In 1752 Richard Trevor became the new Bishop of Durham. A perk of the post was two palaces: one in the city and a country seat at Auckland Castle, on the edge of the town of Bishop Auckland. In around 1760 he erected there this gorgeous gothic Deer House in the park at Auckland. As is so often the case with garden buildings, it combined the functional with the frivolous –  as well as sheltering the herd it also provided a banqueting room with extensive views and served as an eye-catcher in the park.

The Deer House was built on high ground above the River Gaunless, a tributary of the Wear, which meanders in an extremely pretty manner through the park (genuinely useless fact – Gaunless is apparently old Norse for useless). Trevor’s predecessor had already begun to remodel the park, a project that the new incumbent was happy to continue. Bishop Trevor (1707-1771) was a great builder, having remodelled his family seat at Glynde in East Sussex, and built a new church there.

At Auckland Castle he commissioned plans for entrances and garden buildings from the gentlemen-architects Richard Bentley and Sir Thomas Robinson, but the designer of the Deer House is thought, on stylistic grounds, to be Thomas Wright (1711-1786), the polymath who was born and died in County Durham. The Reverend James Raine, in his A brief historical account of the episcopal castle, or palace, of Auckland, published in 1852, gives the date as 1760. Raine also wrote that the ‘winter shelter’ was said to have cost £379, but sadly he gives no information on the architect. Other sources give the date as 1767, which may be when the works were completed.

The Deer Shelter, high on an eminence in the park, was thought ‘well plac’d’ by a visitor in 1766, and the grand scale of the building (‘very commodious’) was noted by another tourist in 1775 . The historian of Durham, William Hutchinson, described it in 1794 as a ‘well-fancied erection, in form of a cloister’. Sadly no accounts of enjoying a repast in the tower, with a vista across to the castle, have been found.

But half a century later fashions had changed, and the building failed to impress one visitor who though it ‘a piece of bad taste […] a sham with no reasonable motive’. Raine also expressed some doubt about the Deer Shelter: he thought it had a good effect from a distance, but did not stand up to closer scrutiny by an ‘architectural eye’. The Folly Flâneuse is firmly with the 18th century admirers.

There had been deer in the park at Auckland for centuries. The keeping of a herd fell in and out of fashion over the years, and the park needed to be restocked on a number of occasions. Bishop Trevor was seeking to increase the herd soon after arriving in Durham, and his steward was tasked to find an estate with deer to spare. But in 1856 The Gateshead Observer reported that the ‘episcopal deer’ had been sold by the ‘economical Church Commissioners’, and that some of them had already been shot & sent off to the London market. The paper was saddened by this move, writing that ‘the romance of the Church is fast disappearing’. A century later the now redundant Deer Shelter was taken into the care of the state to ensure its future was safe.

Early this century the Church Commissioners were once more criticised when they announced plans to sell off a number of Bishop’s Palaces, stating that they were too expensive to maintain, and unfit for 21st century episcopal life. Auckland Castle was on the list, and there was very vocal opposition, but a saviour was on hand in the form of Jonathan Ruffer, a hedge-fund manager. In 2012 he bought the estate and established a trust to save the castle and park, and to help reinvigorate the town of Bishop Auckland. Since that date Heritage Lottery Funding has enabled The Auckland Project to develop new museums and attractions, creating jobs and attracting visitors to the town.

The deer park is currently open for local visitors only. The Auckland Project is scheduled to reopen in June and should definitely be on your list of things to look forward to https://www.aucklandproject.org

And whilst discussing the follies of County Durham there is the excellent news that the updated The Buildings of England (Pevsner) volume on the county is published this month (March 2021). Fully updated by Martin Roberts, this will be a real treasure trove of information. And the icing on the cake? County Durham’s extraordinary eyecatcher, the Penshaw Monument, is on the cover.

You can find out more about the book here https://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?k=9780300225044 And the Paul Mellon Centre is hosting a virtual launch, details here https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/whats-on/forthcoming/pevsner-county-durham

Parlington Park is close to Aberford, south of Wetherby, on the old Great North Road. An architectural highlight of the landscape park is this Triumphal Arch, constructed in the early 1780s to definitively declare Sir Thomas Gascoigne’s stance on the ongoing war with America. Its inscription begins LIBERTY IN N AMERICA TRIUMPHANT, an unequivocal statement that Sir Thomas was firmly on the side of the colonists. The Folly Flâneuse has written about the arch before, but is revisiting to mark the Fourth of July, Independence Day in the U.S.A., and to look at a very curious moment in the modern history of the monument.

Gascoigne had first planned an arch in 1780, perhaps to commemorate his renunciation of the Catholic church and conversion to the Church of England, which allowed him to successfully stand as a Member of Parliament, or perhaps to mark his intention to settle at his Yorkshire estate. But this is merely conjecture, and there is no clue in the simple stone bearing his name and date shown in the sketch above. Executed in a proficient amateur hand the elevation survives in the family papers, and Sir Thomas himself has been suggested as the artist.

