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Purpose
Signed and dated
- 1770-71
Notes
The intense cold killed in one night our poor orang-outang, or man of the woods, and possibly hastened the death of old Mr Bull which is a serious loss to Lord Shelburne, he being the most faithful, able and zealous agent.
Following Daniel's death it appears that his son David was permitted to remain at Castle House. It is possible that he fulfilled a similar role to his father, as Jeremy Bentham recorded in his 'Remembrances of visits to Bowood, 1781-85' in The works of Jeremy Bentham, 'Mr Bull, who managed, I think, the borough of Calne'. It was Daniel who, in 1770, commissioned Robert Adam to extend the T-shaped house into an H-shape by the addition of a large southern wing. According to King it is unlikely that Adam executed any interior decoration aside from friezes, although there is no evidence to confirm this.
Castle House was purchased by the local council in 1961 who left it to fall into ruins, and it suffered a fire. In the 1970s the seventeenth-century portion was demolished, and the Adam wing was gutted for renovation as sheltered housing for the elderly.
Literature:
J. Bowing, (ed.). The works of Jeremy Bentham, 1843, Volume 10, p. 123; E. Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, afterwards first Marquess of Lansdowne, 1912, Volume I, p. 396; A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index pp. 6, 64; E. Harris, The furniture of Robert Adam, 1963, p. 48; B. Cherry, and N. Pevsner, The buildings of England: Wiltshire, 1975, pp. 156-57; D. King, The complete works of Robert & James Adam and unbuilt Adam, 2001, Volume I, p. 204
Frances Sands, 2011
Level
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.
Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).
Contents of Castle House, Cox's Hill, Calne, Wiltshire: executed designs for a new south wing, and possibly executed designs for the interior, including the hall, dining room and drawing room for David Bull, 1770-1771 (8)
- Designs for the addition of the south wing to the house, 1770, as executed (3)
- Record drawing for a chimmeypiece for the hall, 1770 (1)
- Record drawings for pier glass frames for the dining room and drawing room, one above a sideboard table, 1771 (2)
- Record drawings for friezes for the dining room, drawing room and ante room, possibly executed, no date (2)