A history of Bifrons mansion house

A HISTORY OF BIFRONS MANSION HOUSE B.M. THOMAS 1. INTRODUCTION A report on the excavation of the foundations of the vanished mansion house of Bifrons in Patrixbourne has recently appeared in this Journal.1 This compilation started as a brief history of the house and its re-building and alteration over the past 400 years or so, written to accompany the work done to uncover the foundations, which was added to as further information came to light in the course of other work. 2. THE BARGRAVE FAMILY The first house on the site of Bifrons of which we have any evidence is said to have been built by a John Bargrave according to Hasted. 2 Hasted says that the family were resident in the nearby village of Bridge, and John was the eldest son of Robert Bargrave who died in 1600. There is some documentary and other evidence concerning the Bargrave family- alternatively known as Bargar- but it is insufficient to explain how they came by the wealth to build a house of such generous proportions as Bifrons; though it was by no means a palace. Certainly one member of the family, Isaac, the brother of the John who is reputed to have built Bifrons, achieved some note in history by becoming Dean of Canterbury Cathedral but the father, Robert, who was buried in the chancel of Bridge church, was a tanner by trade and described as a yeoman. 1 R. Cross and T. Allen, 'Bifrons', Arch. Cant., cvii (1989), 327-32. 2 E. Hasted, History of the County of Kent, 2nd Edition, ix, 277. 313 l.,l ..... 􀀂 ,- The south view: Showing the south of the house stripped of its formal garden. PLATE I 0, s: i 0 s: ► en BIFRONS MANSION HOUSE John Bargrave is known from his will3 to have died around 1624 leaving a widow Jane and a son Robert. Jane was the daughter and co-heir of Giles Crouch of London, and it has been suggested that it was through this marriage which took place in 1597 that John acquired the money to build Bifrons. Blake4 presents a good argument for the building to have taken place between 1607 and 1611. The fact that the family moved away from Patrixbourne for four years - a typical construction time for such a building when lime mortar was used - and then returned, indicates that there was perhaps a previous house on the site which they had to vacate for its demolition. The house passed out of the Bargrave family when John's grandson who was also named John sold it to Sir Arthur Slingsby in 16625 and it then had four other owners before being bought by John Taylor in 1694. 3. THE BARGRA VE HOUSE All that is known of the architecture of the house John Bargrave built at Patrixbourne is given in two painted views now in the possession of a descendant of the Taylor family, one of which is shown in Plate I, and a landscape view looking down on the garden at the rear of the house from the hill beyond, owned by the Yale Center for British Art and dated by them as painted around 1705 or 1710, some century after the house was built. Architecture of the reign of James I, who came to the throne in 1603, was a transitional style of the early English renaissance known as Jacobean. Many large houses of this period are left for us to enjoy: among them Hatfield House, Hertfordshire; Blickling Hill, Norfolk; Charlton House, Greenwich; Aston Hall, Birmingham, and nearby Chilham Castle in Kent. Most of them have features of layout, elevation and ornament in common. Typical of the external features are the cupola-topped square towers, gable ends to the roof and porches of a recognisable though debased renaissance form. Most of them in the south of England were built of brick with stone quoins, string-courses and window frames. The windows themselves were usually large with stone mullions and transoms and were glazed with leaded lights; large sheets of glass not then being readily available. 3 L.L. Duncan, 'Kentish Administrations', Arch. Cant., xx (1897), 15. 4 P.H. Blake, 'The Builder of Bifrons', Arch. Cant., cviii (1990), 270. 5 C. Greenwood, Epitome of County History, Vol. 1, Kent. 315 B.M. THOMAS The windows were often set in bays; square, rounded or canted. Flat roofs were seldom used and the hipped end was unknown. Though we can place the building of Bargrave's house within reasonably close dates, any further information has to be deduced from the early paintings mentioned above. The Landscape painting encompasses a wide sweep of the countryside in which the house and garden are seen as a small part. Nevertheless, the detail shown is informative. A typical Jacobean house stands facing roughly northwards with its garden at the rear enclosed by brick walls and containing formal beds and planting, much statuary and a gazebo: in fact, a typical early Jacobean garden developed from the medieval pattern with little concession to natural form. There are gates in the wall at the end of the garden, which open on to an avenue of trees in a meadow running down to a river. It is in