 Right. Well, hello everybody. This is fantastic. We've got a tremendous turnout today for today's research lunch. I'm watching the numbers go up. We've got just under 150 of you out there from anywhere from Malaysia to Peckham at Orpington. Very good. Excellent Orpington. Deep in suburbia. I know it well. And Cardiff. That's fantastic. And my name is Martin Poswell. I'm the Deputy Director for Grants and Publications at the Paul Mellon Center. It's my great pleasure to introduce today's research lunch, which is, I'll say a word about Rebecca in a moment or two. You all know the subject. It's on the screen. So I'm going to let Rebecca talk about that. Before we go ahead, there's one or two housekeeping things I have to mention. I won't read them off the screen, but you just take a second to read them yourself. Okay. Rebecca's going to talk for about 40 minutes. Raise the button. The hand raised button. If you've got a question, you can either write a question. If you don't particularly feel like talking, you can just write your question in the box and I'll pick it up. Or if you'd like to talk, then we can pick that up too and we'll talk to you directly. We'll record it. So we are recording, but please don't take photographs or screenshots. And as we always say, any offensive behavior will not be tolerated and attendees can be removed by the webinar. I'm sure that that won't happen, but I do have to mention that. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce Rebecca. She is finishing her PhD in history of art at St. John's College at the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Frank Sam and I don't know if you're out there Frank, but hello, if you are. Rebecca competed and fill in the history of art and architecture at Cambridge 2015, investigating recurring spatial arrangements and patterns of movement in the country houses. Before coming to the UK, she did her bachelor's degree at Columbia University of New York. She majored in the history and theory of architecture and today she's going to be talking about Nash, but also she's going to be talking about Wyatt and so on. So I'm going to meet myself now, turn off my video and hand over to Rebecca. So thank you very much. Hello, everyone. It's so great to see so many, so many people here today. As some of you may be aware, I was originally supposed to give a version of this talk as a Paul Mellon Center in March 2020. But of course, COVID had other ideas. So this is not how I imagined I would be giving this talk. I'm extremely grateful to the Paul Mellon Center to Martin to Ella to Danny, everyone arranging this. And I'm also so thankful that so many of you are here today. And as Martin mentioned, this talk is based on my PhD dissertation, which I submitted for examination at the end of December. I'm continuing to work through these ideas and this material for ultimate publication. So I do welcome your questions and feedback at the end. The picture ask a term which appears prominently in the title of my dissertation is one which I jokingly tried to avoid for much of the early part of my PhD. The picture ask has been studied and at times reviled by scholars and practitioners across a range of disparate fields, including architecture, art and architectural history, English literature, geography history landscape studies sociology and urban studies. Indeed the term picturesque persists widely to this day, batted about in casual conversations, hashtag in social media posts, and often seen punctuating real estate listings. The various scholarly approaches to the picture ask have their place. And I think it especially important to note how recent scholarship has probed some of the darker, more problematic realities that underlay the superficially innocent veneer of late 18th century society, including the repercussions of enclosure at home and issues of colonialism and empire abroad. The focus of my dissertation falls almost exclusively within the realm of architectural history. The analysis relies primarily on detailed examination of thousands of surviving architectural drawings, along with related archival materials, and a number of drawings themselves and here I'm just showing you a sampling of the kind of material that I look at from account books to plans and elevations sections presentation drawings, etc, just to give you an impression and I think you'll notice through this talk that I'm giving various impressions of the different issues that I deal with the fundamental principles and aims of the picture ask in the final decades of the 18th century resulted in country houses, which were designed to be grounded within a visually curated context, conjuring images of carefully framed two dimensional views. In general these houses displayed abroad eclecticism of style and embracing of asymmetry and arrangement of parts and placement of apertures that emphasized the framing of views, and an experience that was predicated on a moving spectator. While much attention has been directed to these aesthetic and experiential objectives, their realization in three dimensions presented a number of architectural challenges and choices that have hitherto not been investigated in any methodical detail. My dissertation therefore departs from previous scholarly approaches by analyzing the physical repercussions of the picture ask on the creation of three dimensional lived in spaces through which such visually manifested scenes might be achieved. The real world architectural responses and solutions that mediated the relationship boundaries transitions and interactions between house and garden, and how those solutions contributed to addressing architects concerns with issues such as grounding viewpoints framing access and movement. Mostly at the work of three leading architects of the period, James Wyatt john Nash, and john later sir john so I examine how each harness to the specific qualities and challenges of the building site in light of these concurrent theoretical and aesthetic concerns. These issues are most closely related to the challenges and possibilities that arose when the principal floor of the house was lowered from piano no belay to ground level. Mark Girward playfully noted in his iconic life in the English country house by the late 18th century nature had come to be considered refreshing rather than frightening. And as a consequence, quote, one can watch country houses gradually sinking into the ground and opening up to the surrounding landscape. Without his broad and relatively simplified overview, Girward understandably did not pursue the specific challenges presented by the lowering of the principal floor, nor examine how individual architects of the period chose to address them. In seeking to better understand how architects were tackling these issues. My analysis is divided into three main areas. One is the vertical interface represented by the presence of level changes or steps between the house and garden, and especially of stepped floors within the principal floor of the house. By this I mean the inclusion of a few steps up or down in entrance halls or between rooms as distinct from staircases between floors. There are possible reasons why this dimension has been neglected or