Gascoigne (1745-1810) supported the Whig party, of which a leading light was the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham of Wentworth Woodhouse, a fellow Yorkshire landowner. The party advocated independence for the American colonies, and did not support George III’s policy of prolonging the war until the Americans were subdued. Hence the decision to make the arch a monument to the American victory.

Moving on from the initial rough sketch of 1780 Gascoigne commissioned architect Thomas Leverton to draw up plans, and his ‘Design for an arch now building…’ was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1781. The decision on a dedication was made the following year, when Gascoigne intended a long inscription reading: ‘To that Virtue which for a series of Years resisted Oppression & by a glorious Peace rescued its Country & Millions from Slavery. T.G. Dedicates this Arch. 1782’. But by the time the arch was nearing completion the treaties known as the Peace of Paris had been signed, formally ending the war, and Sir Thomas had carved on the arch a short and succinct statement:

LIBERTY IN N AMERICA TRIUMPHANT MDCCCLXXXIII

The house at Parlington was largely demolished in the 1950s and the park sold in the 1960s. When Nicholas Pevsner published his West Riding volume of The Buildings of England in 1959 he described the arch, and was particularly impressed with the quality of the lettering. Dr Alexander Lock recently discovered that Pevsner was involved in a rather bizarre scheme to relocate the arch: in 1975 Pevsner suggested that the monument be taken down and transported across the Atlantic, proposing the arch as a gift to the American nation to celebrate the bicentenary of Independence the following year. Pevsner’s motion seems to have been taken seriously, but ultimately the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which was coordinating Britain’s contribution to the celebrations, rejected the idea. Upon consideration, the officers thought the arch did not have ‘sufficient historical significance or contemporary relevance to make it a worthy gift’.

The Folly Flâneuse begs to differ: this one landscape ornament is a unique monument to a major epoch in British history. Surely the heritage lobby would not have let it happen, but luckily it did not have to be put to the test. There’s no explanation why Pevsner would suggest that the British government should give away an important arch which they didn’t even own. Giving the eminent scholar the benefit of the doubt, only fragments of the house remained, the park had been divided in a major sale ten years earlier, and the arch was by then described in The Dalesman as ‘derelict and forlorn’; so perhaps he thought it would be better off cherished in America than decrepit in Yorkshire.

The civil servants also revived the idea, first discussed during WWII, of gifting one of the surviving copies of the Magna Carta to the United States (and no, the government didn’t own one of those, either). This too was dismissed, and instead Britain decided to loan one of the British Library’s two copies of the Magna Carta to Washington, where it would be on display for a year. In July 1975 the idea was discussed in the House of Lords. Lord Shepherd introduced the proposal, saying that the Magna Carta would be thought suitable ‘by most people who treasure democracy’. The irony was not lost on Lord Carrington, who said:
‘If I may be permitted just one reflection, I am sure we are the only people in the world who would celebrate a considerable defeat by sending something we value 3,000 miles across the ocean; but I suppose we are none the worse for that.’

The Magna Carta went to Washington, where it was displayed in the Rotunda of the Capitol in a ‘specially made showcase box over a gold replica which will be revealed when the original is returned’. Happily the arch stayed in Parlington. In the end it was George W. Turner of Elma, Washington, who brought it to the notice of the American public: he ‘discovered’ the arch when in England in 1975, and the Bicentennial Times reported that the ‘American monument’ could be found ‘tucked away in Parlington Park, near Yorkshire, England’.

At the time of writing in 2020, the date 4th of July will be celebrated in England for a very different reason: cafes, art galleries (to pick personal favourites) and many other businesses will be able to reopen as the Covid19 lockdown is eased (Scotland and Wales have to wait a little longer). The Folly Flâneuse would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped with images and information during this period when resources, and the chance to travel, have not been available. Hopefully flâneusing further afield can be resumed very soon. Wishing everyone good health, happiness and a haircut.

You can see more of Chris Broughton’s wonderful illustrations here https://chrisbroughtonartist.co.uk

And discover the work of the splendid New Arcadian Press here https://www.newarcadianpress.co.uk

Thanks to Brian Hull for the main image. You can visit his excellent Parlington website here  http://www.parlington.co.uk

For an earlier post on Parlington see https://thefollyflaneuse.com/triumphal-arch-and-sham-ruin-parlington-park-aberford-west-yorkshire/

Barnsley House, in the village of the same name, is one of those picture-perfect Cotswold manor houses of exquisite honey-coloured stone. Built in the last years of the 17th century it passed through various owners, and served as the Rectory, before being purchased by the Verey family in 1939. It came to fame a generation later when David Verey, an architectural historian, and his wife Rosemary inherited the house. Rosemary Verey went on to create one of the most famous gardens in Britain, and even those who have never visited (including, until this week, The Folly Flâneuse) would recognise the laburnum avenue underplanted with alliums that has graced many a calendar and greetings card.