many ways surprising that a garden of this design should have survived to the beginning of the eighteenth century. About the same time, John Harris, a historian of Kent, recorded his impressions of the garden at Bifrons.6 He mentions the view down the garden to the 'Canal', which had two islands at one end of it and a bathing house with 'Beds and Rooms for Company'. He also mentions the garden walls, covered with 'striped' holly growing from one side and trained over the top and down the other side to the ground and he comments favourably on the 'Turff' of the green walks. The house is shown in the Landscape as built of brick with stone detail and with two wings to the south which, differing in style, appear to be additions. The other painting of importance for this period (the view from the south shown in Plate I) seems to depict the house at a later date than the Landscape since the formal garden has disappeared. In the course of the seventeenth century the garden lost much of its rigidity and more plants became available which were employed in a more natural fashion. The final stage of this gradual movement was the landscape school of park and garden which began in the early years of the eighteenth century and culminated in the wholesale destruction of a large number of formal gardens under the influence of such as Capability Brown. The formal garden shown in the Landscape is absent in Plate I, so the second must represent a later state. Since not even the garden walls are shown, it cannot be the result of neglect. Capability Brown started his work around 1750 and only gradually became popular. It seems possible, therefore, that the clearance of the formal garden may have been carried out at around the time the 6 J. Harris, History of Kent, (1719), 233. 316 BIFRONS MANSION HOUSE house was bought by Rev. Edward Taylor at the end of the eighteenth century. Another reason for Plate I being later than the Landscape view is the apparent disappearance of the bay window on the west side of the house. From the beginning of the eighteenth century the development of Georgian architecture exhibited a dislike of bay windows and a preference for flat fac;:ades. This was an English interpretation of a feature of the renaissance style. The bay window shown in the Landscape on the west side is no longer to be seen in Plate I, having been replaced by two flush windows probably to accord with this later trend. The additions can be seen clearly in Plate I. They have plain gables compared to those on the house to which they connect and smaller windows, moreover they seem to be on a less grandiose scale with lower ceiling heights. There is little evidence on which to date them. They are similar in proportion, but differ in detail and would seem to have been built some years apart in different styles and do not have the symmetry both in elevation and in detail of earlier Jacobean architecture. The south-west wing seems to have an open loggia or cloister on the ground floor. The south-east wing has 6 small windows on the first floor and 9 on the ground floor and certainly looks to be more Georgian in period. Neither view shows a door on the south side. Plate I also shows an added block, which can be seen though less distinctly in the Landscape view, between the north-west wing and its southern extension. This has windows at mid-floor height as if it contains a staircase and raises interesting questions about the internal arrangements of the house as originally built. There is another painting in the same style as Plate I showing the front of the house looking much as would be expected of an early Jacobean house. Walls and railings enclose a courtyard, indicating that the formal garden might still exist behind the house. If this is so then this painting must be earlier than Plate I. If the assumptions about the additions are correct, then the original house was U-shaped. From what can be seen in the painting of its front elevation, Bifrons has some possible precursors for example Wimbledon House to which it bears a striking resemblance. This house was built by Thomas Cecil in 1588 (and demolished in 1720) and there is a plan among Thorpe's drawings and an elevation by H. Winstanley. This house is shown with an entrance front with a central porch, square towers in the angles of the two wings containing staircases with landings about 16 ft. sq. and canted bay windows. It seems to have been much the same size as Bifrons. Hatfield House (1611) though of greater size than Wimbledon has 317 B.M. THOMAS also a U-plan with the original entrance on the south side in what is now the courtyard. It possesses a remarkably fine great staircase which feature is one of the principal inventions of Jacobean architecture. The extent to which the building fashion set by the wealthy members of the Court, such as the Cecils who built Hatfield, was echoed by the gentry was governed by the gentry's contact