overlooked, and the challenges involved in studying it. I examine the use, or in some cases, the deliberate avoidance of level changes in several of these architects designs. I consider various reasons for including them, and their effects upon the visual and kinetic experience of moving through the house. I consider issues such as the need to accommodate pre existing fabric or a raised basement, as well as the desire to create a scenographic experience and or to reinforce the choice of a particular architectural style. Second is the increasingly permeable boundary between interior and exterior, including the use of full length windows and French doors, as well as integrated glass conservatories. Closely related to the picturesque ideal, this increase in permeability is both visual and physical, what I refer to as passive versus active permeability. By passive permeability, I mean the increased use of windows for light and air and their deliberate orientation towards specific views. I use the term active permeability to refer to the effect of ground level placement coupled with full length windows and French doors and facilitating direct movement from the principal rooms of the house out into the garden. Given all these considerations, I probe the reasons why the architect and or patron would elect to use one type of window over another, namely sliding sash windows versus hinged casements. In addition, I address this trend toward increased permeability in the context of concurrent increases in taxes on both glass and windows. The latter aptly referred to as a tax on light and air, because of its disproportionately negative effects on the urban poor. Third is a more specific focus on the attached conservatory, its origins, popularity forms and roles as a social botanical space directly accessible from other polite rooms and central to the life of the household. This focus builds upon the preceding to that is to say the ideal of a house that is grounded in its landscape with a more open boundary between them to consider the incorporation into house designs of this period of one or more conservatories as well as other transitional spaces, such as in the garden and verandas. Prior to this point freestanding glaze structures were relatively common, both as part of the pleasure gardens and for the more utilitarian cultivation of food and flowers. Occasionally, a glass room might also be attached as an appendage to an existing house, or if part of a new construction designed as physically connected but relatively distant from the polite rooms of the house. However, it was only in the final decade of the 18th century that one finds a proliferation of conservatories fully incorporated into the initial construction of the house, adjacent to and directly accessible from its main rooms and central to the cotidian life of the household, a transition in the placement use and significance of the glass house, which is hitherto received relatively little attention. After analyzing a few buildings by Wyatt, Nash, and Sohn with these three areas in mind, it would seem important to step back and briefly establish why the period from 1793 to 1815 is of particular relevance. For this purpose, it is worth noting that when the first professional Association of Architects in Britain, the Architects Club was formed in 1791. Britain could qualify for membership based on prior admission either to the highly selective Royal Academy in London, or to the academies of Rome, Florence, Parma, or Paris, underscoring the value that was placed on having spent time in France, and especially on the Italian peninsula. The French Revolution gave way to the terror, the rise of Napoleon, and a series of wars on the European continent, which effectively prevented such travel for budding architects and young aristocrats for most of the next 20 years. The disruption of architectural travel abroad and its redirection within Britain provided an important period of incubation and legitimation of attitudes and ideas that had been developing gradually over the preceding few decades. Central to these developments was debate and theorizing about the picturesque in relation to both the natural, or quote natural, and built environments. Thus, the beginning of 1794 brought Richard Paine Knight's The Landscape, a didactic poem, and about six months later, Yuvital Prices and Essay on the picturesque followed soon after in 1795 by Humphrey Recton's sketches and hints on landscape gardening. But a figure like John Nash, an architect who had not set foot outside of Britain, and whose first attempt at a London architecture practice had ended in failure, bankruptcy, and internal exile for more than a decade, could rise to prominence as one of the most successful and sought after architects of his day speaks to the shift and ideas that occurred during this period of relative isolation. Within this broader historical context, the years 1793 to 1815 also serve as a logical frame in which to discuss the country houses of Wyatt, Nash, and so on, more specifically, as representing three approaches to design during a period when all three were acknowledged as leading figures. John Nash, having failed in an attempt to establish himself as an independent architect and builder in London, following his training under Sir Robert Taylor, had exiled himself through the end of the 1780s in Wales, where he succeeded in building up a successful country house practice. In the early 1790s, he returned to England as a much sought after architect of small country villas, and later of larger so-called castles. Because only a very small number of drawings survived from Nash's office, a mere handful, if any, for most projects or very rarely, a few dozen, my analysis has included a greater number of his houses than for Wyatt or stone, but the level of deep tail obtainable for any one example has been understandably less than for the other two architects. Thus, I examine about a dozen of Nash's houses, a few of which are shown here, and I've tried to show kind of a range of the styles that he built in. Additionally, although there is very little written in Nash's hand, the red books and publications of his sometime partner Humphrey Repton contribute further insight into Nash's design concerns. John Stone, although a successful architect beginning earlier in the 1780s, gained financial security in 1790 thanks to an inheritance, and in 1792 was thus able to purchase 12 Lincoln's infields, which he would design, add to and alter throughout the course of his life, incorporating numbers 13 and 14 Lincoln's infields from 1807 and 1823 respectively. It would serve as a family home, space for his collections, office and advertisement for his practice, and would ultimately become Sir John Stone's museum. The late 1780s and early 1790s also brought stone important official posts, beginning in 1788 with the position of architect to the Bank of England, which beyond being an important and extensive undertaking in its own right, enabled him to meet many of his future clients. Stone falls at the opposite extreme from Nash in terms of the number of surviving drawings from his office, with thousands stored and meticulously cataloged at the so museum. Unlike, unlike