The Remains of the Afternoon
It’s one of the key English houses to see, totally individual and unlike anywhere else. Set between Elizabethan to Victorian built form is a display of interiors from the third quarter of the 18th century, that fascinating period containing the stylistic segue from high rococo to neoclassicism. Even a taste for the macabre in art – Guido Reni’s touching St Sebastián in the Picture Gallery and his bloodied snowy Massacre of the Innocents in the Corridor and Alessandro Turchi’s equally gory Massacre of the Innocents in the Cabinet Room – cannot dispel the current glory of the place.
Corsham Court is positioned close to its namesake town, separated only to the west by a sea of wavy yews. A magical first glimpse of the south facing entrance front is captured through a gated archway linking two 16th century ancillary ranges. There’s never an excuse for missing Vespers: St Bartholomew’s Church is to one side of the short driveway. To the east and north are nine hectares of gardens and across the haha is a five hectare lake. The estate extends to 188 hectares.
First impressions are of a golden hued stone Elizabethan house. This is both true and false: a concurrency of reality. Thomas Smythe’s house of 1582 is clearly visible, not least on his central datestone, but Lancelot “Capability” Brown, acting as architect and landscape designer from 1760 to 1780, replicated the existing bays on either side of the central forecourt. Further works would follow. In the East Wing, the family accommodation, the additional bay lights the Breakfast Room. The original bay lights the Library. In the West Wing, open to visitors for centuries, the additional bay is part of the Cabinet Room but is walled off – too many paintings to hang. The original bay is curtained off by the fourposter of the State Bedchamber.
The Cabinet Room and State Bedchamber form part of Corsham Court’s celebrated suite of State Rooms and are joined by the Picture Gallery and the Octagon Room. Original blood red damask wall hangings and chair coverings complement furniture by the Adam brothers, Chippendale, John Cobb and Thomas Johnson, as well as two family collections of Old Masters. Move over Wilton House near Salisbury with its double cube room – Lancelot’s triple cube (in multiples of 7.3 metres) Picture Gallery is breathtaking from its symmetrical hang of masterpieces to its deep coved and coffered plasterwork ceiling. Unlike the lead paned mullioned windows in most of the principal rooms, the Picture Gallery has five 12 pane sash windows framing views of the lake. The adjoining Cabinet Room has two sash windows, also on the east elevation. The Library and Picture Gallery appear in the 1993 film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day starring Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins. Living up to his moniker, Lancelot also designed the lake, completed by Sir Humphry Repton four decades later, and the Gothic Bath House.
The second generation of the Methuen family to own Corsham Court still required more space for their original art collection so commissioned John Nash to remodel the north part of the house. That didn’t end well. Despite charging quadruple his original fee proposal, the ambitious Gothic extension was poorly constructed and damp – not so good for paintings. Completed in 1805, it was demolished 41 years later. The polygonal dairy wing with its row of pointy gabled windows is all that remains of his extension. John Nash’s Library and the Dining Room chimneypiece, both in the south part of the house, survive. He also further Gothicised the Bath House.
Discovering John Nash’s fame sometimes slipped to infamy – there’s a reason these days why both planning design and detailed delivery architectural practices are employed for major developments – in 1849 the Methuen family chose Thomas Bellemy, not a household name this time, to design the rebuilding of the north part of the house. His monumental neo Elizabethan north elevation with its staircase tower rising above the roofs is collegiate in tone, best viewed from the far end of the long lawn bordered by deciduous trees. This is its third incarnation: John Nash’s Gothic front had replaced a 1749 Palladian design by Nathaniel Ireson. Thomas Bellemy also inserted windows between the pair of bays of the central setback on the entrance front. Revelling in a typically Victorian eclecticism, his Staircase Hall and Corridors are Italian Renaissance.
The west front is similar in style to the south front. The little published east front is the most playful elevation. Lancelot Brown’s restrained Palladian design – like Alan Hollinghurst’s description of a house in Our Evenings, 2024, “Sash windows up and down were gleams and depths across the great plain face of the building” – was jollied up by John Nash’s Gothic first floor oriel window and turreted trimmings. Its papery architecture is straight off the drawing board. Under John Nash’s remodelling, the Octagon Room lost two of its four chamfered walls so is now six sided. Its centrepiece is a 1790s octagonal rent table. The Dining Room and Music Room unlike the State Suite are in Thomas Bellemy’s neo Elizabethan mode. There is nothing staged about the interiors; no curator has been at work. It is an aesthetic education to be within these walls – first those of the estate, then those of the house.
Splinter Corsham Court into its constituent parts, extant and demolished, disperse and redistribute them, lower the grandeur while raising the vernacular, and Corsham High Street will appear. Parallel lines of Elizabethan to Victorian built form terminate at The Methuen Arms, a three bay three storey Georgian hotel. Most of the buildings share the same golden hued stone of Corsham Court. Others are harled and painted mustard or skin colour. And everywhere, estate and town, the peacocks, symbols of beauty, rebirth, wealth and pride.
