kitchen wing with bedrooms above. Except for two preliminary ceiling designs and a preliminary design for the decoration of the dining room walls in the RIBA Drawings Collection ('Dance Leoni' 83-84a) Dance's drawings for Pitzhanger have not survived - not even those made by John Soane who went to work for Dance when he was 15 and whose first task was to help with Pitzhanger. However, when Soane bought the house and its 28 acres from Gurnell's heirs in July 1800, a survey was made in the following October and eight of those survey drawings are catalogued here. Though Soane demolished the rest of the house he kept Dance's south wing intact.
In his Plans, elevations and perspective views of Pitzhanger manor-house... with a description (published 1833) Soane described the house viz. 'The exterior appearance of this building was of the most common kind, without symmetry and character, whilst the walls and ceilings of the interior of the eating-room and drawing-room over it displayed a profusion of ornaments, exquisite in taste, and admirable in execution.... [These rooms] erected from the designs and under the direction of the late Mr Dance, are of large dimensions and good proportions, forming fine examples of the decorative architecture of the time wherein they were constructed. These considerations determined me to leave the interior of this part... as far as was consistent with my ultimate views, in the state in which I found it. I was naturally attached to this part of the building, it being the first whose progress and construction I had attended at the commencement of my architectural studies in Mr Dance's office.' In fact, Soane's earliest schemes for Pitzhanger had contemplated the demolition of Dance's wing. Soane sold Pitzhanger Manor in 1810; it became a public library in 1902 and in 1987, after restoration and repair, was opened to the public as a house museum and cultural centre.
Since so little of Dance's work has survived, the two rooms at Pitzhanger are of great interest. Built in 1768-70 of stock brick with red brick rubbers over the windows, the exterior is treated very simply. Subsequent alterations include the addition of a porch in the centre of the east front in 1902 that replaced French windows probably inserted by Soane, who also cut out windows either side of the eating room chimney-piece. The centre window and two flanking blind windows on the west wall were knocked through to give access to an addition of 1901. Upstairs, the centre window on the east wall was blocked up and the windows on the west wall enlarged, before 1901.
Dance's decoration for the eating room walls consists of semicircular-headed arches, with continuous fluted mouldings, enclosing three windows on the east side, a centre window and two flat-backed alcoves on the west side and a semicircular serving alcove on the north wall. Above the doors on either side of the alcove are roundels with Dance's favourite 'Pompeian' maidens in relief. The ceiling has intricate geometrical plasterwork and cornice. In the centre is a circular motif within a lozenge flanked by rectangles with an over-scaled lozenge and rosette decoration that crops up in other of Dance's designs. The design is completed by semicircles and triangles with rectangles at each end. While Dance's round-arched walls create a dynamic interior architecture, the ceiling decoration (though suitably emphatic) seems incoherently organised. 'All elements fight for simultaneous attention... [a] manifestation of Dance's rejection of the Baroque compositional system of centralized gradation' (Kalman p.78).
A flight of 11 steps lit by a small glazed dome led to the drawing room. Its wall are articulated by pilasters with capitals that consist of long, straplike waterleaves below small volutes with a garnishing of small festoons and honeysuckle. The pilasters support a frieze ornamented with roundels, festoons and rinceaux, and a cornice. The ceiling decoration is lighter and more flowing than in the eating room and gives a feminine air to a room with a floor-to-ceiling height of 12 feet, 4 feet less than the more masculine eating room below.
LITERATURE. Stroud pp.87-9; Kalman pp.77-9; E. Leary, Pitshanger Manor, an introduction, guidebook published by Pitzhanger Manor Museum, [1990] 36 pp; G. Darley, John Soane, 1999 p.10; H. Ewing, 'Pitzhanger Manor' in M. Richardson & M. Stevens (eds), John Soane Architect, catalogue of an exhibition at the Royal Academy, 1999, p142.
OTHER SOURCES. Typescript catalogue of drawings for and of Pitzhanger Manor in Soane Museum.
Soane's Day Book records for Monday, 20 October 1800 Mr Soane / about Plans of his House / Seward / Sword, that is, Henry Hake Seward (1778-1848) and Thomas Sword who measured and drew up the survey drawings, the inscribing hand seemingly that of Sword. A finished copy of [SM 30/3/14] was made by Francis Edwards (see [SM 30/3/13}.
These eight drawings are not from Dance's own collection but from Soane's. They are included here because they document Dance's work at Pitzhanger Manor for which there are no drawings at the Soane Museum and only two preliminary designs in the RIBA Drawings Collection ('Dance Leoni' Nos 83 and 107).
The commission for additions to Pitzhanger Manor in 1768 was Dance's first real venture in country house design. The client was Thomas Gurnell, a Quaker banker, City of London merchant and partner in Gurnell, Hoare & Harman. His town house was at Cateaton Street, later part of Gresham Street, and very near the Guildhall. Pitzhanger, nine miles from the City, was inherited from this father Jonathan Gurnell who had owned the house from 1721, acquiring it through his wife's father, John Wilmer who had owned it since 1685. In 1772, Dance married 20-year-old Mary Gurnell, daughter of Thomas.