the other two so and also left a great deal of written material from which to glean information regarding his thoughts on and approach to architectural design, including his published books and Royal Academy lectures. Stone's own country house, Pitsanger Manor has served as my primary stone case study with additional discussion of a few other houses. Recently restored and open to the public in 2019. I highly recommend that anyone who is interested in stones work more broadly, or who has simply been enchanted by a visit to the stone museum in London, head to Ealing to see Pitsanger once it reopens again and it really is just a short trip from London on the tube. James Wyatt, although older than the other two and well into his career, displayed a shift in his work in the 1790s what John Martin Robinson has called the second phase of Wyatt's career. Not only did he emerge as a serious player in the Gothic revival, but this was also the period in which he began including conservatories in his house plans, pointing to a changing approach to the relation between the house and landscape. In the midst these changes 1796 also brought Wyatt the post of surveyor general, following the death of Sir William chambers. The number of surviving drawings for Wyatt's office lies somewhere between that of Nash and so on. Despite Wyatt's large practice, his archive was dispersed following his death, and substantial collections of his working drawings survived solely for Doddington Park, Gloucestershire, and Asheridge House Hartfordshire, with a lesser number for castle cool in Ireland. His analysis predominantly focuses on Doddington and Asheridge. Wyatt died suddenly in a carriage accident in September 1813. Because of his mismanagement, the Board of Works was reorganized and by 1815 his position came to be held by a triumvirate of architects, Nash and so on, along with Sir Robert Smirk. Following that year and their new positions, Nash and Sohn's practices shifted away from country houses toward London and more public architecture. The year 1815 was especially significant for Sohn as his wife died that November, and he took on almost no new work the following year, representing another break or shift in his career. The year 1815 also represents a significant turning point in the history of conservatories. On the 1st of August 1815, Sir George McKenzie delivered a paper to the London Horticultural Society on the form which the glass of a forcing house ought to have in order to receive the greatest possible quantity of rays from the sun. His ideas on the use of curvilinear glass surface adopted most notably by John Claudius Loudon ushered in a dramatic shift in glasshouse design and ultimately made possible the widely recognized apex of glasshouse design in the middle of the 19th century, including the great conservatory at Chatsworth of 1836, the Palm House at Kew Gardens 1844 to 48, and the Crystal Palace erected for the great exhibition of 1851. And just to clarify, prior to 1815, the glass panes of conservatories were set in flat planes so they were either vertical or horizontal on the roof or they might be at a slant. For the remainder of this talk, I will focus on one building by each of these architects to provide a brief glimpse of the differences in their approaches to design when it came to embracing picturesque ideas, specifically in relation to level changes, issues of permeability and the inclusion of attached conservatories. The three houses are Nash's Lescom Castle, Sohn's Pitsanger Manor, and Wyatt's Ashridge House. Unlike Sohn's Pitsanger and Wyatt's Ashridge, both of which incorporated level changes within the principal floor, neither Lescom nor any of the other Nash houses I've investigated includes any interior steps within that floor. That in itself is interesting given that Nash is the architect best known for designing picturesque compositions that took full advantage of their site. The Nash house might have one or a few shallow steps up to a portico or within a portco chair. Once one entered the front door, the rest of that main floor would be uninterrupted by steps. One possible explanation might be that Nash often designed smaller villas which could therefore more readily be positioned on a footprint of flat land. However, a number of much larger country houses throw this logic into question. Other houses such as Lescom might have a footprint of under 4,000 square feet, but the footprints of his larger castles could range anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 square feet, indicating the vast areas of land with which Nash would have needed to contend. And although Nash often built for new-moneyed clients on virgin sites so that there would be no need to accommodate any preexisting fabric on the site, that too was not always the case. Another explanation might instead be that perhaps as a consequence of his partnership with the landscape architect Humphrey Repton, which lasted from about 1796 to 1800. Nash was not afraid when the circumstances seemed to warrant to actively manipulate a site for his building, as illustrated in this plate from Repton's sketches and hints on landscape gardening of 1795. Altering the landscape was certainly not new to the period, especially when it came to garden design, but there is evidence that Nash at least occasionally made drastic changes to building sites in order to accommodate his houses as he saw fit. This enabled him to set the principal floor firmly at ground level, with no interior level changes, whether or not there was preexisting fabric on the site. Two examples of sites which Nash drastically manipulated are La Coutre Castle and Cara Hayes Castle. In the case of La Coutre Castle, Nash blasted out solid rock from the virgin site, and then filled the area with huge amounts of soil brought from elsewhere, such that one could walk directly out from the house, onto the artificial terrace on which it was built, and be immediately surrounded, sorry, by greenery. At Cara Hayes, it was less a matter of removing material from the site than of building it up considerably. The house was likewise constructed on an artificial terrace facing a lake, but in contrast to the virgin site at La Coutre, at Cara Hayes Castle, Nash removed some of the old house which remained on the site and then built his new house on top of its ground floor. His solution here was to raise the level of the earth around the preexisting structure, thereby converting the original ground floor into the cellars of the new house, a technique for which Repton had specifically advocated. In contrast to Nash's deliberate negation of level changes, both wide and stone were more open to the inclusion of stepped floors in their houses. Sohn's own country house, Pitzanger Manor, is particularly interesting, though somewhat complicated. Having first purchased a plot of land in Acton, on which to build a country house, Sohn shortly thereafter learned that the nearby Pitzanger Manor was for sale, and he ultimately decided to purchase the more costly Pitzanger estate and sell the previously purchased Acton land. As it happened, Pitzanger had been the first project on which Sohn had worked while in the office of George Dance the Younger, and