Claremont House
Claremont House is a country estate southwest of Esher in the English county of Surrey . It was the temporary residence of various crowned heads. The surrounding park is considered to be one of the oldest preserved English landscape gardens and exerted a great influence on the design of many subsequent facilities. Some of Britain's most famous garden designers and architects have helped design Claremont House, including Sir John Vanbrugh , Capability Brown , Charles Bridgeman and William Kent .
Building history
John Vanbrugh
The first building on the site, called Chargate, was built for himself in 1708 / 9-10 by the architect John Vanbrugh . This non-preserved building, described by Vanbrugh as being relatively small, which also included stables and a walled garden, stood on an area slightly below the current building site. The preserved “White Cottage” on the country estate probably dates from the same time. The surrounding park was initially designed in the baroque style by Charles Bridgeman in collaboration with Vanbrugh. In addition, the participation of is Stephen Switzer assumed in the design. A lawn amphitheater designed by Bridgeman around 1725 has been preserved from this period . The baroque complex also included a bowling green , a round water basin, hedge planting and a network of paths.
Duke Pelham
In 1714 Vanbrugh sold the estate to his friend and patron Thomas Pelham-Holles, Earl of Clare , a large landowner and Whig politician, later Duke of Newcastle and twice British Prime Minister. For this, Vanbrugh expanded the building from 1715 to 1720 by two wings and around 1715 built a fortress-like lookout tower, the so-called "Belvedere" (Italian: "beautiful view"), on a nearby hill as the Point de vue des Parkes, from which the guests can enjoy of the house could enjoy the view of the landscape. The hedge-lined grass path leading to the Belvedere Tower is now called Bridgeman's Walk. The windows of the tower, which look real from a distance, are deceptive architecture made of white and black bricks. With reference to the lookout hill, the new owner named the property "Clare-mont", which was later shortened to "Claremont". As early as 1727, a description praised the park as " the noblest of any in Europe ".
Around 1734 William Kent was commissioned, with the participation of Thomas Greening , to enlarge the park by 1748 and convert it into a natural style, embellishing it with romanticizing elements. A water channel and the round basin of the baroque garden were redesigned to form an arched lake ("Serpentine Lake"). Kent built a pavilion temple on an island in the lake around 1735, which has only been preserved as a ruin, but has since been restored. Two other pavilions in Kent’s park, one of which is part of a bowling green , are illustrated but not preserved. On the shore of the lake, Kent placed a three-arched building in the Palladian style with an artificial waterfall around 1738–1740 . However, as part of changes made around 1750, it was replaced by the grotto structure by the builder Joseph Pickford, an uncle of the architect Joseph Pickford from Derby, which can be seen today (in the partially restored form from 1975) , which is provided with glittering incrustations on the inside especially reflecting at night. Engraved in copper by the cartographer and garden designer John Rocque , a garden plan and views (for example of the no longer existing bowling green) have survived from 1738. The baroque lawn amphitheater designed by Bridgeman only had Kent covered with soil and planted. It fell into oblivion for centuries and was only discovered in the course of the restoration work started in 1975 and restored as a remnant of the baroque garden; Nowadays, the so-called Claremont Fête champêtre (a kind of costume party with music, theater and fireworks) is held here every year . Between 1738 and 1742, a part of the park was laid out in the spirit of the typical idea of an ornamented farm (embellished agriculture): a thatched house surrounded by a yew grove (thatched house) with a small pond in front and a place that was probably for games and perhaps ( according to a description from 1768) was used for cockfighting. This area did not last long, however, because of problems with the water supply, the pond was filled in in 1750. At the end of the 19th century a replica of the house was built, which still exists today.
The German Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg visited Stowe House , Carlton House and Painshill Park as well as Claremont House on an educational trip through Europe together with his brother August in 1768/69 in England . Impressed by what he saw, from 1766 (at the same time as the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm ), he had the Ducal Park laid out south of Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha , one of the earliest English-style landscape gardens on the European continent. As a planner, he was able to fall back on John Haverfield through his aunt Augusta von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg , who had worked as a court gardener in Kew Gardens and Richmond Park .
