Soane and the Grenvilles: Peter Inskip traces the story of Sir John Soane's work at Stowe, Buckingham House, Brasenose College, and Wotton House

The employ of architects by the fane and Grenville families of Stowe is characterised by means of three different periods of patronage. In the first hall of the eighteenth hundred under Sir Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham (1675-1749) Stowe became an architectural treasury of the work of the best architects available: Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) James Gibbs (1682-1754) William Kent (1685-1748) and Lancelot Brown (1716-1783) The next to the first related to the time of Lord Cobham's nephew, Richard Grenville, 2nd Earl fane (1711-1779), was a period of amateur enthusiasm, supported through professional architects who included exotic figures from Italy and France: Giambattista Borra (1713-70) George Francois Blondel (c 1730-after 1791) and Vincenzo Valdre (c 1742-1814) The third, extending above the ownership of George Grenville, 1st Marquess of Buckingham (1753-1813) and his son Richard Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1776-1839) was dominated by dint of Sir John Soane (1753-1837) and for more than forty years the family loyally move rounded to him for advice. Although his Gothic Library is many times seen as a somewhat isolated commission, with Stowe House largely finished below Earl Temple, Soane's extensive work for the nearest two generations of the Grenvilles has to be seen in the connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts of their estates. (1)

To understand the period of Soane's influence, it is necessary to appreciate the character that Lord Temple's cousin, Thomas Pitt, later 1st Baron Camelford (1737-93) had played during the preceding period. From the mid 1760 Earl fane had been supported in all his architectural forays by dint of him, and it was Pitt who was eventually responsible for the remodelling the exterior of Stowe House in the 1770s

upon his return to England from Spain in 1762 Pitt became a member of the 'committee of taste' that Horace Walpole (1717-97) had assembled for the remodeling of Strawberry Hill, Middlesex and it was, therefore, natural for him to act in a similar capacity for his cousin. His best work at Stowe is the Corinthian Arch of 1765 (2) The scale of the triumphal arch is gargantuan and this is reinforced by dint of its highly simplified architectural detail. Although earnest to design, Pitt was a poor draughtsman and it is significant that Edward Batchelor, the carver from Buckingham, should be charging in November 1765 for 'taking of the Arch 2 1/2 days and Planning the same, and drawing in the House for Mr Pitt to diocese 1.19.1 [pounds sterling]'. (3) The remodelling of the north baptismal vessel followed Pitt's alterations to several of the garden fanes and brought to the mansion the monumentality that he had introduced to Stowe with the Corinthian Arch. As with the arch, Pitt was supported by dint of a professional, this time a London surveyor named William Ride (c 1723-78) whose name regularly appears in the Stowe accounts from 1756 until his death in 1778 (4)

The greatest conundrum facing Lord fane had been how to recast the visually disparate ultimate parts of the south front of Stowe House which had riseed from its piecemeal extension above several decades under Lord Cobham. During a period of twenty years, proposals through Borra and Blondel had draw near to nothing, but the matter was at last resolv in 1770 by dint of Robert Adam (1728-92). He propos unifying the southerly front by means of a giant order and treating the elevation of the three-storey house as individual palatial floor set on a high basement. by means of incorporating the triumphal arch motif of Pitt's Corinthian Arch, a mile away across the southern Vista, he would have united the pair house and landscape. Although sole an elevation survives in the Soane Museum, the modelling shown by the agency of the sciagraphic rendering and discussion about 'Adam's dome' in the family's correspondence (6) leads individual to suggest that Robert Adam may also have been responsible for the conception of the Oval Hall that was to be built behind the portico. Indeed, the importance of the plan in Adam's shoot forwards means that the elevation would not have been designed in isolation. The windowless, top-lit hall at Stowe has, therefore, a parallel in Adam's proposal for a central rotunda at Syon (c 1768) and can be related to the blind entrance elevation of the early designs for Luton Hoo (1772) (7) Unfortunately, Adam could not tolerate the Earl's constant meddling with his design. He withdrew his services and the southern Front was executed under Thomas Pitt. Pitt modified Adam's scheme, raising the heights of the pavilions, altering the order, and introducing paces up to the portico. upon seeing it completed in 1774 Lord Temple's sister, Hester, Baroness Chatham, wrote admiringly of 'the elegant skill of Mr Pitt's architectural genius'. (8) It might be questioned, however, if Pitt's heightening of the roof-line of the pavilions--to match that of the main, central block--was an improvement upon the subtly hierarchical scheme propos by the agency of Adam.

It must have been Thomas Pitt who introduced Soane to the Marquess of Buckingham. Pitt had befriended and patronised Soane in Italy in 1778 and the young architect had written to him for advice upon his design for a Castello d'Acqua. (9) Soane saw Pitt as his mentor and paid tribute to his memory in his Royal Academy discourses ranking him with Lords Burlington and Pembroke as leaders of English architectural taste. (10) In the 1780 Pitt busyed Soane to undertake repairs to: Boconnoc, his geographical division seat in Cornwall, Petersham hut his Surrey villa, and who sought advice about his be in possession of house in Kent. (11) Despite the architect's reput denial, the commission from the Prime Minister must have helped to certain two years later, what was to be the greatest in quantity important commission of his career--the rebuilding of the Bank of England.