Sohn evidently felt a nostalgic connection to the estate. Dance had expanded the existing house on the site, adding a wing to the south, which you can see here in the dark red brick on the left of the top image. Retaining Dance's wing, which lacked a basement, Sohn then rebuilt the central portion of the house, electing to distribute the floors differently than before. In case of the ground floors being in alignment between the main house and the dance wing, Sohn chose to include a raised basement in the new central portion of the house, and to align the first or chamber floors of the two parts instead. Although Sohn thus needed steps to reconcile access between the two parts of the building, the area I would like to focus on today is his use of steps at the main entrance of the house. Sohn finds a few steps leading up to the front door, followed after crossing the threshold by an additional few steps before arriving at the principal floor and gaining access to its rooms. An actual progression into the house is thus confined and controlled by means of this funneling from exterior to interior steps. Sohn made similar proposals at a number of other houses, some of which were built and others unexecuted. Sohn, for example, had been designed with a very similar arrangement of exterior to interior steps, albeit on a much grander scale than Pittsburgh. In general, unlike the other two architects, Sohn resisted the idea of full ground floor placement, preferring to retain a raised basement, while nonetheless giving the impression of a house not too divorced from its landscape setting. Sohn later spoke in more detail about the challenges and alternatives to external staircases in Lecture 9 of his Royal Academy Lectures, first given in 1815, laying out the merits and shortcomings of various possible solutions, as illustrated in built examples by other architects. Sohn's design of exterior steps by interior steps, exterior steps followed by interior steps, provide a focused entrance without the house itself appearing too detached from its surroundings. But by placing some of the steps within the hall, he also saved the inconvenience and inclement weather of having to trudge up a long flight of exterior steps, and he actually specifically talks about that issue in his Royal Academy Lectures. In contrast, Wyatt's use of stepped floors at Ashridge, as well as at Doddington reflects a quite different set of circumstances and motivations. Rather than clustering steps at the entrance, Wyatt placed his most significant level change at Ashridge between the entrance hall and staircase hall. And the plan that I'm showing here is the one that is most often reproduced in scholarship on Ashridge. It's undated, but datable to 1807, probably the second half of 1807. And it's very similar or very close to what was built by the time Wyatt died in 1813, except there are a few differences in terms of level changes that I realized when analyzing it. So just to situate you, the black portion on the left is the main block of polite rooms where you can see the staircase hall in the entrance hall, and I'll be focusing on that space between those two pink areas. And then to the right of that main block, which may be my cursor, yes, you can see here that's the conservatory which connects to the chapel and then the rest of this area is all service area, just to orient you. From the entrance hall, two steps lead up to a three-bade arcade supporting a gallery above. After a brief pause, another two steps then lead out into the staircase hall. These steps, as ultimately designed, make a dramatic contribution to the scenographic experience, emphasizing the central axis of the building and physically directing one's body and eyes upward toward the staircase and the dizzying fan bolted tower above. The origin of these dramatic steps, however, was not simply some a priori desire to increase the rise and fall, the advance and recess with other diversity of form in the different parts of the building to quote the Adam Brothers ideas on picturesque movement, even if that turned out to be the ultimate effect. Instead, they came about originally as a way of accommodating preexisting fabric at the site. Early design drawings indicate that the house was initially intended to be located further north, and no interior steps are shown. However, architect and patron ultimately decided to situate the house further south, so as to physically and metaphorically incorporate the sellers or ancient crypt of the medieval college of Bonhomme, a monastery founded on the site by Edmund Cornwall, nephew of Henry III. This decision meant that the house, or at least part of it needed to be set at a certain height to accommodate the vaults, rather than raise the entire ground floor wide instead opted to include those clusters of steps under the arcade. As a result, the entrance hall is two steps below the other rooms on the entrance front of the house, and four steps below the polite rooms on the east and south sides of the main block. Because a doorway was ultimately included in the wall between the library and corridor. So you can see this right here. Two steps were therefore also necessary in that opening. And that is one of the things that is not shown on the previous plan I showed you within the plate block of the house. Therefore, step floors occurred between the entrance hall and staircase hall. As I mentioned right here, between the library and the corridor running along its north wall here between the library and cloister to the east. And the dining room and the conservatory to the west. Though not highlighted on this plan additional level changes occurred at the periphery to between the cloister and the terrace to the east, and between the dining room and drawing rooms and the terrace to the south. And actually this plan, this is the plate block of the of the house. And as part of a larger plan that was published in the Reverend Todd's book on the history of the College of Bonhomme from 1823. And I haven't included more of it partly because I want to focus on this but also because it includes the changes that were made after Wyatt died to the design of the house by his nephew Sir Jeffrey Wyattville who took over the construction of the house. Whereas someone was happy to repeat his use of exterior to interior steps at the entrance to a number of his houses. The use of interior steps was not common in why it's designs. They did play an important role at both ashridge and dottington in both cases originating as adaptations to preexisting fabric but then becoming dramatic design features in their own right. Thus when faced with a specific challenge rather than leveling the site as Nash would do, why it instead took advantage of the circumstances to further the experience of his houses. In the case of ashridge Wyatt placed the steps in such a way as to enhance the gothic character of the building utilizing the three arches supporting a gallery above with steps leading up to and then out from under this arched arcade to create the suggestion of a medieval medieval rude screen dividing nave from chancel. In emphasizing a central axis as sewn and Wyatt often did. Nash instead generally designed his houses around a central