(524) Beckford of Fonthill, Basing Park and Stepleton House - part 1

Beckford of Fonthill

This post has been divided into two parts. This first part contains the introduction to the Beckford family, and an account of the architectural history of their Fonthill estate in Wiltshire. Part 2 contains an account of their other houses, and the genealogical record of the family.

The Beckford family claimed descent from a family of that name that is said to have originated from Beckford (Glos, now Worcs), but whether or not this was so, the origins of Peter Beckford (1643-1710), with whom the genealogy in Part 2 of this post begins, are obscure. His father, another Peter Beckford, may have been the citizen and butcher of London, whose son Peter was apprenticed in 1658. In 1661, the young Peter Beckford obtained a passage with Royal Navy vessels to Jamaica, and although his presence in the island is not otherwise evidenced until 1667, it seems likely that he did emigrate then, or shortly afterwards. The island of Jamaica had been captured by the British from Spain in 1655, and the potential it offered for rapid riches through the production of sugar by a workforce of African slaves and indentured servants was quickly realised. Although Peter Beckford's origins are obscure it would seem that he was not without access to capital and influence, and it may be that he was supported by his presumed kinsman, Richard Beckford, a rich Atlantic merchant based in London. Life for white settlers in the Caribbean in the 17th century had a distinct tendency to be 'nasty, brutish and short', but Peter Beckford seems to have been a survivor. By the 1670s he was building up his holdings of land and buildings on the island and becoming a significant figure in island life, and the process continued, culminating in his acting appointment as Lieutenant Governor of the island in 1702. His elder son, Peter Beckford (1673-1735), continued the process of acquiring wealth, influence and political power, but he seems to have had a vicious temper and found it easy to make enemies. In 1698 he was accused of murdering a judge but he avoided conviction because of the strength of his father's influence both in Jamaica and in London. In 1709 he had contrived to be chosen as Speaker of the House of Assembly, but his opponents made a concerted effort to unseat him at a meeting on 3 April 1710, and something approaching a riot resulted. His father, hearing the tumult, rushed to the courthouse, fearing his son's life was in danger, but collapsed and died en route.

By the time of his death in 1735, Peter Beckford was far and away the richest man in Jamaica, and his total net worth may have been as much as £300,000 sterling, which would put him on a par with the wealthier British aristocrats of the time. His extensive property was 'a testament to [his] commercial acumen and sheer ruthlessness', and his wealth was, of course, very largely created by the efforts of his slaves. In 1722 he settled most of his Jamaican property on himself for life and then on his eldest son Peter Beckford (1705-37), but when the latter showed signs of mental imbalance he wrote a will in rather different terms, leaving Peter his English property and dividing his Jamaican estates between his widow and younger sons. The conflict between the two documents led to disagreements within the family and eventually to complex legal cases, and the position was not helped by the death of Peter junior in 1737, just two years after his father. When the dust settled, the principal inheritor of the estate was Peter's second son, William Beckford (1709-70). Peter's younger sons, although they were left modest property interests at the western end of Jamaica, were chiefly resident in England, where Julines Beckford (c.1717-64) and Francis Beckford (1723-68) subsequently acquired landed estates of their own: in the former case by purchase and in the latter through marriage, although neither survived in the possession of descendants with the Beckford name for more than a few years.

All of Peter Beckford's sons were sent to England to be educated at Westminster School, and those who survived to adulthood went on to Oxford or one of the inns of court. William Beckford intended a medical career, and went on to study at the University of Leiden and to receive practical training in Paris. Soon after his father's death, however, he gave up his studies and returned to Jamaica to manage the family estates. He remained there until 1744 when he moved permanently to England, where he operated as the agent for his own estates, selling the produce on the English market and sending out supplies to Jamaica. He also became involved in the financial services industry, and it was probably through money-lending that he greatly increased his fortune. He sought a seat in Parliament in order to defend the interests of the West Indian planters and slaveowners, and was also active in the administration of the city of London, serving twice as Lord Mayor in 1762-63 and 1769-70. His moderate support for John Wilkes and his willingness to stand up to King George III gave him credibility with, and enthusiastic support from, the populace of London, but the fact that his wealth came largely from outside the city, his brash manners, and his colonial morality, made him less popular with his fellow Aldermen. Political opponents were quick to spot the double-standard involved in his support for the liberty of the Englishman and his defence of slavery, although very few in England yet acknowledged the rights of slaves to equal treatment under the law, or felt the disgust which slavery excites today. Beckford was also proud of his shoal of illegitimate children, for eight of whom - all born before his marriage to the widow of another Jamaican planter in 1756 - he made generous provision in his will. He understood the need for a man of his background and exceptional wealth to assimilate into the landed elite if he and his successors were to be successful in public life, and it was no doubt with this in mind that he purchased the Fonthill estate soon after his arrival in England in 1744, and set about improving, and later rebuilding, the house there. He also went on to buy the Witham Friary estate in 1761 and to build a new house there; and to purchase the Eaton Bray estate in Bedfordshire in 1763.

