The Portals were Huguenots who fled France in 1699. Henri Portal adopted the paper-making industry, living at Bere Mill, Whitchurch until the last few years of his life when he moved to the old Manor House at Freefolk (demolished 1852) that stood in the existing park of Laverstoke, and here he died in 1747. Henri was succeeded by his only son Joseph Portal who managed the paper mill until his death in 1793 and had, in 1759, purchased the Laverstoke Estate. The business was left to John, Joseph's third son, Harry the eldest inheriting, with his brother William, the greater part of the estate. It seems that the first thing the bachelor Harry did was to commission a design for a new house. (William lived at Ashe Park three miles away and John at Freefolk House near the mill.)

Dance's design is not dated (though a rough note on [SM D3/14/4] relates to a bill for a separate design of 28 August 1792) but 1794, the year after Harry Portal received his inheritance, seems plausible. In any case it must pre-date the executed design made by Joseph Bonomi titled '... built at Laverstoke near Whitchurch in Hampshire for Henry Portal Esq^r 1797' for which four highly finished drawings survive in the RIBA Drawings Collection (C3/Bonomi [13] 1-4). A comparison between the two architects' designs shows that both used a porte-cochere spanning the house and kitchen offices, the latter arranged around a semicircular court. Such features are unusual and it does seem likely that Bonomi studied Dance's drawings; the size of the houses on plan in the two designs is virtually the same, as is the accommodation except that Bonomi's design has a full attic floor instead of Dance's part-attic storey. The chief differences are that Bonomi has a conventional entrance hall with access to the enclosed principal stair via a door while Dance's stair fills the semicircular entrance-stair hall, and though both garden elevations have windows without surrounds, Bonomi's has a giant order in antis with angular Ionic capitals.

It is not known whether Dance's and Bonomi's schemes were for the same site. Freefolk is a mile and a half northeast of Whitchurch and Laverstoke a half-mile further away. Portal, a captain of the 10th Hussars, died unmarried at the age of 49 in 1801. Laverstoke Park was extensively remodelled in the mid-19th century.

LITERATURE. Sir Francis Portal Bt., Portals: the Church, the State, and the People, 1962, passim; N. Pevsner & D. Lloyd, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, 1967, p.316 (Laverstoke Park, 'Yellow brick. The principal front of seven bays with a detached giant portico of very slender unfluted Ionic columns with pronounced enasis. Round the corner porch of two pairs of normal unfluted Ionic columns. The windows are all cut in without any surround'); P. Meadows, Joseph Bonomi architect 1739-1808, catalogue of an exhibition at the Heinz Gallery, RIBA Drawings Collection, 1988, pp.18-19.

OTHER SOURCES. Information from the RIBA Drawings Collection (Tim Knox's catalogue of Bonomi drawings).

Group

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