core, drawing visitors first into an inner hall or gallery and then outward toward the principal rooms through the use of light and carefully framed views. I'm not able to convey his technique through photographs but I've highlighted on this modern floor plan of the house, the central core at Luscombe, a small circular inner hall with no natural lighting of its own, showing how one walks into that space from the Port Co chair, before being drawn outward by the light emanating from the windows of the surrounding rooms, the original eating room to the east or right on on this plan, the drawing room straight ahead to the south, and the staircase with large windows to the west or left on this plan. Many windows and Nash's ground floors were full length such as those leading from the drawing room to the conservatory at Luscombe, providing direct access to the outdoors. Notably surviving drawings of Luscombe indicate that although earlier designs had called for casement windows to be used throughout the house. The later designs replaced all of those casements with sliding sash windows, specifically designed to slide up high enough that a grown man could look or walk out without obstruction, and it specifically says that on the plans. Although both Nash and Wyatt included numerous full length windows for natural light of the three architects so as undoubtedly the one most associated with the purposeful and dramatic use of light in his interiors, notably through his creation of Lumière mystérieuse, which he described in his eighth Royal Academy lecture. Other architects of the period often included stained glass in their neogothic houses, but often only in the upper lights of windows so as to view the room with a sense of gloom, but still allow for light and views as is visible in the original eating room at Luscombe. And Wyatt also, just as one example also used colored glass in the upper lights or panes of windows, and then clear plate glass, generally plate glass for these very expensive houses in the lower windows, including at his famous or infamous fontil abbey. One pushed the use of colored glass a step further in his designs at pit Sanger, he used colored light in two ways. First, he eliminated the entry space with a fiery golden light which pours down on visitors as they ascend the stairs emanating from the colored glass in the tribune ahead. And I've tried to capture that here but again, you really must go to pit Sanger when it reopens. Second, he designed windows with strips of colored glass that, while not changing the color of the space itself would be reflected on the floors or walls of the room. Moving is the sun moved across the sky, such as the case for example in the panes of glass between the full length windows of the conservatory and in the claristory windows of the addicts. One used these techniques, colored glass to change the lighting of an interior and strips or small panes of colored glass at a number of other commissions, whereas Nash and Wyatt often included full length windows that allowed one to walk directly out into the gardens. So generally did not allow such direct engagement, maintaining an elevated principal floor and utilizing light as a means of enhancing the picturesque sensibilities within the building itself, rather than as a means of blurring the boundaries between the two realms. And considering the question of permeability at Wyatt's ashridge, one is immediately struck by the number and size of windows on the south and east sides of the house, even though the glazing one sees today is much reduced from what was originally built. Of particular interest here is Wyatt's decision to use French windows in some polite rooms and sliding sashes in others. It should be noted that most of the full length ground floor windows do not survive today in the form in which Wyatt originally designed and built them. The windows in the original dining room and drawing room were changed in the late 19th century, and the conservatory was converted into a dining room in the 1920s, and its windows largely closed up. So here, the lower level was the conservatory and now it also has a floor of bedrooms above it. What struck me in analyzing Ashridge's original form is that the windows of the conservatory and library were originally French windows, whereas the windows of the dining room, anti room and drawing room were full length sliding sash windows. There are various reasons why one might choose to use sash as opposed to casement windows, and these must be acknowledged if one wants to fully understand how these spaces were conceived and used. While I don't have time to go into detail here, just bear in mind that while French windows allow for greater ease of access between house and garden, as well as increased airflow, sash windows, especially those that are double hung so where the bottom can go up and the top can go down, allow for variable amounts of ventilation. It's especially useful in damp climates where you can simply lower a top sash to bring fresh air into the room without having to suffer a direct blast of cold air as one would through an open casement or French window. And additionally, besides differences in ventilation, sash windows also allow for less obstructed views because there isn't a central mullion dividing your view. Additionally, I'd like to briefly touch on the issue of attached conservatories. All three of these houses have or had a conservatory, which was directly attached to the other polite rooms of the house. Of the three architects, Nash was the most prolific when it came to including attached conservatories, excluding examples of freestanding glaze structures. I found about a dozen country houses that included at least one attached conservatory with some including to Nash also included or proposed conservatories for London townhouses and Royal provinces. In the case of last come the conservatory, which was directly accessed from the drawing room was seasonal as glass windows would be hung on hinges in this so called veranda during the colder months and then removed during the warmer months. It was only permanently glazed later in the 19th century. Nash is the only one of the three architects to have designed such seasonally flexible spaces. The most extreme from the modest to be conservatory at Luscombe was Nash's own East cows castle, onto which he first built a conservatory of seven bays visible on the left, and later added another of 19 as described by john Somersen who visited the house in 1933, the garden front quote seemed at first sight to consist of nothing but glass filled arcades. It was initially demolished in the late 1950s. Hence why I've shown these photos from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Asher just conservatory was accessible from the original dining room and served both as a polite space in itself, and as a passage to the chapel, a similar arrangement to what Wyatt had previously done at Doddington Park. In its origin it's uneven topography why it placed the conservatory two steps below the adjacent dining room as I mentioned earlier, which not only would have prevented any water on the floor of the conservatory from seeping into the polite rooms, but also symbolically