Baron Clive
When Duke Pelham died in 1768, his widow sold the property in 1769 to Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive , the founder of the power of the British Empire in India. During his lifetime Duke Pelham had to pledge Claremont to Baron Clive due to high debts. The Baron Clive, who had come to great fortune, had the small building of Vanbrugh torn down. He commissioned Lancelot Brown and his pupil and later son-in-law, the architect Henry Holland , to build what is now Claremont House in the Palladian style on the hill above the previous building. This is the only new building that comes from the pen of "Capability" Brown, who is mainly known as a landscape designer. Even William Chambers is said to have supplied designs to be but did not come into play. Brown, who worked in Claremont from 1768 to 1774, also made changes to the landscape, altered the course of the Ha-Ha that bordered the park, rerouted Portsmouth Road and planted Lebanon cedars and evergreens in the baroque turf amphitheater. The cedar trees have now grown to full size and are considered by the National Trust to be among the finest in England. The builder Clive is said to have invested the enormous sum of over £ 100,000 in the construction work, but he never lived there himself: he committed suicide in the year the exterior was completed (1774) . The interior design of the house, some parts of which (for example the entrance hall) are attributed to a former employee of Henry Holland, John Soane , was therefore only completed in a simplified form in 1779.
One of the earliest and most comprehensive writings on the theory and practice of the picturesque English landscape garden of the early period, the Observations on Modern Gardening, illustrated by descriptions by the British politician, writer and garden theorist Thomas Whately , which appeared for the first time in 1770 and which has expanded through many reprints Distribution and great importance for the dissemination and development of the landscape garden idea, refers directly and indirectly to the facilities of Claremont House in several ways.
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg
After the death of Baron Clive the property first went to the Irish Lord Galway, then it became the residence of the Earl of Tyrconnell , in 1807 it was bought by Charles Rose Ellis (who later became 1st Baron Seaford).
During a visit to England to celebrate the victory over Napoleon, Leopold von Sachsen-Coburg came to Claremont House in 1814 , where he met his future wife, the English heir to the throne Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales , daughter of the future King George IV. In 1816 Claremont was bought by the British State (Commissioners of Woods and Forests) for £ 66,000 as a wedding gift for the couple who now resided there. However, the princess died in November 1817 after a stillbirth. When Leopold became the first King of Belgium, he left Claremont in 1831, but remained the owner of the property until his death in 1865.
On behalf of Princess Charlotte, her house architect John William Hiort , supported by the garden designer John Buonarotti Papworth and the artist Augustus Charles Pugin , designed various outbuildings in the park between 1816 and 1831, for example the neo-Gothic tea house (called retreat ), which is opened after death the princess was converted into a memorial chapel ( cenotaph ) and a camellia house . Some views from Claremont von Hiort have been preserved.
Queen Victoria and Duke Carl Eduard of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
The British Queen Victoria , whose uncle Leopold was, was a frequent guest at Claremont House since her youth and also after her marriage. Leopold lent her Claremont House in 1831 and Victoria left it as accommodation from 1848 to the last French King Louis-Philippe and his wife Maria Amalia of Naples-Sicily, who was distantly related to her and who fled into English exile after the February Revolution in 1848 . Louis-Philippe died on Claremont in 1850, as did Maria Amalia in 1866. The wife of her second son Louis , Viktoria von Sachsen-Coburg-Saalfeld-Koháry , also died here in 1857.
In 1882 Queen Victoria bought Claremont for her youngest son Leopold, Duke of Albany, on the occasion of his wedding to Princess Helene von Waldeck-Pyrmont . Helene's son Charles ( Carl Eduard ) (1884–1954) was born at Claremont House. His mother Helene lived there until her death in 1922. Carl Eduard later became a German citizen and in 1900 the last ruling Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
At the end of the 19th century, a golf course was laid out on parts of the park area. During the First World War, the house served as a military hospital and girls' school.
