Browse
Purpose
Signed and dated
- 1768
Notes
It appears that following his appointment as Archbishop of York in 1761 Hay-Drummond sought to improve his local family seat at Brodsworth Hall, an estate which had been purchased by his father in 1713. For Brodsworth Adam made designs to rebuild, and then simply to enlarge the house, but neither was executed as Hay-Drummond's focus had been drawn to the renovations of the Archbishop of York's official residence at Bishopthorpe Palace. This work was carried out by Thomas Atkinson (c1729-98) in 1763-69. Atkinson was responsible for the Gothic gatehouse, and remodelling the entrance front and interior of Bishopthorpe in the Gothic style. It appears that the expense of two concurrent building projects at both Bishopthorpe and Brodsworth was too great for Hay-Drummond, and his official residence quickly took priority.
These two designs, for an urn and a sideboard table both dated 1768, have previously been attributed as being for Brodsworth. This is unlikely, however, as by this date Atkinson's gatehouse at Bishopthorpe was complete, and his works on the palace were underway, absorbing all of Hay-Drummond's money and attention. Unfortunately there is no archival evidence that Adam produced designs for interior fittings for Bishopthorpe in the Bishopthorpe archive at the Borthwick Institute, York. Moreover, these two designs by Adam may have been speculative, and never commissioned by Hay-Drummond at all.
Atkinson's work at Bishopthorpe seems to assert the medieval origins of the palace as an affirmation of Hay-Drummond's patronage. This does not result in 'Gothic fantasy' but rather is - in part - by the architecture of York Minster itself. Both of the designs made by Adam are thoroughly Classical, but many of Adam's interiors for Gothic, or 'castle style' buildings are Classical, and examples can be seen in the designs for Mellerstain, Culzean Castle, and Ugbrooke. In this instance, however, there is no evidence that Adam's designs were executed.
Bishopthorpe Palace remains the official residence of the Archbishop of York.
See also: Brodsworth Hall, South Yorkshire
Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert & James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index pp. 5, 92; E. Harris, The furniture of Robert Adam, 1963, pp. 48, 69; N. Pevsner, and E. Radcliffe, The buildings of England: Yorkshire West Riding, 1967, pp. 107-108; J. Ingamells, A dictionary of British and Irish travellers in Italy: 1701-1800, 1997, p. 477; Yale, Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, 2011, Volume 28, p. 316
Frances Sands, 2012
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).