indicated that one was entering a space that was not entirely of the house, nor entirely of the garden. Sohn's use of attached conservatories diverged significantly from Nash's and Wyatt's in line with his general approach to glazing, rather than utilize the conservatory as a means of blurring the boundaries between house and garden, he maintained a separation between the two. Sohn's fingers conservatory has full length windows, but it is elevated off the ground, precluding any direct access to the lawns below. It also does not appear in early designs for the house. Initially Sohn simply included a long balcony along the garden front. Ultimately French doors led from both the library and red drawing room to the elevated conservatory, which so notably called a gallery, which was enclosed large sash windows divided from one another by the attenuated strips of colored glass. Sohn designed a similar arrangement of an elevated conservatory with strips of colored glass at Coombe house, although that example does not survive. In contrast to these elevated examples at Everton house Sohn included an attached conservatory at ground level, allowing in principle for direct access to the gardens. Ironically, however, despite this placement being more similar to that of a Wyatt or Nash conservatory, the windows of Everton's conservatory were not full length, with only a single set of French doors providing access between interior and exterior. In conclusion, I have tried here to summarize very briefly some of the challenges involved in designing under the influence of late 18th century picturesque ideas. The all important interface between the country house and its landscape setting, along with some of the solutions proposed and implemented by three leading architects of the day. I hope that despite being a somewhat whirlwind tour, I've succeeded in conveying the value of analyzing country houses in this manner, and provided a slightly more nuanced look at a few designs of this period. And with that, I look forward to hearing your thoughts and questions. Well, thank you very much indeed. Wow, you covered a lot of territory there, Rebecca. That was fantastic. Thank you so much. Great talk, great visuals as well. We've got some time for questions. Can I, I'm going to kick off if I may because I use my prerogative perhaps. I just wanted to ask something you talked a lot about the form of the buildings and the racial landscape. I did have a question which interests me about these houses and that's to do with patronage. Obviously Bridgewater was an aristocrat and he had lots and lots and lots of money. And that's that's partly why he could indulge every single fantasy that that he wanted to as a patron. But generally when we look at these houses and across the buildings produced by these architects. How could we typify the type of patrons because obviously many people who had aristocrats already had houses, you know, and had them for generations. To what extent was this new money, to what extent will we seeing people who, you know, I'm thinking about Nabob's business people, people who are starting from scratch in a way and wanted something new and something different. Is there an aspect of these houses that we can have patronage that is significant. So of the houses in my dissertation. I'm thinking, so Doddington is their money for that construction is coming from sugar plantations. They're the, you know, Luscombe is a banking family. There is a range but yes I mean that these houses are definitely the wealthiest of the wealthy are building these houses this hasn't trickled down in any way to, to anyone else yet. So it is a lot of very old families, but then there are some newer banking families and trying to think. Yeah, I didn't so I didn't deal too much with patronage. There is a lot that could be said though about it. I think about houses like says and quote, you know, yeah, and Daleford, you know which which adopt these models and also if I may very quickly, the influences on these obviously gothic is very important. And the traditions the classical but but non European as well, beyond that tradition I'm assuming that that's also rather significant. Yes. So, yeah, I didn't deal with says and quote in my dissertation although I have worked on it a little bit separately, but in in terms of these buildings they are classical gothic. There isn't too much non Western coming in in, well in in these by Nash, so and why it, although of course you know Nash goes on to do Royal Pavilion at Brighton and things like that but within these houses they're sticking within either the classical, or different versions of native, native, native gothic and things like that in these. I've got some questions here that have been in the Q&A, so I'm going to start off in the order that I received them. The first ones from Rosemary Hill. Hi Rosemary. Rosemary asks how aware if at all with these three architects of this aspect of each other's work. Nash was clearly learning from Repton, but are there any other cross currents of influence between these three architects. I mean, I think you couldn't, you couldn't really avoid knowing what other architects were doing since they were all exhibiting at the Royal Academy. If you go through the catalogs which I know there's the wonderful online. All the exhibitions were put together and all of all the exhibitions I'm trying to think if I've traced anything where I could do a direct connection between them. I mean interestingly Repton worked with all three of these architects or worked at the same sites as all three of these architects so although I've just said that Repton was influencing Nash. I have also wondered whether he could be carrying ideas from one place to another, because he was the one who worked with all three of these architects, or at the same sites at the same times. I haven't actually looked in terms of anything that I could say oh they must have taken that from that person, but these ideas are circulating and the increased use of glass I mean definitely someone like Wyatt his work does shift to start including conservatories and that isn't coming out of nowhere. And that's that's either you know that's the general feeling spirit of the age let's say or it might be seeing what other architects are doing. Thanks and thanks very much Rosemary connecting to that Dan Hayton has a question. Hi, you said could Rebecca say something about the construction materials supporting the glass because there is a you know this is technically innovative houses so could you could you tell you what about that. Interestingly, I'm part of the reason I think conservatories of the period that I look at have not really been looked at or have not been looked at as something significant. It's partly because construction wise I think they're very similar to what had already been happening happening in the preceding few decades. So the use of iron. Wood stone, I mean depending on how much glass you're using or if it's closer to an older kind of orangery. And so this construction itself hasn't changed much from what a freestanding conservatory would be. It's just its placement that has changed. And so then that's why it's so significant that in 1815. They start