architecture, Banqueting House, Buckinghamshire, eyecatcher, Folly, garden history, landscape, Summerhouse

A Musical Interlude

The Folly Flâneuse is away (in search of follies of course), so until next week here is a brief look at the very pretty Music Temple at West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, the seat of the Dashwood family.

John Donowell, active 1753–1786, East View of West Wycombe House, Buckinghamshire, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1975.4.1884.

The temple, also known as the Theatre, was designed by Nicholas Revett in the late 1770s, and sits on the largest of the three islands on the lake. Sir Francis Dashwood’s guests would have been rowed over to the island for fêtes champêtres of food, wine and music.

West Wycombe looking rather fine in June 2021.

The Music Temple is just one of the many garden features added to the West Wycombe landscape in the eighteenth century. Some are lost, but others have been restored, or indeed rebuilt, by later generations of the family.

The Temple of the Winds, erected in the late 1750s.

In 1943 Sir John Dashwood gifted West Wycombe to the National Trust, but the house remains home to the Dashwood family. The house and grounds reopen in the spring https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/west-wycombe-park-village-and-hill

There will be no lounging around for the Folly Flâneuse, who will be back next week.

APOLOGIES that there has been a glitch in the system and regular readers will receive two posts this week. If you have missed the other it is here https://thefollyflaneuse.com/bonds-folly-or-creech-grange-arch-dorset/

 

The Needle’s Eye, Wentworth Woodhouse. Subscribe and discover many other fascinating follies.

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