 Welcom, everybody. My talk this evening is to concentrate on the recent conservation of both painting and framing of this portrait gifted to the society in 2017. In October 2018 I gave a long 50 minute lecture, a lunchtime lecture here on the portrait, such as we knew about it at that point. ac mae'r ddau'r cyfnodd yn y website. If you want more information about the iconography, the historical detail, history of costume and issues about this picture, but I will resume in the first five to ten minutes some of the major things that I raised at that time. Here's the painting in a way before and after conservation and I'm showing you on the right there, I will be showing you tonight my fairest pictures of it. This is not, as it happens, the best time of day to see the picture on the stairs in this dark and artificial light. Do come during the day when the daylight comes through that toppling though and it will really seem to you much more emphatically, but you can immediately see here one aspect of restoration that had to be attended to, this tear up here, which is now being repaired. This is the first old master picture to enter the society's collection for more than a quarter of a century since Martin focus here just to the right of the screen. And therefore it's a moment of some significance for our collecting history. Charles Marsh was born in 1735, he was the son of a London bookseller, he went to Westminster School and became clerk in the War Office after graduating from Trinity Cambridge. He retired on a pension of £1,000 a year, large sum of the time he gave up his job, but somehow he had a huge fortune and was not absolutely clear where all this money came from. There's no will or inventory for him, there is a declaration signed by his sister after his death in the National Archives and there she attests to his estate worth £48,000, that excludes his properties. Marsh is buried in Westminster Abbey with his nephew, the Reverend Thomas Biles, a family name, a Biles family, which will recur in this talk when I come to consider the frame. We know from Thomas Biles's will that having provided for his wife, Louisa and his three young sons who were only to get £250 a year to see them through their education, he asked very specifically to be buried with his uncle in the Abbey's East Cloister. Also to do with this connection, attached to the stretcher at the bottom of the work, now detached in the conservation and part of the archive on this painting here at the Society, is an inscription testifying that this is Charles Marsh, that the painter is LF Abbott, and crucially at the end, an admirable likeness much prized by his nephew, the Reverend Thomas Biles. Charles Marsh bought the huge Radnor House at Twickenham in 1799, a house which survived into the 20th century but was gutted during the Second World War by bombing, but we do have some photographs from country life taken in the 1930s, which show its mid-18th century decoration, and those articles show that it seems very unlikely that Marsh at the end of the 18th century did substantial work in the house, but here he probably kept his collection, including probably the portrait, which now hangs on the staircase, and that his library, at his death, we do know, was valued at £2,500, and that documentary record from the declaration fills in the background to the local historians of the 19th century, historians of Richmond and Twickenham, who say all the time that he was a very bookish man and he had a great book collection. But also that Charles Marsh also lived in an apartment here on Piccadilly, so it seems extra special that in a way, and he may well have died somewhere along this street, we don't know, so it seems very special that he's in a sense coming home with the acquisition of this portrait, and both Westminster, both Piccadilly and his house at Radnor are cited as his residence in the 1812-13 declaration. If you go to Radnor House today, you'll find on site just to 18th century Gothic and Chinese summer houses. The house, as I said, was completely bombed and Twickenham Borough Council who owned it at that time just flattened what remained. And of course looking at this and looking back to that print of the house in the 18th century, its Gothic appearance inevitably raises the spectre of Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill because Strawberry Hill is just a few hundred yards away. Now, Marsh bought Radnor in 1799 after Walpole's death, and there's not a lot of evidence that they knew each other at all well. There's just one reference to Marsh and a rather disparaging one in Walpole's extensive correspondence like so many people disparaging references by the Great Man. But there is one connection in the bottom right there that's quite interesting, historically in the 1750s when the Swiss artist J. H. Mones was working for both Horace Walpole and John Shooter for the Vine in imagining their estates and buildings that could be put alongside them. He draws quite specifically the river frontage of Radnor House with those temples obviously attached in those days to other buildings shown in that image. Now, why is he here? Well, why Charles Marsh is here? Why is it so appropriate he