talking about, you know, how can we make conservatories better for plants because they've really become a place for people they're not ideal for plants and how loud and starts experimenting with those a few years later with curbed sash bars and and things like that. So it is very similar things haven't changed too much across the 18th century in terms of the construction techniques of these spaces. Thanks. I'm going to move on to a question from Sydney airs. Hi Sydney, and Sydney asks what was the reaction to these houses or the work of Wyatt National so more broadly in their time. How are these pictures designs viewed by their contemporaries by critics and audiences. So kind of critical reaction. Yeah. I think the fact that, well, you know, these, these were not houses that were necessarily open to the public. Not all of these houses were part of the tour, you know, they didn't necessarily have guides to them, the way that we think of a lot of country houses were already open to the public to a certain extent or the public but when we say the public we don't necessarily mean everyone at this point. So I think this was much more based on who had seen what directly. So for example, some scholars have said that they think dottington's conservatory may have been a model for says and quotes conservatory and I have my reservations about that but they are both within Gloucestershire and and whether there could have been some influence there. So it's a bit, it's a bit challenging because, yes, there's a love of glass and I think that is something that everyone was appreciating and Powis in her diaries gives us a very good window into taste of the time and she talks about how she visits a house and it doesn't have full length windows and how on earth, you know why in an age when everyone builds full length windows would you not do that and she talks about how in order to see out the window they've built this special platform, so that a set he can sit on this platform so you can see out. And she also talks about the frustration of visiting a house where you have to ascend a huge flight of steps before you reach the main floor, and how she then visits another house, where she says it's so lovely you can walk straight up. So within this, these circles, there's definitely an appreciation for an increased amount of glass, which is interesting given that both the window and glass taxes peaked during these years and 1808 1812. And yet, at the same time, if we want to talk about the majority of the population. They were suffering terribly because the window taxes meant that tenement buildings in in London and other cities were being built with fewer windows because of it's a complicated tax system, but they were being built with fewer windows or windows are being closed up and so I the general population I'm sure love the idea of windows and you would see them in storefronts and that became a way that you would see a lot of. glass, but I think a lot of country house owners were emulating each other's work in the use of a lot of windows in the use of attached conservatories or freestanding conservatories. Thanks very much got a whole flurry of questions and observations and chat so if you haven't had a look at the chat. I think it's all got wow 160 plus people here do do look through the chat. I'm going to look at a question from Carmen, Carmen, Casa legia hope I've pronounced your name correctly. And I comment says that she's examining some literary representations of the country house in remainder styles novel Corinne of 1807 with a particular focus on country houses on the outskirts of Rome. I'm going to talk Rebecca you mentioned traveling to the Italian Italian peninsula as part of the grant your experience and she's wondering Carmen's wondering whether you could say a little bit more about Italian country houses and how similar and different they are from the examples that you've cited in the UK. I don't know very much about Italian country houses except that, and I'm going to defer to an article that Morgan Ang wrote a few years ago about northern European architecture in the 17th century as taking ideas from Italy, and the idea that in in a desire to bring those ideas from Italy over to the UK or to other parts of Europe, and have these wonderful what in an Italian villa might be a wonderful colonnade or open arches are being translated to colder or less ideal climates through the use of glass so my, although there are examples and I don't think I included it of, let's say Cronkill Nash's house, or one of one of Nash's houses, where you have, you know, open arches, and it's verandas, lojas, things like that. For the most part I think things are being translated in England through, if you have large openings they will be filled with glass. But I can't really say too much because I haven't looked too much at Italian or Roman country country houses. Thank you very much. I'm just got an observation here from Camilla I'm just working my way down through the q&a so you do have something to say pop it in the q&a because that's the best way to, to, we can talk about a Camilla Fitzgibbon Humphrey Repton was important to the development of these glass houses he adopted the adapted several to let in more light. So it'd be suitable for a wider range of plants than orange trees. Do you have anything you want to say about that about Repton and his role? Yeah, I can say a little bit about Repton. So, yeah, Repton did alter some older glass structures or andries and put glass roofs on them to actually make them better for plants. And there are various examples of that various people have written about it. As you'll, as one will see in his publications, he initially resisted the idea of having conservatories directly attached to the house. He said if you did attach it you should have a small lobby between the conservatory and the house to prevent the smell of earth in your house which having gotten a lot of house plants during lockdown I know that you do smell the earth. And then he became much more amenable to those ideas. But yes, I mean, Repton, as, as the Bicentenary in 2018 told, you know, showed us you know there are so many commissions so much influence across the country in ways that I think we're still, you know, learning about you know with something like 400 different sites that he worked at. And I'm not sure what else I should say in relation to this but yeah he worked with Nash they ended on very bad terms but one of his sons continue to work for Nash so there's still exchange that was going on even after that ended in 1800. Thanks. Thanks very much. Charlotte Grobler is a connector point actually on the emphasis given by all three architects on creating transitions from indoors through to inside spaces and she's just asking again this how architects work together with others I mean we mentioned Repton. And it is this fascinating the idea of the threshold between the sort of liminal space just between the inside and the outside, maybe think about practical things like you mentioned dirt. You're going to drag a lot more in when you're on a, you know, when you actually walk straight into the landscape, and then, and out of it. So, let me think about that person well Nash