Tower House , 29 Melbury Road, is a late-Victorian townhouse in the Holland Park district of Kensington and Chelsea, London, built by architect and designer William Burges as his home. Designed between 1875 and 1881, in the style of the French Gothic Awakening, it is described by architectural historian J. Mordaunt Crook as "the most complete example of medieval secular interior produced by the Gothic Awakening, and the last." The house is built of red brick, with bathing stones and green roofs from Cumbria, and has a typical cylindrical tower and a conic roof. The ground floor contains a living room, dining room and library, while the first floor has two bedrooms and an arsenal. Its exterior and interior echo elements of the earlier work of Burges, in particular the McConnochie House in Cardiff and Castell Coch. It was designated as a class I listed building in 1949.
Burges purchased a lease on a piece of land in 1875. The house was built by Ashby Brothers, with interior decoration by members of the Burges durable craftsman team including Thomas Nicholls and Henry Stacy Marks. In 1878 the house was mostly complete, though the interior decoration and design of many furniture and metal items continued until Burges's death in 1881. The house was inherited by his brother-in-law, Richard Popplewell Pullan. Then sold to Colonel T.Ã, H. Minshall and then, in 1933, to Colonel E.Ã, R.Ã, B. Graham. Poet John Betjeman inherited the remainder of the lease in 1962 but did not extend it. After a period when the house stood empty and suffered vandalism, it was bought and restored, first by Lady Jane Turnbull, then by actor Richard Harris and later by musician Jimmy Page.
This house retains most of the internal structural decoration, but much of Burges's furniture, fittings and contents have been scattered. Many items, including the Large Book Rack, Zodiac residence, the Golden Bed and the Red Bed, are now in institutions such as The Higgins Art Gallery & amp; Museum and Museum Victoria and Albert, while others in private collections.
Video The Tower House
Locations and settings
Tower House is on the corner of Melbury Road, just north of Kensington High Street, in Holland Park district. It is located opposite Stavordvale Lodge and next to Woodland House, built for artist Luke Fildes. The development of Melbury Road in the yard of Little Holland House created an art colony in Holland Park, Holland Park Circle. The most prominent members, Frederic, Lord Leighton, lived in Leighton House, 12 Holland Park Road, and at the time of Leighton's death in 1896 six Royal Academicians, as well as one associate member, lived on Holland Park Road and Melbury Road.
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History
Design, construction and workmanship, 1875-78
In 1863, William Burges earned his first major architectural commission, Saint Fin Barre Cathedral, Cork, at the age of 35. In the next twelve years, its architecture, metal, jewelry, furniture and stained glass led Crook to claim that Burges rivaled Pugin. as "the greatest arts architect of the Gothic Awakening". But in 1875, his short career has largely ended. Although he worked to complete previous projects, he did not receive any major commissions anymore, and the design, construction, decoration and furnishings of Tower House occupied most of the last six years of his life. In December 1875, after refusing the plot at Victoria Road, Kensington and Bayswater, Burges purchased a plot infrastructure at Melbury Road from Earl of Ilchester, the owner of Holland Estate. The land rent is  £ 100 per year. Preliminary drawings for the house had been carried out in July 1875 and the final form was decided at the end of the year. The building began in 1876, contracted to the Ashby Brothers of Kingsland Road at a cost of Ã,  £ 6,000.
In Tower House Burges drew on its own "twenty years of learning, traveling and building experience", and used many of the artists and craftsmen who had worked with him in previous buildings. A forecast book compiled by him, and now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, contains the names of individuals and companies working at home. Thomas Nicholls is responsible for carving stones, including the capital, korbel and chimneypieces. Mosaic and marble works are contracted out to Burke and Company of Regent Street, while decorative tiles are supplied by W. B. Simpson and Sons Ltd from the Strand. John Ayres Hatfield made a bronze ornament on the door, while wood was the responsibility of John Walden of Covent Garden. Henry Stacy Marks and Frederick Weekes were hired to decorate the walls with murals, and Campbell and Smith from Southampton Row have the responsibility for most of the painted décor. Signs of bird painting over the decor in the library, and illustrations of famous lovers in the living room are on Sunday. They also painted numbers on the bookshelves in the library. The stained glass was made by Saunders and Company of Long Acre, with initial design by Horatio Walter Lonsdale.
