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Francis Johnston + Townley Hall Tullyallen Louth

Thrill of the Chaste

An immaculate concept, a gorgeous late Georgian flowering. Townley Hall deep in the Boyne Valley came about in the closing years of the 18th century. Its architect Francis Johnston designed Rokeby Hall, 17 kilometres north of Townley Hall, a decade earlier in 1786. The former is a smaller version of the latter. Both are of a spare patrician architecture so appealing to the modern eye. Plain planes. Townley is an achingly svelte seven bay by seven bay 27.5 metre square block.

The architect conceals and reveals scale and massing as the viewer moves round the outside. This is a four storey house masquerading on three sides as a two storey building. Attic dormers lurk behind a solid parapet in a similar arrangement to the contemporaneous Castle Coole, County Fermanagh, except there the dormers peep through balustraded gaps in the parapet. Townley is Castle Coole taken to next level Grecian severity in a case of keeping up with the Lowry-Corrys. Francis’ brother Richard was the original architect for Castle Coole: he was replaced by the celebrity architect James Wyatt. There is another Fermanagh link: the client Blayney Townley Balfour married Lady Florence Cole in 1794. She was from Florence Court, a neighbouring estate of James Wyatt’s masterpiece.

Townley Hall is an essay in structural rationalism, a formal stone box grounded by rolling countryside. Recent semiformal planting softens the grey to green juxtaposition. Unencumbered by unnecessary architectural frippery, Francis employs taut lines. He let’s go – just a little – with the kitchen wing. A collection of curves carefully enriches the wing’s fenestration: recessed arches, roundheaded windows, segmental arched tripartite mezzanine windows, a bow window. It’s not just an august purity auguring minimalism that defines Townley. Workmanship and materiality are also top notch. The facing ashlar was quarried from nearby Sheephouse. It has lower absorbency than most limestone. Mortar is barely visible between the masonry. Metal rods reinforce the slimmest of glazing bars. A mid storey string cornice and Greek Doric eaves cornice relieve the expanse of wall.

A tetrastyle Doric portico leads into the entrance hall which has twin Doric chimneypieces – more restrained versions that those in Castle Coole. That’s a theme developing in this article. Rectangular plasterwork wall panels resemble vast empty picture frames. A coffered ceiling adds to the room’s crisp angularity. Straight ahead – silent drum roll – is the rotunda, a nine metre diameter glass domed cylinder forming the core of the house. A swagger of genius. A swoop of plasterwork swags and skulls. Irish design at its most suave. All the plasterwork whether naturalistic or geometric is of shallow relief. There are two coats of paint on the rotunda walls: the current 1920s creamy beige over the original stone grey. The ribbed dome casts a spidery web of shadows which leisurely climbs the staircase as the afternoon progresses.

An interlinking ceiling rose pattern in the drawing room is similar to the overhead plasterwork of the dining room in Castle Coole. Like all the main rooms around the rotunda it is 7.3 metres deep. This layout allows all the main rooms to have natural light while the rotunda is top lit. Rokeby Hall is similarly laid out and equally bright. It is an efficient arrangement removing the need for corridors. Andrea Palladio’s 1560s Villa Rotunda outside Vicenza is an obvious source of inspiration although the dome of Townley is hidden behind the attic floor rather than being on full display. Surprisingly Francis’ drawings illustrate the final rationality of layout and simplicity of design was achieved through an evolutionary process. For example, the more elaborate Ionic order (which James Wyatt used for the portico of Castle Coole) was replaced with the plainer Greek Doric for the portico. Francis was clearly a master of the Golden Ratio.

A set of early 1900s photographs courtesy of the Irish Architectural Archive includes views of the interior. Furnishings were suitably classical and restrained. Chinese wallpaper in the south facing drawing room is a rare flush of extravagance. The boudoir and dressing room over the drawing room overlook the parkland. They are one of five family suites clustered around the first floor rotunda landing. On the floor above, the view from the servants’ dormitories is the backside of the parapet below a sliver of sky. The only unobstructed attic windows are in the west facing barrack room which looks down into the courtyard: guards needed to be on watch.

In 1957 the family sold the house and 350 hectare estate to Trinity College Dublin for use as an agricultural school. Since 1977, Townley and its immediate 60 hectares has been a residential study centre owned by the School of Philosophy and Economic Science. A single level extension (visible as one storey on the north front) was recently completed over the kitchen wing plus a double height access link to the original house. The two main conservation schools of thought are to either design an extension that blends in with the host building or one that contrasts with it. The current Irish notion strongly favours the latter. Oh the architectural profession’s fear of that ultimate sin: pastiche! That’s despite every other modern glass building being derived from Philip Johnson’s Glass House in Connecticut and its 70 year old ilk. RKD Architects of Newmarket Dublin secured planning permission for an extension that consisted of similar massing to that executed except the courtyard facing elevation was a dormered mansard. RKD proposed Georgian style sash windows throughout.