When William Beckford died in 1770, his illegitimate children were all either adults or in their late teens. His only legitimate child, William Thomas Beckford (1760-1844), who was the heir to almost all his real estate, was, however, not quite ten years old. Nominally the young lad was in the guardianship of Lord Cobham, Lord Lyttelton and Lord Camden, but in practice he was in the control of his over-protective mother, who sheltered him from the rough and tumble of a public school and had him educated at home by a series of tutors (including Alexander Cozens and Sir William Chambers), before sending him with a tutor to complete his studies in Switzerland. He emerged from his schooling good looking, over-sensitive and self-indulgent, but with exceptional talents in the arts and with the authority and confidence of great wealth. He was married in 1783 but was pretty clearly bi-sexual, and involved himself in a long affair with his cousin's wife, while at the same time allegedly engaging in homosexual romps with William 'Kitty' Courtenay (later 3rd Earl of Devon). When news of the latter was published in the press, Beckford decided that it would be prudent to go abroad to avoid any risk of prosecution, and he went to Switzerland (with his wife, who died there after childbirth) and later to Portugal. His sojourns abroad exposed his Romantic nature to sublime landscape and architecture, and to the beauties of monasticism, and when he returned to England in 1796 he was fired with the determination to build a cruciform Gothic retreat on the estate at Fonthill in the form of an abbey. Mutual enthusiasm between Beckford and his architect, James Wyatt, saw the project grow from the original project for a folly into a replacement main house for the estate. Work began in 1796 and after the first central tower collapsed in 1800, was renewed on an even larger scale. The cost was astronomical, and more than even Beckford could afford, especially at a time when his income from his Jamaican estates was plummeting as a result of increased costs and the falling price of sugar on the world market. In the end, mounting debts and failing energy obliged him to sell the estate with the interior of the abbey unfinished, and three years later the central tower collapsed once more, leaving the house a permanent ruin. Beckford moved to a house in the Royal Crescent in Bath, and built a new, but more robust tower (now known as Beckford's Tower) on the hill behind the house, to the design of H.E. Goodridge.

Houses on the Fonthill estate, Wiltshire

Fonthill: the locations of the five building sites on the estate.

The building history of the Fonthill estate is exceptionally complicated, with nine short-lived houses having been constructed on five different sites within the estate between the 16th and 21st century. This is partly accounted for by the fact that what had been a single estate in the 17th and 18th centuries became divided in the 19th and 20th centuries, with one or more houses on each property. A fuller account of the descent and building history can be found in Caroline Dakers (ed.), Fonthill Recovered, 2018.

Fonthill I: the Tudor, Jacobean and early Georgian house

There was a house surrounded by a park at Fonthill by the mid 16th century. The earliest house of which anything is known was probably built between 1575 and 1600  for Sir James Mervyn (1529-1611), kt., and stood on the site of the present village cricket pitch on the west side of Fonthill Lake, about halfway between the villages of Fonthill Bishop and Fonthill Gifford. A painting of the house from the east, signed by Robert Thacker (d. 1687) and painted probably in the 1680s, shows a late Tudor or Jacobean house with alterations and additions made for Lord Cottington in the 1630s, at much the same time as he was working on his house near London, Hanworth Palace. 

Fonthill House: painting of the house from the east in the 1680s, signed by Robert Thacker.

The house was of two storeys with a further floor of gabled attics, and consisted of a five bay hall range flanked by long projecting wings: it is likely that the wings projected correspondingly to the west and that the house was thus H-shaped rather than U-shaped. The hall range had a slightly recessed centre containing a balustraded single-storey porch, and shaped gables of two different designs either side of the central triangular gable; the shaped gables may have been an early 17th century alteration. The gables on the wings were all of the plainer triangular form. A low pierced screen wall ran between the ends of wings, enclosing an inner court. Beyond this was a larger outer court, wider than the house, which was divided by stone walls with open balustrades and also bisected by a canal crossed by a small bridge. The entrance into the outer court from the approach drive was marked by an elaborate gatehouse with a first-floor room over the entrance archway and four tall pepper-pot turrets at the angles, strongly reminiscent of the larger gateway at Tixall House (Staffs), which was built about 1580. To the north of the main block of the house were two parallel service ranges, also of two storeys, but lower than the main building. Beyond these, at the right-hand side of the picture, is the detached stable block built in the 1630s for Lord Cottington in a precociously classical style, with a hipped roof, projecting wings and tall windows in the centre with lunettes above.

Fonthill House: view from the south-east, attributed to Antonio Joli, c.1750-55,
showing house and landscape as remodelled by Francis Cottington and William Beckford.

Fonthill House: the remodelled mansion from the north-east (detail from a view attributed
to Antonio Joli, c.1750-55. In the background can be seen the new Fonthill Gifford church.

The next visual evidence for the development of the house comes from a group of four paintings from a variety of viewpoints, executed between 1740 and the mid 1750s, which show that the Tudor and Jacobean house had been remodelled before 1740, replacing the gabled attics of the main block with a full third storey, infilling the recessed centre of the hall range to create a new seven bay east front between the wings, and creating a new main south front with an attic storey above the cornice and a three-bay centrepiece with giant pilasters and a pediment surmounted by statues. The service wings had been altered less, although sash windows had apparently replaced the original mullioned ones on the east side of the north-east wing, and the north front of the main house had been regularised. The stables seem not to have been changed at all. Since there is known to have been work in progress at Fonthill in 1738, it seems likely that the earliest painting (by John Lambert, dated 1740) was commissioned to celebrate the completion of the remodelling.