Burges to Graham, 1878-1962
Burges spent his first night at home on March 5, 1878. It provided a suitable backdrop for entertaining his close friends, "the entire Pre-Raphaelite London whole." The dogs, Dandie, Bogie, and Pinkie, are immortalized in paintings in various furniture such as the Dog Cabinet and the foot of The Red Bed. Burges features an extensive collection of armor in the armory. Her bedroom decoration signaled another passion: opium's joy. Stylish decorative flowers cover the cabinet panels are placed beside the bed.
In 1881, after a cold arrest while overseeing a job in Cardiff, Burges returned, half paralyzed, to a house where he lay dying for about three weeks. Among his last visitors were Oscar Wilde and James Whistler. Burges died in Red Bed on April 20, 1881, just over three years after moving to the Tower House; he is 53 years old. She is buried in West Norwood Cemetery.
Rent of the house inherited by brother-in-law Burges, Richard Popplewell Pullan. Pullan completed several unfinished projects of Burges and wrote two studies of his work. The lease was later purchased by Colonel T. H. Minshall, author of What to Do with Germany and Future Germany, and the father of Merlin Minshall. Minshall sold his contract to Colonel E. R. B. and Mrs. Graham in 1933. Tower House was designated as a first class building on 29 July 1949.
Betjeman to Turnbull, 1962-69
John Betjeman was a friend of Grahams and was given a two-year lease at home, along with some furniture, on Mrs.'s death. Graham in 1962. Betjeman, a Victorian Gothic Awakening architectural champion, was an early admirer of Burges. In 1957 Tower House was featured in the fifth episode of its BBC television series, An Englishman's Castle. In a 1952 radio interview about Cardiff Castle, Betjeman talked about the architect and his main job: "a great brain has made this place, I do not see how one can fail to be impressed by its strange beauty... fascinated in the silence of the Victorian dream power of the Century This middle. "
Due to the potential liability for Ã, Â £ 10,000 of renovation work at the expiration of the lease, Betjeman considers the house too expensive to maintain, and then emptied it. From 1962 to 1966, the house became empty and underwent destruction and neglect. A survey conducted in January 1965 revealed that the outer sculpture had been badly damaged, the dry rot had been eaten through the roof and wood of the structural floor, and the attic was full of pigeons. Vandals have disarmed the wires from the water tank and ruined the mirror, the fireplace, and the work of carving. The most striking loss is the theft of the figure of Fame of the dining room chimneypiece. Betjeman suggested that the owner's agent had deliberately refused to let the house, and let it down, intend to destroy it and rebuild the site. Writing in the Village Life in 1966, Charles Handley-Read took a different view saying that "The Ilchester Estate, where the house is located, is restless that it should be preserved and [has] entered into the lease term depending on the house being repaired. "In March 1965, the Historical Building Council obtained a preservation order at home, allowing rental buyers, Lady Jane Turnbull, William Gray's daughter, the 9th Earl of Stamford, to begin a recovery program in July next. The renovation is supported by a grant of £ 4,000 from the Historical Building Council and £ 3,000 from the Greater London Council. The lease was sold in 1969.
Harris and Page, 1969 so on
Actor Richard Harris bought the lease for Ã, Â £ 75,000 in 1969 after finding that American entertainer, Liberace, had bid but did not keep a deposit. Reading the sale in the Evening Standard , Harris bought it the next day, explaining his purchase as the greatest gift he ever gave to himself. In his autobiography, entertainer Danny La Rue remembers visiting the house with Liberace, writing, "It is a strange building and has a frightening mural painted on the ceiling... I feel evil". Meeting La Rue later, Harris said he had found a house haunted by the ghosts of children from an orphanage that had previously occupied the site and that he had calmed them down by buying them toys. Harris hired the original decorator, Campbell Smith & amp; Company Ltd., for restoration, using Burges from the Museum of Victoria and Albert.
Jimmy Page, guitarist Led Zeppelin, bought the house from Harris in 1972 for £ 350,000, beating musician David Bowie. Page, a fan for Burges and for the Pre-Raphael Brotherhood, commented on an interview in 2012: "I still find things 20 years after being there - a little beetle on the wall or something like that; it's Burges's attention to detail very exciting. "In 2015 Page successfully challenged the planning application posed by pop star Robbie Williams, who has purchased an adjacent Woodland House in 2013 and is planning a major renovation. Page argues that changes, especially the intended underground excavations, will threaten Tower House structures. The ongoing disagreement between Williams and Page over the formation developers continues to be featured in British tabloids and music press.