Treasa Langford of Dúchas Heritage Service commented on the application, “The finishing of the north wall is not specified; however, the construction is specified as exposed uncoursed rubblestone, which would appear to be inappropriate on a cut stone house such as Townley Hall. We would recommend a ruled and lined nap lime plaster finish without use of cement.” Her opinion is based on the view of sympathetically blending old and new. It could be counterargued that rubblestone would be suitably subservient to the cut stone of the grand main block, emphasising the ancillary nature of the wing.

A decade later, MVK Architects of Fitzwilliam Square Dublin’s design also secured planning permission and this time it was built out. Their approach is very different. The design concept is to add an identifiably contemporary layer to this historic property. Subordination and deference are common themes of both practices’ thinking. MVK’s has neither a mansard nor Georgian style glazing bars but the window openings are classically positioned and proportioned.

Michael Kavanagh of MVK Architects relates, “The choice of material was based on aesthetic as well as practical considerations. Natural zinc has a light grey colour – from historic photographs it appears the slate on the original roof had a similar light grey colour. The material is not intended to match the limestone colour but rather be complementary to it. Zinc is natural, hardwearing, long lasting and difficult to puncture. These characteristics make it ideal for long term weatherproofed cladding. It is stiffer than lead or copper and consequently allows for the crispness of detailing which is intended throughout.” This metal envelope is fixed on plywood decking across battens to form a ventilation zone. The zinc is fitted in strips of varying widths using a staggered but repeating rhythm which reflects the use of differently sized limestone blocks on the main house exterior.

The best example in Ireland of a Modernist addition to a neoclassical building is of course the Ulster Museum Belfast extension. Edinburgh architect James Cumming Wynnes won the 1913 competition for the original museum. The exterior displays fairly ornate Beaux Arts decoration. In 1964, London architect Francis Pym won a competition to extend the museum. His highly inventive design is at once contextual and disruptive. He draws out the neoclassical detailing such as cornices and string courses which then collide with abstract cubic concrete blocks expressing the layout of the galleries inside. Francis’ dramatic work is unsurpassed in its genre. Surprisingly, he worked in church conservation and his only other recorded built form is a gazebo somewhere in England.

This is an article of superlatives. The O’Connell Wing of Abbey Leix in County Laois is a study in how to do it right. Architect John O’Connell’s masterful 1990s reimagining of an unfinished 1860s wing by Thomas Henry Wyatt (an Anglo Irish distant next generation relation of James) is a lesson in improving what’s there already. Client Sir David Davies explains, “This extension was never built as planned but the remains of the Wyatt scheme – a low unadorned wall to the right of the main house was a disfiguring distraction, an issue O’Connell resolved by puncturing the walls with windows and adding architectural ornament.” John O’Connell was also responsible for the late 20th century restoration of Castle Coole. This is an article of connections.

Sympathetic contextual additions; visibly contemporary extensions; dramatic architectural interventions; subtly remodelled wings – they all have their place and supporters. English Poet Laureate and architectural historian Sir John Betjeman once stated, “I have seen many Irish houses, but I know none at once so dignified, so restrained and so original as Townley Hall in County Louth.” More than 230 years after it was finished, such is the strength of Francis Johnson’s design, capturing the spirit of a future age, it still possesses dignity, restraint and originality.

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The Landmark Trust + Marshal Wade’s House Bath Somerset

Unvernacular

“I can well remember the first time I entered Bath. It was a very hot day in the summer of 1937 … towards the evening I came to the hills which engirdle the Queen City of the West. Tired and footsore as I was, I lost nothing of that breathtaking moment when the eye first catches sight of that lovely terraced city. Lying, so to speak, in a vast amphitheatre, surrounded by hills of enchanting beauty, it seemed like a city out of an Eastern romance, a new Jerusalem built by some magic hand in England’s green and pleasant land.” That is how Tony Smith reminisced on the Pride of Wessex in his 1944 book simply titled Bath. Hyperbole becomes reality in this city.

Four decades later Kenneth Hudson notes in The Fashionable Stone, “The development of the Combe Down quarries at Bath in the 18th century was due almost entirely to the enterprise of Ralph Allen, who went into the stone business immediately after the Avon navigation was completed in 1727. The improvement in communication by water from Bath made it possible to ship stone by barge to Bristol and from there by ship to anywhere in Britain. It was the Avon navigation that broke the virtual export monopoly that Portland had held for so long.”