Confiscation and reprivatisation
After the death of his mother Helene von Waldeck-Pyrmont in 1922, Duke Carl Eduard was refused the Claremont inheritance by the British government on the grounds that he had served as a general for British war opponent Germany in the First World War. Claremont was confiscated and sold in 1922 by the state trust to the shipowner Sir William Corry, director of the Cunard Line . When he died in 1926, the estate passed several real estate speculators by hands, 1928 (just before the Great Depression ) was bought by then living in England, German-born financier Eugen Spier . A large part of the landscape park was sold to a building development consortium and residential buildings have been built on since the 1920s.
When Claremont House was vacant in 1930 and was slated for demolition, it was acquired, along with the stables, the Belvedere tower and twelve hectares of the park, by the private Claremont Fan Court School , which has been there from 1931 to the present day based on the Christian Science faith taught, initially only girls, now also boys. During the Second World War the school was relocated to Llandrindod Wells in Wales. During this time the house was rented to the aircraft construction company Hawker Aircraft , whose design department under the direction of Sydney Camm developed the Hawker Tempest fighter aircraft there .
In 1949, 20 hectares of the park (in particular the Pleasureground , the particularly intensely designed park area near the manor house) were donated to the National Trust in order to keep it safe; maintenance was initially carried out by the Elmbridge Borough Council, and from 1979 by the National Trust. A total of almost 60 hectares of the original park have been preserved; In addition to the school and the National Trust as the main owner, some smaller parts are privately owned. A restoration program was carried out in the park from 1975 to 1980, supported by funds from the Slater Foundation. The Belvedere Tower has been open to the public again since 1996.
The manor house and the park of Claremont House are now classified in the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England as "Grade I" (complex of exceptionally high importance), the Belvedere as Grade II *.
literature
- Phyllis M. Cooper: The Story of Claremont . 5th edition, 1972
- National Trust (Ed.): Claremont Landscape Garden (Guide), 1988
- English Heritage: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest
- CK Currie: An Archaeological and Historical Survey of the Claremont Landscape Garden, Esher, Surrey , 2 volumes, 1999 (report for the National Trust)
Web links
- National Trust website on Claremont House
- Information about Claremont House on the website of Parks and Gardens UK (English)
- Plan of the baroque garden of Claremont
- The amphitheater and circular water basin designed by Charles Bridgeman , undated engraving by an unknown British artist. King's maps, British Library .
- Claremont's Bowling Green , engraving by John Rocque, 1738
Individual evidence
- ↑ Some of Kent's drawings of the park have been preserved.
- ↑ in John Rocque and in Isaac Ware : Designs of Inigo Jones and others (1731)
- ↑ under the supervision of Stephen Wright , the successor of William Kent, who died in 1748
- ^ John Rocque: Plan of the Garden and Plantations of Claremont in Surrey (in: Colen Campbell : Vitruvius Britannicus , 1725), Plan of Claremont (1738), One of the Seats of his Grace the Duke of Newcastle (1750), Map of Surrey (measured around 1762, published in 1768), A Survey of the House, Gardens, and Park of Claremont (engraved by Aveline, 1750).
- ^ Howard Colvin, Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art: A biographical dictionary of British architects, 1600-1840 , p. 241.
- ^ John Dixon Hunt, Peter Willis: The Genius of the place: the English landscape garden, 1620-1820 . Cambridge, Mass. [u. a.]: MIT Press, 1988, ISBN 9780262580922
- ^ Howard Colvin, Paul Mellon, Center for Studies in British Art: A biographical dictionary of British architects, 1600-1840 , Yale University Press, 4th ed. 2008, p. 523, ISBN 9780300125085 ; Rudolph Ackermann : Repository of Arts , 1819, p. 154
- ↑ King Leopold married a daughter of King Louis-Phillippe for the second time.
Coordinates: 51 ° 21 ′ 28 " N , 0 ° 22 ′ 20.5" W.