should come here? He was made a fellow of the society in 1784 and he gave a paper to the society on the Barbarini Portman vahs now of course in the British Museum. Just a couple of months after it was shown to the society and very interestingly at the time that it was in transit between the William Hamilton and the Duchess of Portland. So at a very interesting moment and Charles Marsh published that piece in Latin but with a preface in English in Archeologia in 1787. In this he contests as he's shown in the portrait with the French writer Bernard Monfocoll in his Lartitite X Vique. That's an image taken from our copy of the book. Because he's leaning, as you can see down the book and I just turned it upside down to show it's this particular volume that he's contesting in terms of the iconography of the work. Interestingly of course the vahs is shown in the portrait in reverse. That's to say it follows the Prince tradition of showing this picture. It's showing us this work, the Portman vahs through things going back as far as Bartley's image originally published in 1697. We have here the 1704 edition in the library. But that reversal and it's very interesting that you must imagine a studio situation in the painter Elef Abbot studio. The artists or assistants used the print version when the owner had actually seen the real thing just recently. But of course in that transit time he was passing into the Dutch Portman's collection. If indeed the portrait was painted at that particular moment it may have been subsequently inaccessible. The painter Elef Abbot, famous as the Portman was the portraitist of the standard image of Nelson and other great navy figures. It may therefore be that Marcia's role in the War Office brings him into contact with this particular portrait painter. There's some tenor portraits by Abbot in the National Portrait Gallery collections including the portrait there on the right of the sculptor Joseph Nolkins. That has a particular association also with this portrait and this painter because the year after Abbot died in Farindon's diary he says that he goes to the workshop of Nolkins and that Abbot's son is working there as an apprentice in his teenage years. He said he's been rescued by the sculptor because the young Nolkins mother a very forthright and believing Roman Catholic wanted him to go to the priesthood and Farindon heads, but she is a bigot. Just reminding us that even in that run up to the anticipation of the 1820s things were very divided. Nolkins also has this connection with I love Abbot in terms of his son working in his studio. Now to turn in the second half of my time to the conservation of the painting. We were advised when the painting came into the collection in 2017 that it was at that point too fragile to hang. It had been hanging in houses mainly along the river at Twickenham. It did have a time when it was elsewhere but mainly in one family after the other along the river at Twickenham for many years. But that's in private houses. People take their own risks. We could not hang it here in the society without conservation of the frame. In particular it was too fragile and of course the surface of the picture was damaged. It was on its original pine strainer rather than a stretcher and when it was online the initials W on the bottom of that strainer may indicate to us the initials of the strainer maker. What's very interesting is that the picture itself was probably bought, the canvas on which it sits was probably bought ready made as many late 18th century artists would have done. It's painted on a very conventional 18th century white ground. It already had a patch that had been restored here which was very visible when it first came to us. Maybe because of that it was covered with a wax finish on the back and then of course we had the small very visible tear above that. The surface of the picture has a very granular surface. The conservator says it's quite... It happens quite a lot in the late 18th century pictures. It may have shown the residue of some soap in the ground of the picture but it has got a nice granular surface to it which I think gives the sense of the making of the picture. We're also advised that the picture may have been cleaned at some point in the 1950s and 60s of the time when the initial big tear was repaired. Anyway, now it's cleaned, repaired, it's on a new structure and it's lined and what's wonderful about this is that I've talked to various picture conservators that I know. One of the things that they will sometimes say is that when you clean a picture you somehow lose something of the surface appearance but I can assure you when you go up and say I'm putting my fairest and the longest images here up to show the details of the picture that nothing has been lost. It still looks a wonderful old picture. It's just now secure and well cared for. What is the date of this picture? When does he have his portrait painted? Of course, one wants to think, first of all, that surely it's the 1780s when he writes the article. As time has gone by, I rather wonder if we're not moving this portrait in our minds into the 1790s, the last decade of Elef Abbot's life. He dies in 1802 and that's because when