obviously worked with with Repton and they really planned those things together. I know that son had a person that he worked with on a lot of his sites but I don't know how much. It was the same kind of well because for Repton you know exactly what the relation was because he was doing these red books that are illustrating what what he was proposing to do with his lovely slides or flaps to show his proposals. And Repton again is someone who, you know, in kind of pushing back against, let's say Richard Payne night and you have a price is saying you know it needs to be practical, like we need these wonderful landscape so we can't have thistles or briars right up to the house and we need to have gravel so that it's not muddy and those those kind of things that actually make it a livable space or we need the carriage to pull up on this side because if they pull up in front of these full length windows you're going to see the animal droppings or the horses as they're waiting there so those kind of adjustments that are made so that you can go straight out into the landscape without having to have the horrible mud. But of course then you also had people that could clean up after it so it. Well it just had a backer question she says she's actually wondering about the relationship between Wyatt and Brian at Ashridge and it's kind of curious these days because the National Trust owns a landscape and a business college owns the house near the 21st century it seems to me, but do you want to say a word about Wyatt and Brian at Ashridge. Well, Wyatt and well, I mean, Repton also worked at Ashridge so the landscape was proposed there was a red book done by Repton in 1813, which was mostly implemented over the following few decades. And if you find a way to go there now. Was Brian at Ashridge? I think Brown earlier was in. But was there earlier but the landscape directly surrounding the house is very Repton now it is. You can if you hold up the red book or and look at the landscape which actually the red book has been beautifully digitized by the Getty so you can look at it you can zoom in you can see all that it is very close to what is there now. If you can find a way to go there. I can see that the clock ticking so I'm trying to fit in a few more question Matthew Beckett. Matthew says thank you superb exploration with much to consider my questions as Matthews do you see the use of steps or changes in levels to echo Elizabethan Elizabethan use of height to emphasize hierarchy or might it be a rejection of this by making their use pragmatic or even egalitarian by eliminating them as I had not considered that but. I think it's pragmatic. I mean I loved the idea originally that these steps were being used in some you know, picturesque some some, you know really they were thinking theatrically and it's not that they aren't thinking theatrically. I find that, let's say for why it when steps are included it's because there was a reason for steps be included somewhere or that there was some reason yeah, why that had to be part of, of the design. For someone like so. He's, you know, the front of pit singer is a triumphal arch it is it is these steps leading you up there is something theatrical about it still, whether it's about Elizabethan hierarchy I haven't, I'd have to think more about that but I don't, I would say no. Yeah, it's interesting I mean, I just, I guess it was on the what what do you do with the service what do you do with the services and it's all, you know you don't know where you put them. Ashrich does have a full basement under it and from the front of the house there's actually a essentially a dry moat to let light in at Doddington. There is also a basement but so that it could be at ground level or essentially at ground level, why it puts metal grates in place. So that you could still walk straight out but there would be light coming into the service areas so they're not in total darkness, but they, but as you can see there's huge service areas off to one side. Because of course with the picturesque you could have you wanted these asymmetrical compositions and so your service areas could be part of that overall composition. Thanks. I don't think we can accommodate all these but I'll carry on. Simon Moorcroft, are there examples where these architects undertook smaller commissions to simply redesign and improve windows and light sources in existing houses and rooms, as opposed to designing brand new houses. For my dissertation I only I really looked at new houses I didn't look at alterations but they both. So I think Nash to a lesser extent was was altering existing houses. So I think Sohn altered a lot of existing houses. Same with Wyatt. In terms of the kind of light they're bringing in well at. Sohn's house, let's say Port Elliott, Sohn's house, Port Elliott, he wanted to create this incredible long on fill out through the house. And also he proposed having level changes or the same kind of progression of exterior to interior steps at the entrance. And at the end of this long on fill out which did not happen exactly as he wanted but there is partly an on fill out. And he, he made little conservatory at the end of that or glassed in what veranda or colony that had already existed there so there are alterations but that is a large house. In terms of smaller houses, I mean, I realized when I was saying it that Lascombe as a smaller house still has a footprint not even square footage but a footprint of 4,000 square feet which is, you know, more than double the size of the houses we have now. So I think at this point to use this much glass especially if they were using plate glass which was the most expensive glass of the time. Extremely expensive. My estimates for one of the houses was that it was anywhere. The cost of windows which is, it's hard to calculate because of a lot of factors involved was anywhere between something like three and 10% of the overall cost of the house so glass itself windows were very expensive so I guess the wealthy people to larger houses who could do these things. Okay, thanks. Well we've come to one o'clock so I think I guess unfortunately we're going to have to kind of wind things up now. There's more that we could say but we've kind of reached the witching hour. Apologies to those who's his questions we couldn't address. Again, I'd just like to thank Rebecca once more for wonderful. It was a great hour. That was a tremendous hour and thank you all so much for tuning in. That was a great attendance. So I just want to, before I wrap up say it and many of you know these are regular events do if you haven't I'm sure most of you do look regularly at our event schedule even though we're pretty virtual right now entirely virtual. There's lots going on in the Mellon Center and our next related event is on the fifth Friday the fifth and that's something completely now for something completely different. Bankside Britain, which is about the turbine hall, and that's Grace Thompson and she'll be with us on the fifth of February at midday so I think thanks. Thanks for everybody attending thanks to Rebecca and we look forward to seeing you in future so goodbye from me goodbye from Rebecca goodbye from Ella and goodbye from Danny. Thank you.