The house that Alderman William Beckford bought in 1744-45 was thus, externally at least, fairly up-to-date. The paintings that he commissioned in the mid 1750s - now attributed to Antonio Joli - show that either Francis Cottington or Beckford himself had infilled much of the area between the wings on the west front, turning the original single-pile hall range into a double pile, probably in the interest of creating more state rooms on the ground floor, such as a large saloon for entertaining. The most striking differences between the views of 1740 and those of the 1750s concern the landscape setting in which the house sat. The park had been completely transformed, with the clearance of much of the woodland around the house, the damming of the Tisbury Stream to form a new linear lake, the relocation of the public road to the east side of the lake, and the creation of a new approach drive which crossed the lake by means of a five-arched bridge. Alongside the landscaping works, Beckford created a number of new structures within the landscape.

Fonthill House: the entrance gateway, attributed to John Vardy. Image: Nicholas Kingsley. Some rights reserved.

The most striking of these is the triumphal arch at the northern entrance to the estate, which has distinctive bands of knobbly rustication, also found on the (now lost) entrance arch of the boat house-cum-cold bath at the northern end of the lake, and has been plausibly attributed to John Vardy. In 1747 Beckford obtained a faculty for taking down the old church of St Nicholas, Fonthill Gifford (which probably stood north-west of the house, although it is not shown on any of the views of the house) and building a replacement in the village of Fonthill Gifford, outside the park. This was a simple rectangular building with a front derived from Inigo Jones' St Paul, Covent Garden: this too could have been designed by Vardy. The Mervyn, Cottington and other memorials from the old church were not transferred to its successor, but were said to have been unceremoniously buried on the old site: they may still be there, and it would be wonderful if, as the antiquary Sir Richard Colt Hoare said 'some future antiquary may hit upon their place of deposit, and bring them again to light'.

Although little is known about any works William Beckford may have undertaken to the interior of the old house, it is known that on the 12-13 February 1755 workmen completing a new ceiling in the north wing lit a fire in a non-functioning chimney, and that the blaze that followed destroyed most of the north range and also the great hall, with a valuable organ installed only 18 months earlier. Beckford himself was in London at the time, but his staff and neighbours were able to remove the furniture and to save the majority of the south range. Beckford's library was, however, destroyed. Press reports stated that the house would cost £30,000 to rebuild but was only insured for £6,000, but Beckford was wealthy enough to shrug off the loss, and he determined not to restore the old house but to build a replacement, and the remains of the old house - apart from the stables which were unaffected by the fire and were retained - were demolished when its successor was complete.

Fonthill II: Fonthill Splendens and The Pavilion

The new house which Alderman Beckford began in 1756 as a replacement for the first Fonthill House was constructed on a new site, just to the south of its predecessor. It was apparently designed by a London builder named Hoare, otherwise known only as the designer of a court house at Maidstone (Kent), who was presumably known to Beckford for works in the metropolis. (An earlier attribution to James Paine is now discredited).  It was a sumptuous Palladian mansion of the type of Houghton Hall (Norfolk), and therefore slightly old-fashioned for its date, but it was extensively illustrated in the fourth volume of Vitruvius Britannicus published in 1767. 

Fonthill Splendens: watercolour by John Buckler on the eve of demolition, 1806. Image: Wiltshire Museum.

The immensely grand entrance front consisted of a nine bay central block linked by curved colonnades of coupled columns to two pavilion wings, five bays square. The main block was of two storeys above a high basement, and had a pedimented giant portico approached by flights of steps which occupied the whole width of the basement storey, and Venetian windows in the end bays of the piano nobile. The pavilions had low pyramid roofs surmounted by cupolas which disguised chimneys. The rear elevation was also of nine bays and had a pedimented centrepiece with Ionic giant pilasters. This feature, and the Venetian windows in the end bays of the first floor, echoed the design of the entrance front; to either side were recessed walls with blind arcading, screening the service courts behind the pavilions.

Fonthill Splendens: the rear elevation as illustrated in Vitruvius Britannicus (1767).
It echoed the form of the entrance front but with less movement in the design. 

Vitruvius Britannicus gives plans of the basement level, piano nobile, and attic storey of the main block, as well as of the ground floor of the pavilions, although only the basement floor plan is annotated with the names of the rooms. The left-hand pavilion contained the kitchens and associated offices; the right-hand pavilion the laundry and brewery. 

Fonthill Splendens: plan of the ground floor level, annotated with room names, from Vitruvius Britannicus, 1767.

Fonthill Splendens: plan of the piano nobile, from Vitruvius Britannicus, 1767.

An undecorated doorway in the centre of the house, below the portico, gave access to a hall running through the house from front to back. The basement of the main block was vaulted throughout, and included four modest polite rooms: common and eating parlours, a library (with some 1500 books) and bedroom, as well as the butler's pantry. It is likely that these spaces provided private accommodation for the Beckfords when they were not entertaining.