I look at this alongside other abbots I've seen particularly images like this, the great portrait, the prime version of this portrait of Adon O Vaicant, in the Yellow Centre for British Art, the primary version because that's the kind of picture that collection has tended to buy. It does bear comparison and particularly when I show you those faces, this blondness, this fairness, the deed, of course, 18th-century men who had abandoned or were abandoned, the process of abandoning except for former occasions there, weeks by this time, so the natural appearance of the hair is very striking and vibrant in this work. That's why also, I wonder if it's not a picture from the 1790s. Just to say a little bit then about the history and treatment of the frame, when Servitor has advised there were three phases to the gilding of this frame and this is where the name of Viles comes back in as some of you may know, Viles' workshop was one of the most famous 18th-century frame makers. They worked for Reynolds, some of these pictures of the Royal Academy next door were made by that workshop but it's therefore tempting but at the time of the 1780s and 90s the whole workshop had been left to Sarah Viles, the niece of Thomas Viles, nephew of Charles Marsh and it's several times the thing that she led the campaign in the workshop to get her uncle's picture framed but it does seem, we are advised, that this isn't a frame that's been made very specifically for this picture. The picture really is elbowing out and always has elbowed out its frame. The frame has been modified in order to bring this picture into line. So an interesting family collection possibly but I would also argue for that in terms of the decoration of the frame it is quite close to some of those frames made for famous paintings by Reynolds that the first campaign was a mode-coloured bowl and traces of this did appear in the conservation and what you can see here is this very delicate colour with very, very fine gilding as time went by gilding got to use crudum or speedily done in restorative programmes so this very delicate gilding and we were talking just the other day about thinking of these pictures being seen in the late 18th century by candlelight, by the late 19th century when other forms of light and gas and later are coming in you want things to have more bling and more splendour so this very delicate candlelit effect on the original gilding and then overlaying this not very long after possibly within a generation or less in the early 19th century the paint there is an oil gilded scheme on a yellow base laid onto a gesso surface and you can see that in the background behind the ornament here and just some highlights of that scheme coming through the later final scheme and it was that final scheme the 19th century scheme probably sometime from the 1860s onwards that really was in very poor condition much fragmentation and cracking this is where water gilding was used on the top and back edge of the profile of an oil gilding elsewhere so the original delicacy of that first phase of gilding when the portrait of March was made is now long compromise we raised a large sum of money in order to have this work done it would have taken much much longer to try and get back to that original scheme so the compromise is that the 19th century scheme of gilding is now expertly with sword and will see this picture through for generations to come picture looking now at the state of the back from its original deteriorated condition where it's been lined placed on the stretcher and finally just to look again at the wonderful details of this picture I feel this picture is not only appropriate here because of the subject but it is a very fine late 18th century portrait in fact Lucy Pelt from the National Portrait Gallery when she first saw it said oh it's too good to be by her that habit but I think she was thinking of some of those in the portrait gallery and not some of his prime works on one at Yale I think we have a very very fine picture here and one which we have various avenues of research we can now pursue through the archaeology and the history of the port of Bath through the history of a man like March and his role in government in the late 18th century and also very much I think interesting for our times and I have a dime committed to a mental asylum and I think our current interest in that history of health and creativity in the arts for people who are battling serious mental and physical health issues means that we can explore too things about that artist's last decade and finally my thanks here listed down to the last one which I really must mention our donors who contributed to the project for conservation without whom we could never have accepted or hung this picture and finally to my friend Sheila Lockhart whom I persuaded to give this picture to the society because it was right and it's very much in memory of her late brother Simon Orford who would have been a fellow of this society and amongst us had he lived thank you very much a resident, fellows, guests and our staff of the society who are the unsung heroes of Burlington House the society has, since its early years taken a strong interest in the Palace