The Landmark Trust’s central Bath property predates John Wood the Elder and John Wood the Younger’s developments. This remarkable 1720s townhouse built for Ralph Allen’s friend Field Marshal George Wade – swapping his military life in the Scottish highlands for political life as MP for Bath – was rescued by the Trust in 1975. The ground and first floors are retail use. The top two floors of this now single aspect (save for one landing roof window) south facing building are holiday accommodation. Two reception rooms evenly occupy the four bays of the second floor. A freestanding octagonal kitchen (sink, cooker, fridge and cupboards all in one waist height compact unit) in one of the reception rooms is parallel with five of the walls including the chamfered chimneypiece wall. This allows the panelling and bolection mouldings to remain intact. Two bedrooms on the storey above have floors so slanted that walking across them is like being tipsy on a rocky boat.

All seven main windows (one of the windows in the outer bathroom wall is a dummy) of the palazzo façade overlook Abbey Churchyard. Thankfully it’s a car free space unlike The Circus and Royal Crescent. The angels climbing up and down Jacob’s Ladder on the west elevation of Bath Abbey are almost in touching distance. Directly opposite are the roofs of The Pump Room. The best view is from the loo on the top floor. Unusually for this hallowed and documented city, the provenance of Marshal Wade’s House is lost in the mists of time. The architect was certainly familiar with Andrea Palladio’s Libri dell’Architettura of 1570. “The Ionic pilasters are the first in Bath of the giant order,” Richard Morriss confirms in The Buildings of Bath (1993), “rising through two storeys.” Charles Robertson records in An Architectural Guide to Bath (1974), “The attic storey is somewhat different and may have been added or altered at a later date. “The building next door to the east clearly has a later top floor.

Heading downhill and arriving four decades later, Robert Adam’s Pulteney Bridge is a lighter version of neoclassicism in contrast to the virility of Marshal Wade’s House. Richard Morriss ponders, “It is said to reflect Palladio’s proposal for the Rialto Bridge in Venice.” Charles Robertson isn’t so sure: “Walter Ison suggests that the design may be adapted from a drawing in Palladio’s Terzo Libri dell’Architettura but the resemblance is not at all close, and Adam would presumably have regarded imitation of Palladio as old fashioned. There is really no reason to consider this simple but masterly design as anything other than original.”

So who was the first occupant of this house? George Wade’s family had settled in County Westmeath in the 17th century. Clearly at some stage he crossed the Irish Sea to settle in the West Country. Denise Chantrey records in George Wade 1673 to 1748 (2009), “Wade was a man who made and kept many friends who might easily have been his enemies. He was straightforward and honest, and made a point of seeing the other man’s point of view. He was a flamboyant character and he loved cards, wine, women, comfort, good furniture and art. He had friends in high places but gambled in low dives. He was vain and often commissioned portraits of himself which he gave to family and friends.” It would be rude not to continue the established partying tradition then in his not so humble Palladian abode.

Director of The Landmark Trust Dr Anna Keay explains, “Over 50,000 people now stay every year in The Landmark Trust’s buildings and experience the pleasure of carrying the key of the door in their pocket, ‘a stimulus more powerful than a mere ticket of admission’, and the possibility, for which Landmark was founded, that they ‘might go back home with an interest awakened that would grow, and perhaps last them all of their lives’.” An awakened interest it is then but not before afternoon sherry is decanted at a stop off in Corkage. Life is a stage behind the velvet curtains of this intimate restaurant and bottle shop on Chapel Row. “There is a poignancy,” writes Jan Morris in the introduction to Charles Robertson’s Guide, “to this diminutive side of Bath, or if not a poignancy, a wistfulness.”

In The Landmark Handbook (1988) the then Prince of Wales wrote in the forward: “While I am fortunate to be the Patron or President of a great many charities, I have always been a particular enthusiast for the work of The Landmark Trust. Its philosophy accords closely with my own convictions that historic buildings need – indeed deserve – sympathetic and skilled repair and a viable contemporary purpose both to survive and thrive. It is wonderful that the Trust’s restored buildings give much enjoyment, as well as earn the income to support themselves and the charity that cares for them.” Much enjoyment – taking his now Majesty’s advice the toons are turned up! Min Hogg, Founding Editor of The World of Interiors, liked to have the last word, “The most successful houses reflect their surroundings.”