Statue of William Beckford from the gallery at
Fonthill House, now in Ironmongers Hall, London 

The interiors of the piano nobile were on a grand scale, and work on fitting them out continued intermittently until Alderman Beckford's death in 1770.  The 'Egyptian Hall' entered from the portico, was some 36 ft square, paved with black and white marble, and decorated with murals by Andrea Casali, and a new organ, replacing that lost in the fire at the previous house. Behind the hall was a saloon. The principal staircase lay to the right of the hall and saloon, and beyond this was the great picture gallery, some 69 ft long, with ceiling panels by Casali, a statue of Beckford by J.F. Moore (now in Ironmongers' Hall in London), and a celebrated collection of pictures. To the left of the hall and saloon were four further rectangular rooms, forming a state apartment, which included a dining room, bedroom, and a room hung with Gobelin tapestries, which may have been used as a drawing room. The principal interiors had chimneypieces by J.F. Moore and Thomas Banks, and pier glasses by Chippendale. Robert Adam made designs for fitting up the parlour and library in the basement in 1763, but it is thought these were not carried out.

Alderman William Beckford died in 1770 and his son came of age in 1781. Although in intermittent exile from 1784-96, he commissioned designs for alterations to the house from Soane in 1787 (a new gallery) and from James Wyatt after 1795 (refitting the library), but he never liked the house, which he described as 'false Greek and false Egyptian..[with] small doors and mean casements...dauberies a la Casali... ridiculous chimneypieces and... wooden chalk-covered columns without grace, nobility or harmony'. By 1796 he had conceived the idea of building an 'abbey' in the grounds, initially as a retreat from the main house, but after 1802 he decided to demolish his father's house and to use the stone to enlarge the Abbey as his sole residence. The east pavilion was demolished first, then in 1807 the main block, leaving just the west pavilion.

Casali painting from the gallery of Fonthill House showing Astronomy and Architecture
holding the elevation of the house (now at Dyrham Park). Image: National Trust.

Many of the fixtures and fittings of the house found an after-life elsewhere. Wyatt took the iron staircase balustrade and built it into the house he was constructing at the time at Dodington (Glos); a chimneypiece by Moore and a ceiling painting by Casali are at Beaminster Manor (Dorset), and five more Casali panels, including one showing Architecture holding the house plan, went to the Theatre Royal, Bath in 1801, and from there to Dyrham Park (Glos) in 1845. Two 16th century Italian chimneypieces went to Pythouse, Newton (Wilts) and a Gothic chimneypiece at Bathampton House, Steeple Langford (Wilts) is probably also from Fonthill.

The surviving west pavilion - originally built as a laundry and brewhouse - was retained as guest accommodation for use in connection with Fonthill Abbey. After the estate was sold to John Farquhar in 1822, it was further altered by Thomas Harrington, proprietor of the Black Horse Inn, Salisbury, who created a common coffee room, private sitting rooms and bedrooms to make it 'an elegant Inn' for the use of visitors to the estate, but before long John Farquhar's nephew, George Mortimer was in residence.

Fonthill House: view of 'The Pavilion' when it was in use as an inn for visitors to the estate, from Ackermann's Repository of the Arts, 1823.

Fonthill House: engraving of 'The Pavilion' in 1828 after conversion into a house for George Mortimer.

George Mortimer commissioned (the plans survive but are unfortunately unsigned) the enlargement of the pavilion with a front portico and new offices at the rear, while the interior was recast to provide a library, dining room and billiard room on the ground floor, and two drawing rooms, a boudoir, bedrooms and nurseries upstairs. At the same time he built a woollen mill at the south end of the lake (finished by 1826), a stable block on the hillside south of the Pavilion and a new bridge (dated 1826) at the north end of the lake. The woollen mill, which cost £20,000 but seems to have been erected without thought for its impact on the picturesque qualities of the site, was a financial disaster, and had ceased trading by 1829, when Mortimer sold his part of the estate to James Morrison.

In the early 1830s, Morrison brought in J.B. Papworth, whom he had employed previously to remodel his suburban villa at Balham (Surrey), to remodel the Pavilion. Relatively little was done to the exterior, except for the enlargement of the ground floor windows, the provision of canopies to the windows and first floor balcony, and the addition of urns to the parapet. Inside, however, all the rooms were redecorated, new floors, ceilings and chimneypieces were installed, and new suites of furniture were made, also to Papworth's designs. In 1844 Papworth and Morrison fell out over works at Morrison's Basildon Park (Berks) estate, and in 1846-50 a further remodelling in the Italianate taste was commissioned from David Brandon. 

Fonthill House: 'the Pavilion' converted into an Italianate house by David Brandon.