of Westminster fellows were famously involved in the controversies over James Wyatt's remodelling of St Stephen's Chapel around 1800 and have subsequently often been the first to hear findings from the likes of Sidney Smirk, William Lathabee and so forth and recently the Antichrist Journal has carried reports on the Palace by Mark Collins and others and by Henry Schoenfeld so the discoveries reported to you today originated with the St Stephen's Chapel project at the University of York emerging directly from a study supported by York and the Houses of Parliament and generously part funded by the Leifahume Trust and this talk about them created especially for the festive season has elements of a detective story it features a light bulb a light bulb moment subversive Victorian graffiti and a lost head of Charles I it also represents much teamwork and I pay particular tribute to those mentioned here two of whom Mark Collins and Paul Hungieball are present this evening Dr John Crook is sadly not able to be here but his archaeological findings and his drawings and photos form a critical part of this tale so here's the location of the doorway and the passageway in question at the south east corner of Westminster Hall so that's the Palace of Westminster guidebook there and that's it on a drawing by John Crook so that's where you come in and that's the gift shop there and this is the south end so the former entrance which is the lost Tudor doorway in question it's marked in the hall by a bronze plaque of 1895 it's just there this informs posterity that an archway here served as the main entrance to the House of Commons from 1547 to 1680 and there's a view at the back view of this writing it does go on at length but it's actually largely unnoticed by the public and as far as I can tell academics and a few insiders have long been aware of the doorway and passageway through the wall of the hall that they believed that the space within the wall was wholly sealed up and inaccessible some have also questioned the precise dates given on the plaque as the passageway appears in 18th century plans it was clearly not locked off in 1680 similarly 1547 was thought to be a bit too early for its creation but the consensus was that a date of around 1600 seemed the most probable moment when it was cut through the wall and thus it features on an important academic reconstruction of the layout of this part of the old palace in about 1640 so the passageway joined Westminster Hall with west range of St Stephen's Tudor cloisters built circa 1515 to 27 and hugely admired by generations of antiquaries if not unfortunately by their actual occupants some of whom in the mid 20th century described them as the Gothic slum after several centuries of misuse these were restored by Charles Barrie after the 1834 fire and most recently they've been used as the MP's cloakroom from 1852 to 1967 whether they are set up as a cloakroom and then as offices from 1967 to 2017 they are currently empty and awaiting restoration and now the detective story begins because it was with great surprise and pleasure that on a research trip to the historic England archives in Swindon I discovered this photo of the ceiling of the interior of the passageway dated 13 June 1949 I wondered how we would ever be able to get into the space and I asked Dr Collins if I could take a pneumatic drill into the cloisters and I was not surprisingly turned down so also found in Swindon was a measured plan of the space so that's that top one made for Sir Charles Gilbert Scott it became clear that his workman had rediscovered the passageway when restoring the wall damaged cloisters the restoration was between 1948 and 1952 now the damage here had resulted from a high explosive bomb in 1940 which had sadly destroyed the eastern and southern ranges now the west cloister also suffered our passageway lies behind here that's the second bay along but like the rest of this range it remained intact it seems a very very bad condition as heavily restored after the war we know that Scott had walled the space up again by 1952 and we noticed in a TNA file that he considered leaving a small gap in the cloister side's wall which would be covered by a hinged panel giving access within his new cloakroom furniture was the panel there? yes it was, there it is in December 2018 a tiny and inconspicuous keyhole was found in Scott's cloakroom fittings in the correct bay the parliamentary locksmith opened it and pulled back the hinged access panel enabling Mark Collins to clamber in into the hidden passageway and here's some photos of the inside now two former parliamentary staff with very long experience and deep knowledge of the building knew nothing of the appearance of the space or of the access panel and we believe that we were the first people to go in there for several decades and quite possibly since about 1952 clearly all knowledge of the panel and passageway had been lost in the intervening years I think that the Labour MPs who'd had their desks just next door during the 1970s and 1980s had been extremely surprised had they known about it well what did we find in that? Well it has to be said that at first sight this is a rather unassuming spot