Isaac de Caus, Nicholas Stone, and the Woburn Abbey grotto

The history of the grotto at Woburn Abbey has hitherto not been clearly established. That it dates from the early seventeenth hundred is universally accepted, for it is within the loam floor of the still extant north range that was almost certainly built in the late 1620 or early 1630 'Garden-making' accompanied the building roar in country houses in the first hardly any decades of the seventeenth hundred and a fair number of patrons commissioned designers to create renaissance-style gardens that included grottoes. As we will diocese however, the siting of the Woburn grotto in the actual living area of the house appears to have been distinctly unusual for the period. The identity of the patron has been uncertain as well, although it has generally been agreed that Isaac de Caus was its contriver and designer. Until newly it was generally assumed that Lucy Countes of Bedford, wife of the 3rd Earl of Bedford, Edward Russell (1572-1627) and famous for her other gardens at Twickenham and Moor Park in Hertfordshire, was the patron of the grotto. (1) new research, however, has made it clear that Edward Russell and his extravagant wife Lucy were not responsible for any of the seventeenth-century changes at Woburn Cash-strapped for greatest in quantity of their adult lives, the pair evinced little interest in Woburn Abbey beyond attempting to exchange it on several occasions. Francis Russell (Fig. 1) Edward's first cousin and his heir, actually took rule of almost the entire Bedford estates in 1618/19 eight years before he inherited the earldom, and there is abundant evidence that the subsequent time 4th Earl moved to Woburn with his family shortly afterwards. It was he who, in the proces of converting and adding to the remnants of the advanced in years monastery buildings, decided to include a magical, classical conceit--the grotto (Fig. 4) That he did thus is a fascinating point in its possess right, and adds further to the revised persona of the 4th Earl that has lately emerged. More importantly, however, the stonework in the grotto has now been attributed to Nicholas Stone, Master Mason to Charles I. (2)

[FIGURES 1&4 OMITTED]

During the first not many years of the 1620s, Francis Russell certainly carried without some updating work to the elderly monastic structure that had been solitary partially converted beforehand by his grandfather and namesake, Francis, the 2nd Earl. (3) on the other hand it seems most likely for several reasons--financial in particular--that it was not until towards the extremity of the decade that he began the major conversion and rebuilding of the Abbey. He retained the basic fabric of the east and west ranges of the former monastery, on the other hand rebuilt the south and north wings, the former probably upon the site of the laybrothers' reredorter. The fresh north wing was built upon the site of the south-western corner of the elderly abbey church nave, a small range of approximately 93 x 30 feet containing, upon the ground floor, two family parlours flanking the spectacular centre-piece--the 22 x 26-foot grotto. Within the rear wall of this wing is still subsum the remnants of the southerly nave wall of the advanced in years abbey church (Figs. 2 and 4) single cannot fail to wonder at the incongruity of this capricious grotto within a disciplined classical building, which is single increased by the fact that the watch from this range would almost certainly have been onto an ordered renaissance garden. Jonas Moore's contemplate of Woburn in 1661, although somewhat naive and not totally accurate in its architectural detail, displays classically laid-out, walled gardens to the north, west and southern of the abbey (Fig. 3) (4)

[FIGURE 2&3 OMITTED]

What is indicated by means of the very existence of the grotto in the of recent origin classical north range, is that the earl was aware of the architectural inter-relationship between the renaissance garden and the features it shared with the house. Grottoes, a quintessentially mannerist phenomenon, were a belonging to all feature of classical villas and their encircles both in antiquity and the renaissance. They were oftentimes sited and presented like natural caverns in the external reaches of gardens, or beneath terraces in their more formal parts, with the ambiguity of simulated nature behind an architectural exterior. on the other hand sometimes they were situated within the main building, like the grotto in the basement of Inigo Jones's Banqueting House which, it looks James I used as a privy wine storage and tippling cellar. Around the early 1630 Thomas Bushell, a servant of Francis Bacon, created an extraordinary hermitage at Enstone in Oxfordshire with an elaborate basement grotto, above which he lived. Samuel Pepy in 1663 describes visiting Mr Povy's house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where after dinner the visitors went 'down to see his fresh cellars ... and in a compass next to it such a grotto and fountayne'. (5) The unusual location of the Woburn grotto as an integral part of the living accommodation, by what mode ever, is comparable to the grotto in the great chamber upon the first floor of the conduit court at Theobalds, the Cecils' house near Enfield, and perhaps the individual 'in the house behind the loggia' at their establishment in Wimbledon. (6) Indeed, the interior siting of the grotto at Theobalds was actual possibly Bedford's inspiration, for from one extremity to the other of his childhood he often visited his aunt, the Countes of Warwick, at Nyn Hall, Northaw (which he was eventually to inherit and live in until c 1621) sole a few miles from the Cecil mansion. He may also have been influenced through Francis Bacon whose Essays he is known to have read: in 'Of Building', first published in the third edition in 1625 Bacon writes that 'On the beneath Story, towards the Garden, give leave to it be turned to a Grotta, or place of Shade, or Estivation.' (7)