In 1949 Osbert Lancaster published a history of the town of Drayneflete, with illustrations showing its development from the Bronze age to the then present day. His detailed research took him to rare historical volumes, archaeological reports and contemporary prints and photographs. With help from the Earl of Littlehampton, and local historian Miss Dracula Parsley-ffigett, he set about recording the town’s past in print. As the admiring visitors above have spotted, an interesting architectural ornament could be found in the park of Drayneflete Castle, which stood on the edge of the settlement.

As Lancaster’s history tells us, the 1st Earl of Littlehampton (died 1742) rebuilt Drayneflete Castle to a Palladian design by Hawksmoor, and the park was laid out in the French style by the great landscape designer Le Nôtre.

Of particular interest to the Flâneuse was the development of Drayneflete Castle in the eighteenth century. The 3rd Earl of Littlehampton (1749-?), went on the Grand Tour as a young man, and was painted by Batoni whilst in Rome in 1769 (like his peers he sent home crates full of antiquities and paintings). Upon his return he called upon ‘Mr Wyatt’ to remodel Drayneflete Castle in the fashionable gothic style.

The earl also employed Capability Brown, who swept away the formal avenues and canals of Le Nôtre and in their place created picturesque lakes, clumps of trees and a landscape dotted with grottoes and temples. But the earl’s pièce de résistance was his folly.

This great building was an ‘architectural curiosity expressly designed to display correct examples of all the five great schools of architecture’. Completed in 1799, the basement was an Egyptian crypt, whilst the lower storey was a cube with porticos in the Ionic, Doric, Corinthian and Tuscan orders. This supported a Gothic octagon, which in turn carried a Chinese pagoda, and the finishing touch was a cupola ‘in the Hindoo taste’. The architect is not recorded, but it would seem likely that Littlehampton himself played a part – it is known that he designed a ‘magnificent mausoleum in the Saracenic style’ after the death of his wife in 1782. It is greatly to be regretted that no further views of the park are known to survive.

Sadly Lord Littlehampton’s Folly was not to stand for many years: at the very hour that the 3rd earl expired (the exact date seems to be hard to trace) the folly was struck by lightning, destroying the uppermost sections. The Gothic octagon was taken down as unsafe in 1923, and the classical base was used as an Anti Aircraft Battery in the Second World War, before it too collapsed. All that could be seen in 1949 was the Egyptian crypt, which had been used as an air-raid shelter during the Blitz.

Like so many other fine mansions Drayneflete Castle ceased to be a family home towards the end of the nineteenth century: its future was in institutional use. The grounds became a public park, although much of it was redeveloped to meet the housing needs of the area after the Second World War.

The earls of Littlehampton retained the family portraits until the middle of the twentieth century when they sold the collection to the National Portrait Gallery (it was quietly accepted that they needed to raise funds to pay death duties). For reasons of lack of space the works were consigned to the basement, but in 1973 the outgoing director of the gallery, Roy Strong, asked Osbert Lancaster to write an illustrated catalogue of the collection. In the foreword Strong described the collection as ‘the most significant addition to the gallery’s holdings since the last war’. The catalogue was published as The Littlehampton Bequest towards the end of 1973, and it was surely the book’s great success that persuaded the National Portrait Gallery to mount a small display of works from the bequest in the spring of the following year.

By now readers may have their suspicions that all is not what it seems. Drayneflete Revealed (1949) and The Littlehampton Bequest (1973) are magnificent parodies from the pen of Osbert Lancaster (1908-1986). Drayneflete Revealed is an ‘excursion into imaginary topography’ – a spoof of the dry antiquarian accounts of many a settlement. The reviews were excellent, with Elizabeth Bowen writing in Tatler that the book was ‘exquisitely, rumbustiously and satanically enjoyable’. The novelist John Fowles noted in his copy that Lancaster’s satire ‘deserves to be ranked with Thackeray and Waugh’. Many people will have found a copy in their stocking on Christmas Day 1949.

Roy Strong, ‘with tongue in his elegant cheek’ (as The Times put it), had suggested that Lancaster write the ‘catalogue’ of the Littlehampton Bequest shortly before Strong left the NPG to become director of the Victoria & Albert Museum. In his diaries Sir Roy (he was knighted in 1982) noted that he gave copies of The Littlehampton Bequest to the National Portrait Gallery’s trustees as parting gifts at his farewell dinner.

The Littlehampton Bequest was described by The Sunday Times as ‘by far the most civilised joke of the year’. The bequest was of course entirely fictional, but the exhibition of Lancaster’s illustrations of the Littlehampton collection at the National Portrait Gallery was real.

Guests were invited to a private view in March 1974, and the exhibition continued until 30 April. A poster advertising the show could be seen around London, and the Flâneuse sought out the copy in the NPG archives.

The books are a joy to read. Lancaster’s spoofs are works of genius, for to parody history and art one must first know the subject matter very well. Copies are available in libraries and from the usual second-hand book sources. The Flâneuse thanks her Decorative Friend for the wonderful gift of copies of the books.

N.B. Lancaster admitted in 1973 that Miss Parsley-ffigett’s family history, which he had relied upon in Drayneflete Revealed, had been flawed. Updated research was published in The Littlehampton Bequest, and that is the source used here.

Coincidentally, the Flâneuse recently came across this image, which was published in a pattern book in 1752. Did Lord Littlehampton have a copy in his library?

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Sundorne House in Shropshire was the seat of the Corbet family and the estate included the picturesque ruin of Haughmond Abbey. In 1774 John Corbet added a dramatic eye-catcher to the ensemble – a sham castle on the summit of Haughmond Hill.