but it is full of interest so some key features its complex masonry many exposed brickwork and plaster from several different eras these have been recorded and investigated by John Crook the doorway, the door case in Soffords of Great Doorway four pintors for the two doors one shown here on the floor are perfect flagstones which are worn at the centre which is rather thrilling there's also some graffiti by masons from the 19th and 20th centuries written in pencil on mid 19th century plaster so the one pictured here reads 1950, Alex Leaper, Mason, Stonehaven he was clearly one of Jarsgood Scots workers he is to be found in the electoral registers for 1950 in 1951 living at 33 Milbank his family came from Perth and Ken Ross that's obviously the same track and finally and very remarkably are still functioning all-stram light bulb of what I believe to be a 1950s early 1950s style with electrical wiring and a switch of the same period which immediately sprang into life although the light bulb has now sadly been retired for health and safety reasons but above were some wooden joists laid flat once covered in lathen plaster supporting the ceiling masonry then in October 2019 so this is not long ago in fact it was after I'd put forward this talk to the society the timbers of the joists were isotope dated by Dr Dan Miles of the Oxford Dendro Chronology Laboratory to spring 1659 now this was an immense surprise to us it caused us to question all our previous assumptions about the dating of the doorway and the passageway which has been based broadly around the dates on the plaque there are also major implications here for the layout of the area around St Stephen's Chapel in the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries so we revisited all relevant building plans, plans and drawings so a range of relevant evidence supports the proposition that right up to about 1660 the route from the hall to the south end of the palace and then to the House of Commons was not via our doorway instead it seems to have remained via the medieval door on south wall of Westminster Hall that's there I'm mentioned by John Stowe and recorded by Alan Cottingham and Robert and Sidney Smirk that door appears clearly on the left hand side of the drawing of the layout for Elizabeth I's Coronation in 1550 next to the days of the King's High Table a drawing of the law courts from about the 1620s here once attributed to Holler is consistent with this arrangement continuing during the first half of the 17th century and notable so that this important plan of the Cloisters from 1593 from the Cecil papers of Hatfield House shows no sign of the other side of the passageway which should have been there all this explains also why we were really struggling to find any mention of the creation of the doorway in the accounts room before 1660 although admittedly these are very patchy the works accounts actually show that the southern door and route were blocked off in 1660 to 61 when the days at the south end of the hall was remodelled and extended for Charles II's Coronation as written up by Dr Mark Collins and others in their report published in the Antiquaries Journal and the works accounts also demonstrate that our passageway was not through the wall of the hall in 1660 to 61 to replace it this is a transcript by Simon Neil for the St Stephen's Chapel project which is absolutely invaluable and very interesting now this is the absolute clincher because John Crook is confident that the dimensions given in the accounts match exactly those of our doorway and passageway also the stone they record for the sill Kentish Stepple rag looks right as shown in the photograph of the door sill on the hall side exposed during repairs in 2014 so the new doorway and passageway clearly marked a grand processional route for the King used the Coronations as shown in Francis Sandford's plan for his history of the Coronation of James II published in 1687 this was also the main way to the House of Commons and for a while to the south end of the palace as noticed in the accounts ahead of Charles I was above the doorway had first in a cartouche in 1704 it was replaced by a bust of the King as shown here the design of this was later attributed to Bernini but it was on a certain after Hubert of Sur this remained in situ until about 1790 it could perhaps be the bronze version now in the Royal Collection it would be nice to think so but perhaps someone here will know something about lost heads of Charles I I would very much like some information now here is a real triumph this is actually the only picture we found of the doorway in a print in Britannica Lestrata of 1727 where it's described down here as the entrance of the House of Commons the inset is a rectified version made by John Croock so there it is by this time another more central door at the south end of Westminster Hall had replaced it as the main route through to the House of Lords and Old Palace Y Yard was still puzzling about when that was actually knocked through there are a lot of door-related puzzles in the House of Westminster and particularly in Westminster Hall and they will keep us going for a very long time throughout the 18th century the doorway and