Foots Cray Place
Foots Cray Place was a country house near Sidcup in the English county of Kent . This area is now part of the London Borough of Bexley ( Greater London ). The house, built in 1754, was inspired by Palladio's La Rotonda near Vicenza . The house was demolished in 1950 after being destroyed by fire the previous year. Three other houses in England were built along the lines of La Rotunda: Chiswick House (1729), Mereworth Castle (1725) and Nuthall Temple (1757, demolished 1929). In the 1980s, another house was built in England based on the model of this Italian house, namely Henbury Hall . Another example of such a building in England is the Temple of the Four Winds at Castle Howard . However, this is not a residential building, but a garden house.
Previous houses
The manor of Foots Cray in Kent is mentioned in the Domesday Book . The Walsingham family later bought it and kept it for six generations until they sold it in 1676. A house in e-form in the Elizabethan style - Pike Place called - stood still in the 1680's. The property passed through many hands and eventually Bourchier Cleeve bought it for £ 5450 in 1752. Cleeve had the old house demolished and the new one built a little further north in 1754.
Palladian manor house
The design of the Palladian manor house in Vitruvius Britannicus IV (1777, panels 8-10) is attributed to the architect Isaac Ware , but others also suggest that Metthew Brettingham the Younger or Daniel Garrett may have been the architects.
Corresponding to the La Rotonda (Villa Capra) model, the building had a large central block with a square floor plan and an attached dome. A portico was attached to each of the four facades . All parts of the building were made of stone. Three of the porticos at Foots Cray Place were closed on the outside and open on the inside to create additional space inside. The central hall was octagonal and a gallery, which was lit from above, led to the rooms on the upper floor. The buildings for the servants were built in brick at a short distance from the main house. Cleeve amassed a large collection of paintings, e. B. Rembrandt , Rubens , van Dyck , Canaletto and Holbein , which he exhibited in Foots Cray Place.
After Cleeve's death in 1760, his daughter inherited the property; she married Sir George Yonge in 1767 and the house was sold to Benjamin Harenc in 1772 for £ 14,500 . He had it rebuilt in 1792 by a lesser-known London architect, Henry Hakewill . Harenc's son sold the house to Nicholas Vansittart , then Chancellor of the Exchequer and later Baron Bexley, in 1821 . Hakewill rebuilt the house in 1823 and Lord Bexley had other work done by another - equally unknown - London architect, John William Hiort , who also designed Bexley's London house on Great George Street in Westminster. The Vansittart family kept the house and property until it was sold to Samuel Waring , later Baron Waring , at the end of the 19th century.
In 1939, at the beginning of the Second World War , the house was requisitioned for use by the Thames Nautical Training College (HMS Worcester) , whose ship of the same name had been requisitioned by the Admiralty. Lord Waring died in 1940, and after college clearance, his widow sold the war-damaged building to Kent County Council for use as a museum in 1946. A fire in October 1949 caused immense damage and so the house was demolished in 1950.
Foots Cray Meadows
The stables remained, but the property, now called Foots Cray Meadows , became a prized public park in this south-east London suburb. The 89 hectare park was merged from two landscape parks from the mid-18th century at the beginning of the 19th century. It is listed as a Grade II Historic Park by English Heritage and is a Local Nature Reserve . The London Outer Orbital Pass , also known as the London LOOP , leads through the Foots Cray Meadows on its way from Old Bexley to Sidcup Place and to Petts Wood . There is an industrial area next to the green spaces along the river.
Individual references and comments
- ↑ Chiswick House was partially demolished in the 20th century, only the Corps de Logis remained.
- ↑ Henbury Rotunda, Cheshire . Julian Bicknell & associates. Retrieved November 9, 2015.
- ^ Howard Colvin: A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 . 3. Edition. Yale University Press, Yale: see there: Isaac Ware , under Doubtful and attributed works .
- ^ Stanford Anderson: Matthew Brettingham the Younger, Foots Cray Place, and the Secularization of Palladio's Villa Rotonda in England. . In: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Issue 53, No. 4, pp. 428-447 . December 1994. Retrieved November 9, 2015.
- ^ Henry Hakewill (1771-1830), a student of John Yenn , became the trustee of Rugby School ; he is buried in North Cray .
- ^ A b Howard Colvin: A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 . 3. Edition. Yale University Press, Yale: see there: Henry Hakewill .
- ↑ John William Hiort (1772-1861) was an architect associated with the Office of Works , where he was mostly involved in planning temporary buildings for ceremonies; he designed some outbuildings for Claremont House in Surrey for Princess Charlotte and patented special bricks for the construction of circular chimneys which were used for Buckingham Palace .
- ^ Howard Colvin: A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 . 3. Edition. Yale University Press, Yale: see there: John William Hiort .
- ^ Foots Cray, Bexley . Hidden London. Retrieved November 11, 2015.
- ^ The River Cray . Greenspace Information for Greater London. 2006. Archived from the original on December 24, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 8, 2012.
Coordinates: 51 ° 25 ′ 37.2 ″ N , 0 ° 7 ′ 12 ″ E