with the Court. If this was tenuous, the building fashion, particularly of the interior which is less easily seen by those with little acquaintance with the owner, was likely to be some years behind the times. Since as fariaslis known1John.Bargrave had no contact with the Court, though he may have frequented London through his connection with his wife's family, he may have been able to copy the outside of a house such as Wimbledon but not having seen the interior his layout would have been conservative. In the light of this possibility the later addition of the great staircase without which the house would surely be regarded as old-fashioned would suggest an early date for the first building of the house. Reverting to the painting of the entrance front, it seems likely from the appearance of the fenestration, that the entrance porch led into the Great Hall as it does at Chilham Castle and Hatfield House. This Hall and its associated passages and gallery were of considerable size and height: about 65 ft. (20 m.) long with a ceiling height of nearly 25 ft. (7.50 m.) to judge from the size of the staircase towers. This again would favour an early date for the house for in the later years of the period the Hall had declined in size to that of a vestibule. The large building to the east of the house, to be seen both in the Landscape and in Plate I was probably the stables; the windows on the first floor, the only ones visible, lighting the accommodation for the stable staff with the stables and carriage houses below. The name given to the house - Bifrons - is probably derived from the two Latin words bi-, meaning two, and frons, meaning face or fa􀁒ade. This seems the equivalent to today's 'double-fronted' applied by estate agents to detached houses which show some form of symmetry about the entrance, though it is possible that it indicated a similarity between the entrance and garden fronts. The symmetrical elevations displayed by most houses influenced by renaissance ideas in architecture, including John Bargrave's house, were indeed 'double-fronted'. 4. THE TAYLORS John Taylor, who purchased Bifrons on 29th September, 1694 (the date is given precisely on his memorial tablet in Patrixbourne church), was born in 1665 the son of Nathaniel Taylor, a barrister 318 BIFRONS MANSION HOUSE from Shropshire who had the dubious distinction of being 'elected by letter' from Cromwell to represent the County of Bedford. 7 At the age of 19 John, who was said to have been a person of somewhat morose temper, married Olivia, the daughter of Sir Nicholas Tempest.8 Their eldest son Brook was born in 1685 and later became a famous mathematician and discoverer of Taylor's Theorem. Though Brook married twice both wives died in childbirth and no male heir survived. Bifrons then passed first to Brook's brother Herbert and in turn to Herbert's eldest son who died young in 1767. The estate then passed to Herbert's second son the Rev. Edward Taylor. Edward Taylor was 33 when he inherited Bifrons and within a few years he pulled down the old house and began to build again. Hasted says that he rebuilt nearly on the old site and the recent excavation of the foundations has uncovered Jacobean brickwork in the foundations of the later house. Taylor's reasons for this considerable expenditure can only be guessed. Jacobean houses were inconvenient, being laid out on the principle of one room leading out of another; thus, there was little privacy as the rooms functioned also as passageways. The servants were, therefore, unable to carry out their duties without invading the privacy of the owner and his family. Inconvenience apart, the Jacobean style was by this time considered old-fashioned. In those days the concept of the heritage was barely recognised and a man was admired for being up-to-date and not for keeping to the old ways. In an age of great confidence and forward looking, a new house was the symbol of the owners' wealth, taste and progressive views. The Jacobean house was said to be Gothick, a term of disparagement. Harris in 1719 describes the house as being 'built after the Gothick manner'. 9 Many seventeenth-century houses had been adapted for the new way of living by the addition of corridors and extra rooms in the course of replanning the interior and by changing the external appearance to suit the current architectural style. As has been shown, there are indications that previous owners had removed some bay windows and added a staircase quite apart from the addition of the two wings. However, if one could afford it, a new house would obviously be more convenient for the occupants and would excite more admiration from one's acquaintances. 7 Kentish Register, June 1794, page 229. 8 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th. Edition, vol. 26, 467. 9 Op. cit., 6. 