Architecture
Exterior and design
Cultural historian Caroline Dakers writes that the Tower House is "a promise for the Gothic spirit in the area given to Queen Anne". Burges resents the Queen Anne style prevalent in Holland Park, writing that: "like any other mode... will have a day, I do not call it the art of Queen Anne, because, unfortunately I do not see art in it at all". The inspiration is the 13th-century French Gothic domestic architecture and more recent models from the work of the 19th-century French architect Viollet-le-Duc. Architectural historian Gavin Stamp and Colin Amery assume that the building "sums up Burges in miniature, although it is clearly a red-brick suburban house, the building is enormous, very beautiful, with a prominent turelle for staircases conquered by conical shaped towers." Luke Fildes' neighbor Lukes describes the house as "a model of a sizeable modern house in 13th-century style built to show what might be done for the everyday desires of the nineteenth century."
The house has an L-shaped plan, and the exterior is plain, red brick, with bathing stones and green roof boards from Cumberland. With a floor plan of 50 feet x 50 feet (15 m) square, 2,500 square feet (230 m 2 ), Burges continues its development on a large scale. Architect R. Norman Shaw said that the concrete foundations fit "for a fortress". This approach, combined with Burges architectural skills and minimal exterior decoration, created a building described by Crook as "simple and massive". Following the usual pattern, Burges re-worked on many previous design elements, adapting them appropriately. The frontage comes from another townhouse he designed, McConnochie House in Cardiff, although they have been reversed, with the fronts front of the McConnochie Building forming the front of the Tower House park. The ladder was handed to a cone-shaped tower, avoiding the mistakes Burges made in his previous home, where he placed the stairs in the middle of the hall. The cylindrical tower and the cone roof are from Castell Coch, and the interior is inspired by examples in Cardiff Castle. The house has two main floors, with a cellar below and a garret on top. The ground floor contains a living room, dining room and library, while the first floor has two bedrooms and an arsenal.
Plan
Interior
The architectural author Bridget Cherry writes that "the sturdy exterior gives a hint of the fantasy [Burges] made inside," the interior that art historian and Charles Handley-Read Burges scholar described as "instantly fancy, aggressive, obsessive, dazzling, grandeur [ing] on elegance ". Each room has a complex iconography decoration scheme: in the hall it is Time; in the living room, Love; in Burges, Sea room. Massive fireplaces with elaborate overmantels carved and mounted, described by Crook as "truly an altar of art... some of the most amazing pieces of decor ever designed". Handley-Read considers that Burges decorations are "unique, almost magical [and] unlike those designed by his contemporaries".
Ground floor
Bronze-covered doors, with relief panels depicting the numbers, open into the front hall. In the time of Burges, the door had a letter, in the form of Mercury, the messenger of the gods. Mailboxes are now gone, but contemporary copies are in The Higgins Art Gallery & amp; Museum. The porch contains white marble seating and columns, and on the floor there is a Pinkie mosaic, Burges favorite poodle. Cartoons by H. W. Lonsdale, it resembles the cane floor of the cane cave in Pompeii.
The interior center is in the double-height entrance hall, with the Time theme. The painted ceiling depicts the astrological signs of the constellations, arranged in the position they held when the house was first occupied. A large colored glass window containing four female figures representing Dawn, Noon, Twilight, and Night. The mosaic floor in the entrance hall contains a labyrinth design, with the center depicting the myth of Theseus killing the Minotaur. The park entrance, which is also bronzed, is decorated with Madonna and Child reliefs. Like elsewhere, Burges incorporates earlier designs, bronze doors echoing them in Cork Cathedral, and the labyrinth floor remember the previous ceiling in Burges office at 15 Buckingham Street. Emblems adorn the five doors on the ground floor, each relevant to their respective rooms. A flower marked the door to the garden, with the front door marked with a key. The library is indicated by an open book, drawing room or music by musical instruments, and a dining room with bowls and bottles of wine.