The Pavilion was given an additional storey and an Italianate tower, and the offices were enlarged to the north. The house was also given a new name, being known thenceforward as Fonthill House, and was given to Morrison's second son, Alfred Morrison (d. 1897). Alfred began improving the house and estate in the 1850s, and also began the formation of an important collection of paintings and objets d'art, especially Chinese porcelain. He employed the decorator Owen Jones to design new furniture, fabrics, carpets and fittings for a room at Fonthill, and also used him to decorate his large London house (16 Carlton House Terrace). After 1862 he turned to George Devey to design cottages on the estate and, later, the curved wing walls with balustrades either side of the grand Georgian archway at the entrance to the estate. In the 1880s an unidentified architect added three large top-lit galleries to the house to provide more space for Alfred Morrison's rapidly growing collections. When Morrison died, comparatively young, in 1897, he left Fonthill House to his widow, Mabel (d. 1933) for life, and his son and ultimate heir, Hugh Morrison (d. 1931), decided to build a new house on the estate at Little Ridge [see below]. Mabel actually gave up Fonthill House in 1912 after her last daughter was married and moved to a smaller property in Hampshire, and Hugh Morrison moved into Fonthill temporarily while Little Ridge was enlarged. 

Fonthill House: demolition of the house (including the last surviving fragment of Fonthill Splendens) in progress in September 1921.
Image: The Sphere, 24 September 1921.

Work was interrupted during the First World War, but once Little Ridge was ready for occupation in 1920, he decided to demolish Fonthill House, which was pulled down in the second half of 1921 and the building materials sold. The name Fonthill House was then transferred to Little Ridge.

Fonthill III: Fonthill Abbey

The great Gothick folly called Fonthill Abbey built from 1796 onwards for William Thomas Beckford (1760-1844) is arguably the most famous building of its time, despite existing for less than thirty years. Its sublime scale generated a frisson of Gothick horror which captured the public imagination and has continued to do so ever since.

Beckford never had much enthusiasm for his father's Palladian house, Fonthill 'Splendens', which he inherited in 1770. His tastes were always for the exotic: as early as Christmas 1781 he laid on an elaborate orientally-themed entertainment at Fonthill with the assistance of the set designer Philip de Loutherbourg, which in turn inspired him to write the famous Gothick novel, Vathek (1786). From 1784-96 he spent much of his time abroad, and particularly in Portugal, where he conceived a passion for St Anthony of Padua, in particular, and for the monastic idea in general. In 1790 he began planning to build a Gothick tower on Stop Beacon, towards the western edge of his estate at Fonthill, as a retreat from the main house. He engaged James Wyatt, perhaps then the most famous architect in England, to provide designs, but as the two men egged one another on, the idea of a tower was expanded into an abbey and the site was changed from Stop Beacon to a flatter site further east on Hinkley Hill. Work began in 1796, at first on 'a pleasure building in the shape of an abbey' designed to resemble 'a pretty ruined convent', and drawing heavily on the Portuguese abbey of Batalha. 

Fonthill Abbey: view of the house from the south-west in 1799, by J.M.W. Turner. This shows the original short spire, which collapsed in 1800.

Work was carried on 'at a monstrous rate', keeping up to 500 men busy at any one time, and at first the building was largely of timber and lath-and-plaster, reducing costs and enabling rapid progress at the expense of structural stability. By November 1796 the abbey was 200 feet long and 'a good part of the building' had reached the first floor, and by the following year a tower 145 feet high, a gallery, and a chapel to St Anthony of Padua had been completed. The details of the design continued to evolve as construction proceeded, but the essential concept for the building was for four long narrow ranges forming a cruciform design 350 ft by 290 ft, meeting at an octagonal space under a central tower. The original crossing tower had a short spire, but this partially collapsed in 1800, and had to be rebuilt. 

Fonthill Abbey: the house as built, viewed from the north-west, showing the final form of the central tower, from an engraved view by J. Buckler, 1821.

Fonthill Abbey: plan as built, from Rutter's Delineations of Fonthill, 1823.

Fonthill Abbey: section of the house on the north-south axis.

Fonthill Abbey: engraving of the central octagonal hall, 1820.

From 1802, Beckford decided to make the Abbey his main residence, leading to an increase in the domestic accommodation, and to the reconstruction of large parts of the building in stone. The new central tower, an astonishing 280 feet high, was completed in 1809 (the idea for a spire that would have rivalled Salisbury Cathedral having been given up), the north wing in 1812, and the east wing, with the main reception rooms, was never finished inside. The west wing was occupied by a vast entrance hall, with a hammerbeam roof and steps across its whole width to the soaring octagonal central hall, some fifty feet high. From the octagon there opened St Michael's Gallery to the south, and King Edward's Gallery to the north, forming an immense vista running the entire 350 ft. length of the building. A short south-west range contained the habitable quarters where Beckford actually lived.

Fonthill Abbey: aquatint of St Michael's Gallery by John Rutter, 1823.

By 1822, Beckford was running out of money and energy to complete his building, and he sold the estate in its entirety to John Farquhar, a rich eccentric, who intended to carry on the building work, but before he could do so, the great central tower collapsed on 21 December 1825. Farquhar was in the house at the time, but was unhurt, although he died the following year. After much legal wrangling the courts decided that he had died intestate, and that his estate should be divided between a large number of nieces and nephews. George Mortimer took The Pavilion and his woollen mill as his share, but the rest of the estate was sold and divided. 