John Corbet (1751-1817) spent 1773 on the Grand Tour, where he was painted by Pompeo Batoni. He had inherited the Sundorne estate from his father in 1759, when still a minor and on his return from Europe he began to remodel the mansion using the architect Robert Mylne, and his improvements to the park included a vast new lake.

Although his portrait by Batoni shows him with a plan of the Pantheon in Rome, he chose to ornament the park with a building in the Gothick style. High on Haughmond Hill he built a mock fortification called Haughmond Castle.

The architect Robert Mylne sent Corbet a ‘design of a castle to be erected on the top of a hill’ in November 1774. Mylne had experience in the field having already built Blaise Castle in Bristol: Haughmond Castle had a similar triangular floor-plan of a central core surrounded by three circular turrets, as shown on Ordnance Survey maps. It was complete by 1777 when a lucky visitor stayed in the ‘pea green’ room at Sunborne and his view took in the building on Haughmond Hill.

As well as being an eye-catcher from Sundorne, the Castle would have served as both a landmark and a refreshment pavilion during the chase, for Corbet was a passionate huntsman. Locally it is told that a flag was flown when hunting was to take place the following day, although an alternative version has it that the flag was hoisted to warn the servants at Sunborne House that the hunt was over and the participants were heading back for dinner.

It was also a belvedere and from it there was a ‘magnificent panorama’ which included ‘the valley of the Severn, with the ancient town of Shrewsbury, backed on the horizon by the Welsh Mountains, while further south the wooded crest of the Wrekin towered above the valley’.

The prominent eye-catcher played a key role in the celebrations of the coming-of-age of Corbet’s eldest son Andrew William in 1822. Cannon were fired from Sundorne Castle (the house by now remodelled and renamed) and ‘these were answered by discharges from the Castle on the hill’. Tenants and their friends were invited to partake of a ‘cold collation’ at the Castle, and in the evening the building must have been a magical sight when it was illuminated.

For some years the eye-catcher doubled as a home for estate workers. Photographs and postcards from the early years of the 20th century show the Castle in good condition, but in the 1930s it collapsed. In 1938 a visitor noted the ‘ruins of Haughmond Castle’ and by 1973 only ‘traces’ remained.

Sundorne Castle too is gone – demolished in 1955, although a very attractive gatehouse and chapel were left standing.

All that remains of Haughmond Castle today are a few moss-covered bits of masonry and some curved ironwork. The view can still be appreciated, although the valley has been developed since Corbet’s day. There are walks to the site from the Forestry Commission’s Haughmond Hill car park https://www.forestryengland.uk/haughmond-hill/walking-trails-haughmond-hill

Haughmond Abbey is in the care of English Heritage and can be visited all year round https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/haughmond-abbey/

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18th century Italy was bustling with rich young noblemen on the Grand Tour. This extended study trip/holiday filled the years between formal education ending and the responsibilities of inheriting an estate, and producing heirs of their own, kicked in. In the early years of the 1750s, a coterie in Rome centred on Charles Caulfeild, Viscount Charlemont, a young Irish dilettante as well read as he was well travelled: Charlemont would travel further than most and see Egypt, Constantinople and Greece. Within his circle for the obligatory sojourn in Italy were two men with strong Yorkshire connections: Thomas Brudenell, Baron Bruce of Tottenham, who had a seat at Tanfield Hall near Ripon, and Henry Willoughby of Birdsall Hall in the East Riding of the county. 

Also in Rome at this date was the architect Sir William Chambers, who was only a few years older than the three friends. As the son of a merchant, Chambers was not of an equal social standing but he became a friend and architectural mentor, and went on to design garden temples for each man – although it appears that only Charlemont had the means and the inclination to build a tribute to Italy once back home.

On his return from Italy in the later 1750s Charlemont began to remodel his estate at Marino. There was already a modest mansion on the demesne, and Charlemont had a townhouse in nearby Dublin, so the Casino, Italian for ‘little house’ was perfect for the spot. Chambers designed it to look as if it contains only one room, but the structure actually has an ingeniously designed 16 rooms and cabinets, including a grand saloon and a state room. The artifice is helped by the use of curved glass in the window panes, which deflects the light and hides the fact that walls actually divide the windows, which serve more than room.

From the Casino there were views, now lost as the city has expanded, across Dublin Bay to the Wicklow mountains. The conical Sugarloaf Mountain, which dominates the view across the water, must surely have reminded Charlemont of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples.

Over in Yorkshire, Charlemont’s friends don’t seem to have had such a desire to build. Chambers had published the designs for Charlemont, Willoughby and Bruce in his A treatise on the Decorative Park of Civil Architecture in 1759. The fourth plate was ‘an Elevation of the principal Front of a Cafine, designed by me for Lord Bruce, to be erected at Tanfield-Hall, his Lordships [sic] Seat in Yorkshire’. Bruce lived mainly at Tottenham, his Wiltshire seat and in London, but Tanfield Hall was at this date used by the family for country sports. To date, there’s no evidence that the temple was built, but research continues.

Willoughby’s casino at Birdsall also appears to have been a whim that was never realised. But Chambers liked the idea so much that he had his studio produce a beautiful finished view of the elevation, now in the Royal Academy.

The Casino at Marino admitted visitors again in September 2019 after a two year closure to allow remedial works. Opening dates for 2020 are here http://casinomarino.ie

Update: thanks to David Winpenny for reminding me that Chambers too had Yorkshire connections having spent his early years in Ripon and attended Ripon Grammar School before making his way in the world.