passageway appeared numerous plans and its surrounding buildings this example from the Office of Works Plans in TNA also shown William Kent's Gothic Revival Law Courts dates from between 1768 and 1794 then in 1794 the Cloisters and Grand House surrounding them passed to the Speaker of the House of Commons in 1802-7 James Wyatt remodeled it at vast expense for Speaker Charles Abbott removing the partitions from the West Cloister and by 1807 locking off Great Doorway on the Hall side however the Cloisters side of the passageway remained open fast forward to the 1834 fire and then to the building of the new palace whilst the two Houses of Parliament remained on site and constantly shifting temporary buildings now is there a lesson there I wonder I think there is from this MP's pocket plan of 1847 because it gives us some idea of the complex circulation arrangements which were needed particularly to bypass Stephen's entrance and hall at that stage under construction and there's the Cloisters and there is the passageway then also committee rooms all the way along there it must have been incredibly difficult for members to find their way round because in 1846 Barry had had to reopen the hall side of our passageway to provide an access route by the Cloisters to the north end of the site but finally in 1851 the passageway was walled in on both sides when Barry was restoring and remodeling the Cloisters graffiti inside the passageway marks this event again a most vivid way I love this, I absolutely love this bit this room was enclosed by Tom Porter who was very fond of old ale the parties who witnessed the articles of the wall was Archongdon Mason, J. Williams, H. Terry, T. Parker, P. Duval these masons were employed refacing these drawings of the Cloister August 11, 1851 real demo cracks so all of these festive worthy Charles Barry's workmen turn up in the 1851 census Tom's Porter was a bricklayers labourer living in Water Street near the Strand Richard Condon, Stone Mason, Domiciled in St Mariborne and the other four also Stone Masons all inhabited Ponson would be place this is a terrace of houses near Tate Britain which are today a highly desirable address Tom Porter was clearly the ringleader also wrote his name in very large letters on the plaster right at the top of the adjoining wall so after all this walling up while the existence of the passageway remain known it could no longer be accessed until its surprising rediscovery by Giles Gilbert Scott in 1949 but now we come to the crux of the matter how on earth did the legend that this was a Tudor doorway which had us all fooled arise by investigating press reports of the unveiling of the plaque in 1895 I discovered that its mastermind was this gentleman Sir Reginald Deuce Paul Graves clerk of the House of Commons from 1886 to 1900 he was the fourth son of Sir Francis Paul Graves the first deputy keeper of public records he was evidently a well-regarded proceduralist who built on the work of his predecessor Sir Thomas Erskine May named Cungjewith but his real passion was perhaps unfortunately history and especially the life and times of Oliver Cromwell on which topic his enthusiasm considerably outstripped his adherence to any evidence for example his attempts to redate the signing of the death warrant of Charles I were scornfully dismissed by the magisterial Samuel R Gardiner as a very improbable explanation without a scrap of evidence in its favour I investigated some of his other published work and here in his colourful lecture to the Rygate South Park Working Men's Club he lived in Rygate by the way which appeared back in 1868 are the origins of the legend of the door I won't read it all out it just goes on and on but as you can see it is based on his self-consciousness showman's suppositions and a lot of these words really appear almost verbatim minus any caveats on the plaque in the hall and so they've unsurprisingly been pretty much believed ever since so to sum up I mean the chronology so 1660 to 1661 the door and the passageway cut through the wall and the hall side was blocked by James Wyatt the hall side partly unblocked in 1846 1851 the hall and the hall the choice to sides were both blocked the passageway was now fully enclosed by Charles Barry and his festive masons and here we are 1895 the plaque marked its location and both the story about it subsequently broadly accepted then in 1949 the passageway was rediscovered by Sir Charles Gilbert Scots Workman they're actually putting in a ventilation system when they found the passageway and it was recorded and sealed up again apart from the access panel the existence of the access panel subsequently we think forgotten and the passageway was little known but finally in 2018 the passageway was rediscovered and accessed once more infinity's the variety of fame and name with which the doorway may be coupled Declared Sir regional ddy-sporcgrave the working men of Rangate now I have to admit this does very considerably overstate the case but i hope I've convinced you all that the powers of Westminster still has some intriguing secrets to give up and also that a light bulb moment can be literal as well as figurative. I'll say that many times. Thank you.