Fonthill Abbey: engraving of the ruins after the collapse of the central tower in 1825.

The Abbey was bought by John Benett of nearby Pythouse, who could afford to do very little with his new property. The rubble of the collapsed building was partly cleared in 1828, and the east wing was converted into a residence on a shoestring, with new service accommodation built on to it. The surviving north tower (the Lancaster Tower) was buttressed to reinforce it, and there were plans to convert it into a chapel; the Canterbury Towers at the end of the east wing were also still standing at this time. Beckford visited in 1835 and was not impressed: he is said to have asked whether Benett's new building 'was not intended as a workhouse for the use of the Poor Law Commissioners'. In 1844 Benett sold the estate to Richard Grosvenor, Earl Grosvenor, who succeeded his father the following year as 2nd Marquess of Westminster. He finally cleared the rubble of the collapsed house in 1845, but for a decade he dithered about whether to build a new house at Fonthill or on an estate he acquired in 1853 at Stalbridge (Dorset). He considered rebuilding on the site of Beckford's abbey, or restoring part of it, but when he finally contracted for a new house at Fonthill in 1857 it was for a new site a little further south-east, where New Fonthill Abbey had been erected by 1862. The surviving fragment of the old abbey was repaired and a cloister was added to the east in 1857, so that it could be used as a picnic spot from the new house.

Fonthill Abbey: the surviving fragment and the 'cloister' of 1857 built by William Burn for the 2nd Marquess of Westminster in 1857.
Image: Country Life.

Old Fonthill Abbey: the new house built onto the surviving fragment of Beckford's abbey in 2016.

The surviving fragment of Old Fonthill Abbey descended to Niel Rimington (d. 2009), and was sold with 1500 acres to the present owners, Mr. & Mrs Stephen Morant, after his death. They undertook urgent repairs to the Lancaster Tower, and then commissioned a new house from Mark Watson, of Watson, Bertram & Fell of Bath, which was linked to Burn's 'cloisters' and the Lancaster Tower by an arcaded range echoing the design of the 'cloisters'. The new house, which was built in 2016 and is of modest size, has two low storeys with irregular gabled attics. It is designed in a loosely neo-vernacular style and built of the same Chilmark stone as the Lancaster Tower. It deliberately does not assert itself against the strong verticals of Beckford's abbey, but makes the site once more a respectable centre for this section of the Fonthill estate.

Fonthill IV: New Fonthill Abbey

In 1846, the 2nd Marquess of Westminster invited William Burn to make designs for a new house at Fonthill. The initial intention was to build on the site of Beckford's abbey, and in 1845-46 the Canterbury Towers were demolished along with everything else except the Lancaster Tower and the three bays beyond it. There does not seem to have been any great hurry to make progress, and Burn worked on his designs for six years without anything been done on site, although a drawing of the proposed new mansion was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850. 

New Fonthill Abbey: design by William Burn for a new house, 1847. This was very similar to the design exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850.
Image: RIBA Drawings Collection.

In 1853, however, the Marquess bought the Stalbridge estate in Dorset and scrapped the idea of building at Fonthill, inviting Burn to make new designs for a house at Stalbridge instead. In January 1857 the focus switched back to Fonthill, and work began on a reduced version of the house proposed in 1850, not on the site of Beckford's house but on a new site a little to the south-east and lower down the hillside. Work was substantially complete by March 1862, when the Marquess slept in the house for the first time, and in September a celebration was held for the tenants and villagers to mark the family's occupation of the new building.

New Fonthill Abbey: ground plan from Ordnance Survey
25" map of 1886. 

The style of the house was described as 'French Scottish Baronial', but it was a big-boned, dour building. The main entrance was on the north side, set in the base of a round tower at the north-west angle of the house. The elevations were of two and three storeys, with a skyline given hectic variety by gables, gabled dormers, balustrades, bartisans with conical candle-snuffer roofs, and tall chimneystacks. The elevations below were, by contrast, remarkably plain, with no architraves to the majority of the windows. The north and west fronts had a studied if balanced irregularity, but the south front overlooking the gardens had a more formal symmetry, with three plain bays between two slightly-projecting gabled wings. The wings had canted single-storey bay windows with balustraded roofs, while in the centre was a broader rectangular bay with a similar balustraded roof. 

New Fonthill Abbey: the north (entrance) front of William Burn's house, built in 1857-62 and photographed in 1901. Image: Country Life.

New Fonthill Abbey: the south (garden) front of William Burn's house, photographed in 1901. Image: Country Life.

North-east of the main house was a two-storey service block with the stable court beyond it, which occupied a much larger area than the main house. Unfortunately, no plans are known to survive of the house as built, and, remarkably, no photographs of the interiors have yet been traced.