To the five-bay, red brick house of two floors and an attic, Dance added a two-storey, four-bay south wing with a dining room on the ground floor and a drawing room on the first floor. On the north side, he added a three-bay kitchen wing with bedrooms above. Except for two preliminary ceiling designs and a preliminary design for the decoration of the dining room walls in the RIBA Drawings Collection ('Dance Leoni' 83-84a) Dance's drawings for Pitzhanger have not survived - not even those made by John Soane who went to work for Dance when he was 15 and whose first task was to help with Pitzhanger. However, when Soane bought the house and its 28 acres from Gurnell's heirs in July 1800, a survey was made in the following October and eight of those survey drawings are catalogued here. Though Soane demolished the rest of the house he kept Dance's south wing intact.
In his Plans, elevations and perspective views of Pitzhanger manor-house... with a description (published 1833) Soane described the house viz. 'The exterior appearance of this building was of the most common kind, without symmetry and character, whilst the walls and ceilings of the interior of the eating-room and drawing-room over it displayed a profusion of ornaments, exquisite in taste, and admirable in execution.... [These rooms] erected from the designs and under the direction of the late Mr Dance, are of large dimensions and good proportions, forming fine examples of the decorative architecture of the time wherein they were constructed. These considerations determined me to leave the interior of this part... as far as was consistent with my ultimate views, in the state in which I found it. I was naturally attached to this part of the building, it being the first whose progress and construction I had attended at the commencement of my architectural studies in Mr Dance's office.' In fact, Soane's earliest schemes for Pitzhanger had contemplated the demolition of Dance's wing. Soane sold Pitzhanger Manor in 1810; it became a public library in 1902 and in 1987, after restoration and repair, was opened to the public as a house museum and cultural centre.
Since so little of Dance's work has survived, the two rooms at Pitzhanger are of great interest. Built in 1768-70 of stock brick with red brick rubbers over the windows, the exterior is treated very simply. Subsequent alterations include the addition of a porch in the centre of the east front in 1902 that replaced French windows probably inserted by Soane, who also cut out windows either side of the eating room chimney-piece. The centre window and two flanking blind windows on the west wall were knocked through to give access to an addition of 1901. Upstairs, the centre window on the east wall was blocked up and the windows on the west wall enlarged, before 1901.
Dance's decoration for the eating room walls consists of semicircular-headed arches, with continuous fluted mouldings, enclosing three windows on the east side, a centre window and two flat-backed alcoves on the west side and a semicircular serving alcove on the north wall. Above the doors on either side of the alcove are roundels with Dance's favourite 'Pompeian' maidens in relief. The ceiling has intricate geometrical plasterwork and cornice. In the centre is a circular motif within a lozenge flanked by rectangles with an over-scaled lozenge and rosette decoration that crops up in other of Dance's designs. The design is completed by semicircles and triangles with rectangles at each end. While Dance's round-arched walls create a dynamic interior architecture, the ceiling decoration (though suitably emphatic) seems incoherently organised. 'All elements fight for simultaneous attention... [a] manifestation of Dance's rejection of the Baroque compositional system of centralized gradation' (Kalman p.78).
A flight of 11 steps lit by a small glazed dome led to the drawing room. Its wall are articulated by pilasters with capitals that consist of long, straplike waterleaves below small volutes with a garnishing of small festoons and honeysuckle. The pilasters support a frieze ornamented with roundels, festoons and rinceaux, and a cornice. The ceiling decoration is lighter and more flowing than in the eating room and gives a feminine air to a room with a floor-to-ceiling height of 12 feet, 4 feet less than the more masculine eating room below.
LITERATURE. Stroud pp.87-9; Kalman pp.77-9; E. Leary, Pitshanger Manor, an introduction, guidebook published by Pitzhanger Manor Museum, [1990] 36 pp; G. Darley, John Soane, 1999 p.10; H. Ewing, 'Pitzhanger Manor' in M. Richardson & M. Stevens (eds), John Soane Architect, catalogue of an exhibition at the Royal Academy, 1999, p142.
OTHER SOURCES. Typescript catalogue of drawings for and of Pitzhanger Manor in Soane Museum.
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Group
Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation
If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk
Contents of Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, Middlesex (now London) 1768 (8). Survey drawings made by pupils in Soane's office, 1800
- Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, Middlesex (now London) 1768
- Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, Middlesex (now London) 1768
- Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, Middlesex (now London) 1768
- Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, Middlesex (now London) 1768
- Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, Middlesex (now London) 1768
- Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, Middlesex (now London) 1768
- Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, Middlesex (now London) 1768
- Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, Middlesex (now London) 1768