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Sir William Stanhope, unexecuted designs for a garden pavilion, either for Pope’s Villa in Twickenham or Eythrope House in Buckinghamshire, 1764 (19)

Signed and dated

  • 1764

Notes

The Hon. William Stanhope (1702-72) was the second son of the 3rd Earl of Chesterfield. He was created a Knight of Bath in 1725, and served as MP for Buckinghamshire in 1727-41. In c1764 Adam made three alternative designs for a garden pavilion for Sir William, but the intended location is unclear as he owned both Eythrope House in Buckinghamshire and Alexander Pope's Villa in Twickenham. Although unexecuted, Adam's garden pavilion designs were presumably intended for one of these locations as it is known that improvements were made at both.

From around 1750 Sir William embellished Eythrope House and its park, employing Isaac Ware (1704-66) to build stables and garden buildings, and Thomas Harris of Cublington (c1688-1763) to design a new front for the house. Eythrope House was demolished in 1810-11 by the 6th Earl of Chesterfield, and none of Ware's garden buildings, save a bridge and a small grotto, have survived in the garden of the present nineteenth-century house. In addition to this, in 1760, Horace Walpole complained about the changes that Sir William was making to Pope’s garden. Pope’s villa was demolished in the early nineteenth century, and the subsequent buildings on the site are now occupied by St Catherine's School.

Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index pp. 57, 88; B. Cherry, and N. Pevsner, The buildings of England: London 2: south, 1983, pp. 542-543; N. Pevsner, and E. Williamson, The buildings of England: Buckinghamshire, 1994, p. 322; J. Ingamells, A dictionary of British and Irish travellers in Italy 1701-1800, 1997, p. 887; D. King, The complete works of Robert & James Adam and unbuilt Adam, 2001, Volume II, pp. 197-199, 218

Frances Sands (2012)

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Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

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Contents of Sir William Stanhope, unexecuted designs for a garden pavilion, either for Pope’s Villa in Twickenham or Eythrope House in Buckinghamshire, 1764 (19)