The library, its walls are lined with bookshelves, equipped with cabinets that resemble the Tower of Babel. The hooded chimneypiece is a "dispersion of language", with figures depicting Nimrod in charge of speech elements. Two trumpets represent the pronoun, the queen manifests the verb, the noun porter, and many other gold and painted figures are displayed. The ceiling is divided into eight compartments, with depictions of six founders of law and philosophy, Moses, St. Paul, Luther, Mahomet, Aristotle, and Justinian. An illuminated alphabet of architecture and visual art that runs around a bookshelf completes the scheme, with the letters of the alphabet inserted, including the letter "H" falling under the cornice. Because H - a point of social taboos in Victorian times, Handley-Read described it as "the best-known joke in Burges". Artists and craftsmen are displayed at work on every letter door from the bookshelves that surround the room. In a panel on one of the glass doors that opens into the garden, Burges is shown standing in front of a model of the Tower House. It displays as A rchitect, A form the first letter of the decoration alphabet. Both the Architecture Cabinet and the Large Bookshelf stood in this room. The stained glass windows in the room were painted, architecture and sculpture, and painted by Weekes.
On the wall opposite the library fireplace is opening to the living room. Inside were three colored glass windows arranged in a decorated marble lining. Across the window stands the Settle Zodiac, which Burges moved from Buckingham Street. Love is a central decorative scheme to the rooms, with ceilings painted with medieval cupids, and walls covered with mystical lovers. The engraving figures from Roman de la Rose adorn the chimneypiece, considered Crook "one of the most glorious ever produced by Burges and Nicholls". Echoing Crook, Charles Handley-Read writes, "Working together, Burges and Nicholls have turned a poem into a sculpture with an almost musical delicacy." The Roman de la Rose has come back to life.
The dining room is devoted to Geoffrey Chaucer The House of Fame and art storytelling, Crook explains that "high story is part of the dining room ritual". The hooded chimneypiece, of Devonshire marble, contains a bronze figure above a fireplace that represents Goddess of Fame; hands and face made of ivory, with a sapphire for the eyes. It was then stolen. Wall tiles depict fairy stories, including Reynard the Fox , Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood . The room also shows the use of innovative ingredients from Burges: Handley-Read observes that Victorians are "horrible smells of food" and therefore the room was built using non-odor-absorbing ingredients. The walls are covered with Devonshire marble, overlaid with glossy picture tiles, while the ceiling is made of metal sheets. The ceiling is divided into several compartments with square blocks, and displays the symbols of the Sun, planets and signs of the Zodiac. Burges designed most of the dishes and dishes used in this room, which showed his expertise as a metallic designer, including a blood urn and a Cat Cup chosen by Lord and Lady Bute as a memento of the Burges collection after his death. The wine cabinet panels are decorated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
First floor and racket
The windows of the landing turret represent the "Storming of the Castle of Love". On the first floor there are two bedrooms and armory. Burges Room, with a theme of sea creatures, overlooking the garden. The elaborate ceilings are segmented into panels with gold-plated and painted beams, fitted with miniature convex mirrors mounted on golden stars. Fish and eels swim under the waves painted beneath the ceiling, and fish are also carved relief in the chimneypiece. Above the fire hood, the carved mermaid stared into the visible glass, with shells, coral, seaweed, and baby mermaids also represented. Charles Handley-Read describes decorations around the mermaid's fireplace as "proto-Art Nouveau" and notes "international art nouveau debt for Gothic Gothic designers, including Burges". In this room, Burges places two of his most private pieces of furniture, the Red Bed, where he died, and the Narcissus wash basin, originally from Buckingham Street. The bed is painted in red blood and has a panel depicting Sleeping Beauty. Red and gold hand wash; Its tip basin of marble decorated with fish is silver and gold.
"Earth and its production" is the theme of a guest room facing the street. The ceiling is decorated with butterflies and fleurs-de-lis, and at the junction of the main beams there is a convex mirror around the gold-plated. Along the block is a painting of frogs and rats. A floral decor, once painted, has been restored. The Golden Bed and Vita Nuova Washstand designed for this room are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Burges designated the last room on the first floor of the armory and used it to display his large collection of armor. The collection was inherited to the British Museum after his death. An engraved chimneypiece in the armory has three bundles carved with the goddess Minerva, Venus and Juno in medieval outfits.
The garret originally contained day and night nurseries, which writer James Stourton considers a surprising selection of settings for "Bachelor's without a child". They contain a pair of decorated chimneypieces featuring the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and three play monkeys.