As David Verey himself wrote in the Gloucestershire: The Cotswolds volume of the Buildings of England series (aka ‘Pevsner’) the garden contains a ‘fine gothic alcove of c.1770-80 with ogee entrance and panelled front’. Rosemary Verey went on to design gardens worldwide, but that surrounding her own home remains her most famous creation. The house became a hotel a couple of years after her death in 2001.

For many years The Folly Flâneuse has cherished a pair of bookends that keep in place a key selection of her much-consulted folly reference books. Purchased many years ago from Timothy Richardson Architectural Models, they were very much at the, how to put it, affordable end of the company’s offering. Much as The Folly Flâneuse coveted the model of the Temple of the Winds at Castle Howard, it wasn’t to be. But the bookends continue to be both beautiful and useful, and it was delight to see their inspiration at long last.

The Secret Garden in Wakefield’s Thornes Park features these architectural fragments which have popped up at various locations across the Wakefield district. The pinnacle is a bit of a mystery, but is believed to have been salvaged during a restoration of Wakefield Cathedral. The columns were originally part of the Wakefield Market Cross which was demolished, against the wishes of the people of Wakefield, in 1866 as part of the corporation’s ‘public improvements’. The furious scenes at the public auction of the cross in September 1866 made the papers across Britain. It was bought by a no-nonsense Mr Armitage who said  ‘It will do very well for my garden’.

What happened next is not clear but at some date the pieces were incorporated into a rockery in the grounds of Holmfield, adjacent to Thornes Park. Development of Holmfield in the 1990s forced their removal, and the pinnacle and one column were erected in the garden of Wakefield Art Gallery. That institution closed in anticipation of the opening of Wakefield’s much admired Hepworth Gallery in 2011. The pinnacle was then erected in the Secret Garden, with its companion column, and the two others which had been with the Wakefield Museum service for safe-keeping.

There are only a small number of surviving bridge chapels in Britain and Wakefield’s dates to the 14th century – or parts of it do. By the 1840s the masonry of the ancient structure was in a poor condition, the building having been in secular use for almost three centuries, and Sir George Gilbert Scott was commissioned to restore the building. The old facade was bought by Joseph Thornton Esq., a railway contractor, of nearby Kettlethorpe Hall, and he re-erected the chapel’s front elevation over the entrance to a boathouse on his lake.

This rebuilding has been incorrectly credited to the Hon. George Chapple Norton, but the Norton family were not at Kettlethorpe by this date. They did however make a brief return, in poignant circumstances, following the death of Fletcher Cavendish Charles Conyers Norton in 1859. In October of that year his body lay in state in the ‘chapel’ and hundreds of mourners visited to pay their respects.

Nikolaus Pevsner described it as ‘the most precious of all boat houses’ in the West Riding volume of the Buildings of England series, although as a correspondent with the Yorkshire Post pointed out in 1937, ‘boat house’ is a misnomer and it is better described as ‘a temple’. From the 1950s the grounds of Kettlethorpe Hall were developed for housing, and vandalism became a major problem in the decades that followed. In 1996 English Heritage, as it then was, took urgent measures and gave consent for the structure to be dismantled. Loose stones were also salvaged from the lake and all the masonry placed in storage. There it remained until 2014 when, with local support, the remains were installed as a feature in the new Secret Garden in Thornes Park. The stones have been laid at an angle in a bed, so that their outline can be appreciated but they are secure. On the minus side they are now very difficult to photograph.

Thornes Park was originally the garden to Thornes House, a substantial mansion designed by John Carr for James Milne in around 1780. The surrounding landscape included two lakes, the larger of which had an island with temple. Marked on the first ordnance survey map simply as ‘The Temple’ it was an open rotunda with a deep dome which housed a statue of a female figure. Only the larger lake survives today, remodelled with concrete edging in place of the original grassy banks, and no sign of the temple remains.

By 1957 the temple was ‘forlorn and dilapidated’, and in the spirit of that terrible decade for the country house no-one seemed to care. ‘I don’t think it is of any great value’, Mr Haynes the Park Superintendent told the Wakefield Express. Local legend has it that the statue was spirited away, never to be seen again, after the lake froze over in the 1960s. The temple is said to have collapsed in bad weather in 1970 and the statue is believed to be of Pandora, the first woman in Greek mythology, but no evidence for this seems to exist. In 2017 the local paper announced that there were plans to return a statue of Pandora to Thornes Park, but the idea was abandoned due to lack of funds.

Thornes Park was purchased for the people of Wakefield in 1919, and together with the adjacent Clarence and Holmfield parks is a cherished local resource with an active friends group https://chatparks.org.uk