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Sudbrook Park + Richmond Golf Club Petersham London

All Square

The English Country Home edited by Vanessa Berridge was published in 1987. Despite its title, Sally Phipps writes about Mount River, a country house in County Kildare which would later be bought by the Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood. She notes, “The owners… worked with the architect John O’Connell, who is becoming to Irish houses what John Fowler was to English ones: many have benefitted from his keen appreciation of individual atmosphere and history.”

On an off-duty visit, John casts his unrivalled eye over Sudbrook Park, now Richmond Golf Clubhouse, Petersham. The outer London village is synonymous with Petersham Nurseries, the garden centre with a restaurant which has become the restaurant with a garden centre. Wealth is in the air. Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner observe in The Buildings of England London: South, 1983: “Petersham, for its small size, is unusually rich in fine houses of the late 17th century and 18th century whose dates and ownership require further investigation.” Grade I Listed Sudbrook, built to the design of James Gibbs, is the finest.

James Gibbs is a member of that exclusive club of architects whose surnames have become adjectives. Gibbsian, Corbusian, Miesian, Palladian. O’Connellian will come. The South London guide continues, “The enviable clubhouse of the golf course is the house by James Gibbs built in 1726 for the Duke of Argyll and Greenwich (the grandson of the Duchess of Lauderdale of Ham House). Nine bays, brick and stone dressings. Basement, main and upper storey. Slender segment-headed windows with aprons. Brick quoins, parapet. The main accent on the garden as well as the entrance side a giant portico of Corinthian columns with frieze and raised balustrade, projecting only slightly in front of the façade, so that the space behind the columns is actually a loggia. On the entrance side the effect has been spoiled by a tall extension forward of the portico. On the garden side a splendid open stair towards the entrance, starting in two flights parallel with the façade and then joining up into one. The plan is typically Palladian. The centre is a cube room which runs through from front to back portico. The other rooms open out from it, and on the upper floor have to be reached from the small staircase. The cube room is luxuriously decorated: giant coupled pilasters, coved ceiling, marble fireplace, doorways with very finely designed heads and pediment – Gibbs at his most baroque.”

“The garden front portico is in antis and so shallow it doesn’t rob the Cube Room of light and prospect,” explains John. As for the 10 metre Cube Room: “Everything is resolved. It’s a robust ensemble. James Gibbs’ workshops would have pulled all of this together and produced presentation drawings for the client. The stucco work is so emphatic. The subtle beading of the coupled Corinthian pilasters is very Mies van der Rohe in its attention to detailing!” Sudbrook Park has been the very grand clubhouse of Richmond Golf Club since the end of the 19th century.

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Carlo Scarpa + Banca Popolare + Castelvecchio Museum Verona

Strings Attached

The paradox. His architecture is so legible yet he defies classification. His work is half a century old yet timeless. His influence is widespread although he wasn’t especially prolific. His oeuvre is so Italian but he still inspired a generation of Irish architects. His personal rhetoric has universal relevance. Born in 1906, Carlo Scarpa lived, studied and worked in and around Venice all his life. Two of his projects in Verona, though, demonstrate his true brilliance. One, an augmentation of a bank. The other, a reawakening of a castle museum. Both reveal his sensitivity towards materials and textures as well as his ability to create memorable forms and spaces. It’s time to place him in the pantheon.

Of Banca Popolare, Carlo’s 1970s block is contextual in massing if not design. Or at least not detail. He was clearly unafraid of decoration. At a 1973 lecture, Carlo argued, “Why gilding? Gilding is not done in order to waste or squander money. For that matter, we wear rings of gold, not iron. Gold shines also in the dark, even in pitch darkness, if there is the slightest ray of light… So you go for precious metal, for what is rightly called tinsel. But if the form is good, if the objective results are developed in such a way that there is nothing to object to critically, this works to the advantage of the end result.” The gilding on Banca Popolare is subtly applied to just the base and capitals of the clerestory columns.

Stepping back into Piazza Nogara, taking in the full breadth of the building, it becomes apparent that Carlo is really presenting a reinvention of the palazzo façade. Looking beyond the vitrine windows and Frank Lloyd Wright style oeils de boeuf, the elevational plane is classically divided into a base, middle and clerestory. The bold proportions and monumental scale may channel Charles Rennie Mackintosh but little wonder Anne Davey Orr, former Publisher and Editor of Ulster Architect, remarks, “I’m sure Carlo Scarpa was influenced by his 16th century Venetian predecessor Andrea Palladio.” Banca Popolare is both emphatic and empathetic. And more contextual than it would first seem.

One motif that Carlo made his own is what could be called a “strings course” – parallel stepped lines, when sectioned forming ziggurats. It pops up everywhere in a multiplicity of forms: coffer, cornice, cutaway, parapet, plinth, porch. At Banca, he employs the motif as a giant T shaped corbel, aesthetically, if not functionally, supporting the vitrine windows.