Garden
The garden at the back of the house features a flower parcel depicted by Dakers as "planned according to the pleasances depicted in medieval romance; the red tulips overlays, bounded by stone fences". On a mosaic terrace, around the statue a boy holds an eagle, carved by Thomas Nicholls, Burges and his guests will sit in "marble seats or on Persian rugs and embroidered pillows." The garden, and adjacent to Woodland House, contains trees from the former Little Holland House.
Furniture
In creating the interior of the house, Burges shows his expertise as a jeweler, metal craftsman and designer. He included some of his finest pieces of furniture such as Zodiac Settle, Dog Cabinet, and Great Bookcase, the last of which Charles Handley-Read described as "occupying a unique position in the history of Victorian painted furniture." They were as elaborate as the furniture: the tap for one of the guest bathrooms was in the shape of a bronze bull from the water of his throat poured into a silver-coated sink. In Tower House Burges puts some of its finest metal; Artist Henry Stacy Marks writes, "he can design trophies and cathedrals... The saucers, cups, jugs, forks, and spoons are designed with the same ability he would design a castle."
Burges Furniture does not receive universal praise. In his principal study of British domestic architecture, Das Englische Haus, published about twenty years after Burges's death, Hermann Muthesius writes of The Tower House, "The worst of all, perhaps, is the furnishings. in an earlier way, some of them like boxes and painted entirely.This style is now fashionable, although with historical justification it is not easy to say it.
Many early pieces of furniture, such as Narcissus Washstand, Zodiac Settle and Great Bookcase, were originally made for the Burges office on Buckingham Street and then moved to the Tower House. The Great Bookcase was also part of Burges's contribution to the Medieval Court at the 1862 International Exhibition. Later pieces, such as the Crocker Dressing Table and Golden Bed, and the accompanying Vita Nuova Washstand, were made especially for the home. John Betjeman placed Narcissus Washstand in a thrift shop in Lincoln and gave it to Evelyn Waugh, a fellow artist and architectural style Victorian, who featured it in his 1957 novel, Criminal Gilbert Pinfold. then gives Waugh both Zodiac Settle and Philosophy Cabinet.
Many of Burges's decorative items designed for Tower House were dissolved after his death. Several pieces purchased by Charles Handley-Read, who played a role in reviving interest in Burges, were acquired by The Higgins Art Gallery & amp; Museum, Bedford. The museum also purchased the Zodiac Settle from the Waugh family in 2011.
Furniture and scattered locations
The table below lists the original furniture parts in in situ , with the date of manufacture and its current location where it is known.
Architectural coverage
Richard Popplewell Pullan describes the house in detail in both of the two works he wrote about his brother-in-law, William Burges House, ARA , published in 1886. The book contains photos of the interior of the house by Francis Bedford. In 1893, it was the only private house listed in an article in The Builder, which gave architectural representation fifty years earlier. It was referenced again over the last decade by Muthesius, who described it as, "The most highly developed Gothic house built in the late 19th (and)) century built in England." At that time largely ignored, James Stourton described the early decline of the twentieth century as "the paradigm of the Gothic Awakening reputation".
The renewed understanding and appreciation of the building, and of Burges itself, begins with Charles Handley-Read essay on the collection of Burges in Peter Ferriday Victorian Architecture , published in 1963. In 1966 Handley-Read followed this with an article substantial at home for Village Life , "Aladdin Palace in Kensington". His notes on Burges formed the basis of the hundred-year volume of Mordaunt Crook, William Burges and High Victorian Dream, published in 1981 and revised and reissued in 2013, in which Crook wrote at length on the Tower House and its contents.
The latest coverage was given in London, London 3: North West, UK's revised UK guidelines written by Nikolaus Pevsner and Bridget Cherry, published in 1991 (revised 2002). This house is referenced in Matthew Williams's William Burges (2004), and in Panoramas of Lost London by Philip Davies, published in 2011, which includes several photos of Francis Bedford about the house of 1885. In the chapter on the building at Great Houses of London (2012), writer James Stourton calls The Tower House "the single most London home, even including the Soane Museum."
References
Note
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Source
External links
- 1880 exterior and interior photos of The Tower House of the Royal Institute of British Architects
- The altitude and part of The Tower House of London Survey
- Photos of Tower Houses from London Survey
- Comparison of Tower House and St. Anthony Hall in Trinity College, Connecticut
- Art & amp; Home Craft Sites - The Tower House color photos
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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