Camden Place, a seven-bay, three-storey brick house, was built shortly before 1717 by Robert Weston. In about 1788, Dance was employed to remodel the house for Charles Pratt, Baron Camden of Camden Place, Kent, Viscount Bayham of Bayham Abbey and 1st Earl Camden who wrote from Camden Place on 14 November 1789 to his daughter Fanny that 'The plaisterers are come down to put the last covering of Stucco / upon the Walls' (letter, Centre for Kentish Studies, U840 C3/4). Lord Camden dying in 1794, his son wanted to sell the house but was reluctant since his father had taken its name for his title. Dance told Farington (26 October 1798) that 'He thinks however, that, if He were to erect a Monument or Statue to his father with part of the money it would be still a greater mark of respect.' And in 1807 when the 2nd Earl Camden sold the house to Thomson Bonar, a wealthy City merchant, Dance was called in again. In his earlier work, Dance seems (from the evidence of a survey drawing, [SM D2/9/19]) to have added a drawing room, and dining room, a new entrance and stair. He may have suggested a Grecian well-head for a reference in J. P. Neale's Views of seats states that there was 'over a well in the lawn, a model of the classic building called the Lanthorn of Demosthenes [or Choragic Monument of Lysicrates] upon the same scale as the original' (volume II, 1819, under Wilderness). Measured, drawn and published in J. Stuart & N. Revett's Antiquities of Athens (volume I, 1762, chapter III, plates I-XIX) the prototype for the well-house was about 34 feet high.

For Mr Bonar, the entrance was changed and a library inserted but what was mostly required were up-to-date domestic offices, accommodation for the servants, brand new stables, a lodge house and dairy. Dance achieved a new kitchen, brewhouse and laundry by converting the stables and designing new stables around a courtyard. However, his most interesting design was a thatched dairy on an elliptical plan (or alternately a circular plan, [SM D2/9/2]) having tree-like Doric columns without bases, Gothic windows and internal walls with Chinese-style decorations. 'Thus in a succinct statement Dance commented upon the primitivism of tree trunks and thatching, the Greek Doric, Oriental, and Gothic style, and the simplistic nature of the oval form' (Kalman p.36).

Dance's use of an elliptical plan, thatched roof and rustic columns with bark, is reminiscent of Soane's design for a dairy at Hammels Park, Hertfordshire published in his Plans of buildings (1788, plates 43 and 45). This 'natural' architecture was not new. Its most influential image is Abbé Laugier's illustration of the 'rustic cabin' of primitive man in his Essai sur l'architecture (1753), continued with William Chambers's examples of 'primitive buildings' in his Civil architecture (1759) and soon after by William Wright's rustic garden building in his Grotesque architecture (1769). Robert Adam used tree trunks for an arbour seat at Dalquharran in about 1785 and for a thatched lodge of 1787 (reproduced in Tait, 1993, figs 113-114). From the late 1790s the cottage orné style was increasingly popular. Dance's dairy was not new but it is intriguing to see him turning his hand to rustic primitivism.

Changes made to Camden Place for the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie, 1870-80, have left little trace of Dance's work. Neither the stables, lodge nor dairy can now be seen, and it is not known whether these were built. Camden Place, off Prince Imperial Road, has been the Chislehurst Golf Club House since 1894, having been bought in 1890 by William Willett who, with Ernest Newton as his architect, developed the estate 'in two groups for high-class medium-sized commuter residences' (Newman, 1980, p.221).

For other works by George Dance for Lord Camden and his family see Bayham Hall, Kent/Sussex; Camden Estate, London; and Wilderness Park, Kent.

LITERATURE. Stroud pp.211-12; Kalman pp.35-6 (dairy); J. Newman, West Kent and the Weald, 1980, p.220-1; S. Lyall, Dream cottages, 1988, passim; A. A. Tait, Robert Adam, 1993.

OTHER SOURCES. Information from the Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone.

Group

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