“Thus his first major project was the castle at Verona,” explains conservation architect John O’Connell who is busy working in Beijing, London, Paris and Ireland. “It was very badly bombed by the Allies! He applied his very severe and practical approach whereby ‘The past is the past and if it has disappeared can now be rebuilt’. All or most museums of the western world have been inspired by his work but in particular this project. Carlo was the master of the whole museum world post World War II. He’d a very rigorous approach towards presentation and conservation employing simple and very high quality interventions.” Carlo’s new building elements assimilated in the architecture of Castelvecchio may have mellowed with age, but they still represent a revolution in the perception and display of artworks. His use of polished concrete for interiors is a forerunner to the early 21st century popularity of this material.

King Vittorio Emanuele III opened the 14th century castle turned museum in 1926. But it wasn’t until half a century later that the building’s potential was truly realised. While other Modernists jettisoned the past, Carlo’s work from the postwar era to the late 1970s venerated and transformed it. And Castelvecchio was no exception. He maintained the structure’s original integrity whilst developing an unfolding sequence of spaces and voids and vistas and objects, ceaselessly theatrical, masterful, virtuosic, populated with asymmetric incident. There’s an endless play between past and present, architecture and art.

Historical and aesthetic clarity is achieved through the coexistence of overlaying fragments of construction, selective excavation and creative demolition. This approach reaches a climax in the setting of the statue of Cangrande I Delia Scala. Frank Lloyd Wright’s “destruction of the room as a box” is taken to its ultimate conclusion. Who else but Carlo Scarpa would envisage “construction of the void as a gallery”? Demolishing the end bay of the Napoleonic wing in the courtyard, he dissolves corners to position the statue on a cantilevered platform. This complex spatial organisation thrillingly delivers visibility above and below ramparts and across and around boardwalks. Such movement – there is nothing static about Cangrande on his horse. The outer Roman tiles on the roof above are pared back to expose an underlay of green copper. Implied delamination of existing solid form leads to a richly layered materiality throughout the building.

“Stones at the top of the building can continue upwards a little, and I would like them to vibrate in the light of the sky,” Carlo lectured. “Then the sky can enter in so many ways and I would almost obtain a ‘quivering of form’, like the Ancients. And so, with a sunset grey or red, whatever it will be, I will feel their light penetrating within. In this case, the reference is to Andrea Palladio who laid his stones at a distance of two and a half or three centimetres with gaps remaining. This is what I discovered one day and what caused me to explain, ‘Good Lord, how beautiful, how expressive it is, what meaning it gives!’” An exaggeration of this effect is the medieval butterfly parapet of Castelvecchio which carves the sunrise grey or blue over Verona.

John recalls, “He enjoyed a small but very high status practice and would have met all the ‘Stars’ from Le Corbusier to Louis Kahn.” Early on in his career John met Louis, describing him as charming, self effacing, very humble. “Carlo was Professor of Architecture in Venice. This role allowed him to think everything out first, to distil ideas through academia. There is a distinct geometry to his work. He was the successor to Josef Hoffmann.”

Pantheon placement continuing, “Carlo’s pupil Gae Aulenti was a superb architect. Her greatest work is the Quai D’Orsay in Paris. Some say she was appointed because her views on life were in line with the then President Mitterrand. It is excellent – well conceived and executed. The National Art Museum project in Barcelona is commanding but weak in parts. Not her fault as the building is a late 19th century bombastic structure and the collections are mixed or of varied quality! A must, and to be seen.”

“Back to Carlo Scarpa,” breathes John. “His most engaging and demanding project is the Memorial Chapel commissioned by the Brion family outside Venice near Verona.” It’s a commemoration of death in concrete and water. The curtain wall is pierced with two interlocking unglazed oeils de boeuf framing a view of the meditation pavilion: a metaphorical section of Andrea Palladio’s interlocking columns on the loggia of Andrea Palladio’s Palazzo Chiericatti in Vicenza where Carlo played as a child; an eternal love symbol; a cross eyed bull. “Also of great importance is his extension to the Canova Museum in the Veneto as well.”

How would John O’Connell sum up Carlo Scarpa? “He sought and I believe achieved a way of detailing and using modern materials so that they conveyed the value and spiritual quality one finds in Italy with the sense of craftmanship so vital and valued in the heroic architecture of Europe from Ancient Greek times to the pre industrial world.” International architect Alfred Cochrane, currently hot in demand from Beirut to Rome, is another admirer: “Carlo Scarpa! A genius! A god in the Seventies architecture firmament.” Pantheon placement complete.