319 B.M. THOMAS 5. TAYLOR'S NEW HOUSE The new Bifrons as drawn by Oldfield for the Kentish Register (Fig. 1) was a plain building in the classical style with little ornamental embellishment. The cornice was probably dentillated and the pediment over the front door was supported by simple columns. The basement was not differentiated from the upper storeys in any way, which was unusual for a house of its size and made it look rather tall for its length. Edward Brayley in The Beauties of England and Wales in 180610 speaks of ' ... the present mansion, a respectable brick structure ...', but there seems to be no other contemporary description of the house. The stable block, which still exists, though it has been heavily altered on more than one occasion, could be of the same period as the house, but there is no firm evidence on which to base a date. Rev. Edward Taylor died in 1798 leaving four sons each of whom achieved some success in life.11 The eldest, also named Edward, became Member of Parliament for Canterbury and it was he who eventually sold Bifrons in 1830. The second son, Sir Brook Taylor, became private secretary to Lord Grenville, the Whig Prime Minister in 1806 and 1807, and a Privy Councillor. The third was private secretary to Frederic, Duke of York, and then to George III. The fourth son became a captain in the Royal Navy. 6. THE TA YLORS' LA TIER YEARS In 1802, the younger Edward Taylor married Louisa, the only child of Rev. Charles Beckingham of Bourne Park some two miles from Bifrons.1 2 Louisa's father died in 1807 some four months after Edward had been elected Member of Parliament for Canterbury coming second in the poll, and, therefore, taking the second seat for that City. It seems }§robable that Louisa inherited Bourne Park for the land tax returns 3 show that the Taylors went to live there in 1824 and let Bifrons. Louisa's mother must at some stage have moved out of Bourne Park for, when she died in 1844, she was living in Dover. Bourne Park, whose architect was John Shaw the younger, 14 is a 10 E.W. Brayley, The Beauties of England and Wales, ii (1806). 11 Rev. W.A. Scott Robertson, 'Patricksbourne Church and Bifrons', Arch. Cant., xiv (1876), 173-6. 12 Kentish Gazette, September 7th, 1802. 13 Land Tax Returns, Kent County Archives. 14 Country Life, 6th-13th May, 1922. 320 VJ N ...... , r 7 ., ,,, BIEJUV\-.,, ,,/,,· , i:r// ,/ //t,e .Jr..'.,-x: r.DA'LJJtJ":':' ;t:11.JrLtJA, _.,v,J/y'A:?J􀀣•.1!'L)'.fl../ lj .run,,,,t.Qn,,􀀤u--kJJ .(.f,.,,..,, C􀀥hu;,. Fig. 1. The new Bifrons: An engraving in the Kentish Register of 1794 drawn by Oldfield. to - "?1 ';lj 0 z rJl 􀀃 > z rJl 0 z :r: 0 C rJl m B.M. THOMAS larger house than was Taylor's Bifrons though of much the same style. It has two storeys and was built of brick with stone trimmings such as quoins and is set most elegantly in a wide valley overlooking a lake where it stands today almost unaltered. Apart from its lovely setting Bourne may well have had somewhat better arrangements inside to persuade Edward Taylor to move out of the house his father had built. The first tenant of Bifrons in 1825 was the second Marquess of Ely who occupied the house for two years.15 In 1828, Lady Byron became the tenant. Lord Byron, from whom she had separated in 1815 after only a year of marriage, had died in Greece in 1824 by which time the family home at Newstead Abbey had already been sold to Col. Wildman whose brother lived at Chilham Castle 10 miles away, for the sum of £94,000. In 1830, Edward Taylor sold Bifrons to the first Marquess Conyngham and a new chapter opened in the life of the house. 7. THE PROBLEM OF THOMAS HUNT A dictionary of architects16 states that Bifrons - meaning the house that stood in the Conynghams' time - was the work of Thomas Hunt. He was born in 1791 and from 1813 - at the age of 22 - he was employed by the Office of Works at St. James's and Kensington Palaces. He is said to have been an able architect who made a special study of the Tudor style but, unhappily, suffered from a tendency to run into debt and so spent some of his time hiding from the bailiffs. He died on 4th January, 1831, at the young age of 40 and his obituary appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine of that year.17 Hunt was probably best known for his books of which he wrote four, all concerned with the design of cottages and houses in a style derived from his studies of Tudor architecture of which he had experience from the Tudor palaces in his charge. The only evidence for an association of Thomas Hunt with Bifrons occurs in remarks made by William Jerdan in his four volume autobiography . 18 Jerdan founded and edited the Literary Gazette of that time and was an acquaintance of Hunt who contributed to the Gazette. Jerdan says that Hunt trained in the office of Sir John Soane 15 Voters' Lists, Kent County Archives. 16 H.M. Colvin, Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, London (1978). 17 Gentleman's Magazine, April 1831, 376. 18 W. Jerdan, The Autobiography of William Jerdan, iv, London, (1853), 52. 