In 1879 the dowager Marchioness of Westminster sold her life interest in the New Abbey to her son-in-law, Sir Michael Shaw-Stewart (d. 1903) of Ardgowan (Renfrews.), who was the ultimate heir under the Marquess' will. After Sir Michael's death it passed to his widow, Lady Octavia Shaw-Stewart (d. 1921), and then to their son, Walter (1861-1934), whose widow was the owner until her death in 1943. The Shaw-Stewarts only son Michael had died in a shooting accident in 1936 leaving their daughter and her husband, Brigadier Reginald Rimington as the prospective heirs. During the Second World War the house was requisitioned for military purposes and Brigadier Rimington died of wounds after being captured by the Germans in North Africa. His young son, Niel [sic] Rimington (1928-2009) became the heir, but in 1946 his trustees sold about a quarter of the estate, including the New Abbey, to John Granville Morrison (1906-96), later 1st Baron Margadale, the owner of Fonthill House (see below), in order to pay the death duties on his inheritance. Lord Margadale had no immediate use for the house, and consideration was given to its use as an hotel, and to it becoming the home of his son, who married in 1952. But the cost of renovation was seen as prohibitive, and in 1952 the house was demolished, except for the stable block, with most of the stonework being pushed down into the basement.

New Fonthill Abbey: stable block in 1987 after partial rescue from demolition. Image: Nicholas Kingsley. Some rights reserved.

New Fonthill Abbey: interior of stables, 1987.
Image: Nicholas Kingsley. Some rights reserved..

The stable block had been abandoned in the 1950s and allowed to slide into dereliction, but in 1977 Lord Margadale sold it, with some of the surrounding land, to Professor Bernard Nevill (1934-2019), a textile designer and design director of Liberty & Co, who rescued the stables and filled it with an eclectic collection of pieces acquired through an enthusiastic devotion to architectural salvage. In 2011 Nevill became too ill to look after the stables, and he sold the property to the present owners, who set out to incorporate the former stables into a new country house on the site of the service wing of Burn's mansion. The stonework of the Burn house (some of which may have been reused time and again since the days of the first Fonthill House) was excavated from the cellars, and incorporated into the new building designed by local architect Timothy Reeve and built in 2018-20.

New Fonthill Abbey: the new house built in 2017-22.

Fonthill V: Little Ridge and Fonthill House

When Alfred Morrison died in 1897 he bequeathed to his widow Mabel (d. 1933) a life interest in 'Fonthill House', the much remodelled surviving pavilion of Fonthill Splendens, and 300 adjoining acres of the park. His son, Hugh Morrison (d. 1931) was left the rest of the estate, and decided to build himself a new house on a new site well to the east of the lake, which was picturesquely placed below a wooded hillside called Little Ridge. The architect appointed was the young Detmar Blow (1867-1939), who was probably recommended to the Morrisons by their friends Sir Edmund and Lady Antrobus of Amesbury Abbey, for whom Blow had undertaken controversial restoration work at Stonehenge and built a farmhouse. The house Blow designed was not, in fact, entirely new, for it incorporated the stonework of the ruined Jacobean Manor House at Berwick St. Leonard on the estate, of which only the shell survived.

The Manor House, Berwick St. Leonard by John Buckler, 1804. 

The stones of this house were carefully taken down, numbered, and transported to the new site for re-erection as the shell of the new building. The internal planning was, however, wholly contemporary in inspiration, with a series of reception rooms (drawing room, library and dining room) along the main south-west front, a hall in the centre of the house, and service rooms and the front entrance on the north side. Blow constructed a level terrace on which to build the house, supported by a great rampart to the west, and laid out an Elizabethan garden to complement the house.

Little Ridge: the house from the west in 1912. Image: Country Life.

Little Ridge: ground plan in 1912.

In 1906, the birth of a son and heir to Hugh Morrison led to the addition of a nursery wing with new kitchens and servants' hall on the ground floor to the east of the main block, also designed by Detmar Blow. Work was undertaken quickly, in 1907-08, and at the same time, a reordering of the main block was undertaken, with a new library in the north-west corner of the house, and a garden hall replacing the original library in the centre of the south-west front. It was the interiors from this remodelling which were recorded by Country Life magazine when they photographed the house in 1912, not the original interiors.

Little Ridge: entrance front after the addition of the nursery wing in 1907-08. Image: Country Life.

Little Ridge: the east side of the house and the nursery wing added in 1907-08. Image: Country Life.

Little Ridge: the library in 1912. Image: Country Life.

In 1909 Hugh Morrison inherited large sums of money from his uncle Charles and aunt Ellen, and he first added a wing to his property in Scotland, Islay House, in 1909 and then built a new London house in Halkin St. in 1910-13, to the designs of Detmar Blow and his partner, Fernard Billerey. In 1911 his mother vacated Fonthill House and moved to Shawford Park (Hants), and Hugh decided on a drastic enlargement of Little Ridge, begun in 1913. While the works were in progress, Hugh and his wife moved back into Fonthill House. Work on Little Ridge was paused while the workmen undertook remedial work at Fonthill House after a fire there, and a shortage of skilled labour during the First World War must also have hampered progress. Work was finally completed in 1920, by which time the house had been transformed. Only the main south-west front and the rooms behind it were little altered. The nursery wing was substantially rebuilt and balanced by a new west wing that made the greatly enlarged south-west front symmetrical once more. A new entrance hall was constructed on the north side of the central block, and a large new hall was formed on its east side. The west wing comprised a large drawing room and a long gallery, and a dining room and billiard room were formed in the east wing.