322 BIFRONS MANSION HOUSE (1753-1857), who was certainly not inclined towards the Tudor style, before going to the Board of Works. In this second post he 'designed and fitted up the State apartments for holding courts and levees' in St. James's Palace and also altered the Duke of Clarence's house 'with whom he was an especial personal favourite. ..' Jerdan records that Hunt carried out other works in all departments of the royal palaces. It is worth noting that Lord Conyngham may well have met Hunt in the course of Hunt's work on the royal palaces. Jerdan goes on to praise Tudor architecture in contrast to the 'naked, bizarre' Greek, Roman and Palladian and then says that 'Bifrons, the seat of the Dowager Marchioness of Conyngham, is a fine original specimen of Mr. Hunt's skill .. .' The only other house Hunt is known to have built in the south of England is Danehurst in Sussex for Lt.-Col. Francis Davies, 19 a veteran of the Peninsular War, probably in 1827. This house is somewhat in Hunt's Tudor style as exemplified in his book Designs for Parsonage Houses, Almshouses etc. If, abandoning his Tudor style, Hunt had made some alterations to Bifrons, the question is when? Edward Taylor moved to Bourne Park sometime after 1824, and it seems unlikely that he would have carried out any alterations to Bifrons once he had let it. On the other hand, any work by Hunt would probably have been carried out after, say, 1815 when at the age of 24 he would have gained a few years' experience, leaving a period of, say, nine years in which the work might have been done. However, in view of the total dissimilarity between Hunt's known work and interests and the style of the altered house as can be seen in the late nineteenth-century photographs, it seems possible that for some reason Jerdan was mistaken in his attribution of Bifrons in a Tudor style to Hunt. On the other hand, Jerdan knew Hunt quite well, and it seems strange that he should make such a mistake. Certainly in 1806 in Brayley's Beauties of England and Wales20 and again in 1829 in Ireland's History of the County of Kent,21 Bifrons is described as a house rebuilt by Edward Taylor with no mention of subsequent alterations. However, we have no record of the house's appearance between the early days of Edward Taylor and the photographs of the greatly changed house of the later years of the nineteenth century. There are in the villages of Bridge and Patrixbourne some half 19 D.M. Forrest, St. Raphael's, Danehurst, n.d. 20 Op. cit., 10. 21 W.H. Ireland, History of the County of Kent, ii (1829), 477. 323 B.M. THOMAS a dozen cottages and two lodges to the Park with a Tudor cottage look to them akin to John Nash's work at Blaise Hamlet near Bristol (c. 1810) and in a style reminiscent of some of Hunt's illustrations to his books. Hunt had a pupil named G .H. Smith of whom little is known but to whom some alterations to Bifrons in 1835 about which we know nothing are attributed. 8. THE WORK OF THOMAS CUNDY Henry, Marquess Conyngham, was much at Court for he was made Lord Steward of the Household on the eve of George IV's coronation, a post he held until the King's death in 1830. Henry died in 1832 and his widow remained at Bifrons until her death at the age of 91 in 1861. On his mother's death, the second Marquess Conyngham took possession of Bifrons until he died in 1876. Francis Conyngham had the distinction, as Lord Chamberlain from 1835 to 1839, of acquainting the young Princess Victoria of the death of King William and so of her accession. Soon after his mother's death Francis Conyngham carried out some major works at Bifrons which were completed in 1863. The architect was Thomas Cundy of Eaton Chambers, Pimlico. He was the third generation of Cundys - all called Thomas - to take up architecture and he trained in the office of his father, who in turn had inherited the practice - and also the surveyorship of the Grosvenor Estates - from his father. 22 Some of the accounts of the work have been preserved in the Conyngham papers23 showing that the total expenditure was £12,014--4-9 covering seven separate accounts. Only one of these accounts still exists, that for the painter and decorator whose bill came to £1,677 and covered such items as painting the Turkish Bath, repairing and cleaning the fountain, scagliola work to two columns in the dining room and putting up 40 pieces of French moire paper with gilt moulding to boxings in the Drawing Room. Thomas Cundy's fees amounted to some £678 and the Clerk of Works was paid nearly £115. If one compares the photograph of the front of the house (Plate II), which is unlikely to be earlier than the 1860s, with Oldfield's drawing of the Taylor house the extent of these alterations seems to have been 22 Biography Database, R.I.B.A. Pers. Com. 23 Conyngham MS, U238, Kent County Archives, Ramsgate. 324 BfFRONS MANSION HOUSE - - 325 .., -5 ·= V, C g iii 0 .t: 0.. 􀀃 00 0 0 .t: 0.. -< c g ..,