Little Ridge (later Fonthill House): the house after the enlargement of 1913-20, painted by Charles Geoffroy-Dechaume (1877-1944) in 1925.

The enlargement of 1913-20 made Little Ridge a very large house, about three times the size it had been when first built, and when Fonthill House was finally pulled down in 1921, its name was transferred to Little Ridge. The next generation found the house uncomfortably large and expensive to maintain, and John Granville Morrison (1906-96), who was MP for Salisbury, 1942-64 and created 1st Baron Margadale in 1965, determined to demolish his father's house and build a smaller replacement on the same site. The Blow & Billerey house was unlisted, so no consent was needed for its demolition, but there was opposition to the demolition from the Blow family and from the Victorian Society, who attempted to get it 'spot-listed' to prevent demolition. This was refused, apparently because of confusion in the Ministry, who thought that the house was wholly the result of rebuilding after a fire in 1920. 

Fonthill House: the entrance front of the present house, built in 1972-74 for the 1st Lord Margadale. Image: Fonthill Estate.

Fonthill House: garden front of the present house, built in 1972-74 for the 1st Lord Margadale.

Demolition was completed in 1972, and work then began on the construction of the present house, designed by Trenwith and Simone Wills, built in 1972-74. This is a rendered rectangular neo-Georgian block, with an eleven-bay, two storey entrance front, the middle seven bays of which are stepped forward, with quoins at the angles. The central three bays have giant pilasters carrying a triangular pediment that encloses an oculus. On the garden front, a section the same width as the central seven bays on the entrance front is again stepped forward, although here treated as three bays between a pair of rather narrow two-storey semicircular bow windows. There is no pediment in the centre, but the garden door sits under a triangular pediment, out of which rises an apron below the first-floor window. With the exception of the bows on the garden front, which look a trifle pinched, the proportions are generally elegant, although the overall effect is rather bland. The symmetry of the house is now rather marred by a single-storey stone-built extension at the east end, which partly wraps around the garden front.

Descent: Margaret, Baroness Botreaux; sold 1472 to John Mervyn... Sir John Mervyn, kt. (d. 1566), who reunited the manor of Fonthill Gifford; to son, Sir James Mervyn (1529-1611), kt.; to son, Sir Henry Mervyn, who sold 1620 to Sir Mervyn Touchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven (executed 1631 on charges of rape and sodomy); estates forfeited to Crown and granted 1632 to Sir Francis Cottington (1579-1652), 1st Baron Cottington; properties seized by Parliament and granted 1646 to John Bradshaw (1602-59), regicide; seized after his death by Lord Cottington's nephew, Francis Cottington (d. 1665), who recovered legal title at the Restoration; to son, Francis Cottington (d. 1666); to brother, Charles Cottington (d. 1697); to son, Francis Cottington (d. 1728), who was made 1st Baron Cottington of Fonthill Gifford in the Jacobite peerage; to son, Francis Cottington (d. 1758) (2nd Baron Cottington of Fonthill Gifford), who sold 1744 to William Beckford (1709-70); to son, William Thomas Beckford (1760-1844); sold 1822 to John Farquhar (1751-1826), who died intestate, leading to the break-up of the estate. 

One part (including the Abbey ruin) was sold 1826 to John Benett, who sold 1844 to Richard Grosvenor (1795-1869), 2nd Marquess of Westminster; to widow, Elizabeth Mary (d. 1891), Dowager Marchioness of Westminster; who sold her life interest in 1879 to the remainder man, her son-in-law, Sir Michael Shaw-Stewart (d. 1903) of Ardgowan; to widow, Lady Octavia Shaw-Stewart (d. 1921) for life, and then to her son, Walter Shaw-Stewart (1861-1934); to widow, Mary Beatrice Shaw-Stewart (1864-1943) for life; requisitioned by War Office in WW2; to grandson, Niel William Rimington (1928-2009), whose trustees sold part of the property, including the New Abbey, in 1947 to John Morrison, who demolished the house (except for the stable block sold in 1977 to Bernard Nevill, and converted into a house); the remainder of the estate was sold after Rimington's death to Stephen and Benetta Morant, who built a new house adjacent to the Old Abbey. 

The second part (including The Pavilion) was inherited by George Mortimer (d. 1832), who sold 1829 to James Morrison (1789-1857), who added to his property lands sold in 1826 to Robert Grosvenor (1767-1845), 2nd Earl Grosvenor and 1st Marquess of Westminster and Lord Arundell of Wardour; given 1850 to his son, Alfred Morrison (d. 1897), who left the house and 300 acres to his widow, Mabel Morrison (d. 1933) for life and the remainder of the estate to his son, Hugh Morrison (d. 1931); to son, John Granville Morrison (1906-96), 1st Baron Margadale; requisitioned by War Office in WW2; to son, James Ian Morrison (1930-2003), 2nd Baron Margadale; to son, Alastair John Morrison (b. 1958), 3rd Baron Margadale.

Principal sources

T. Mowl, William Beckford: composing for Mozart, 1998, esp. ch. 15; J.M. Robinson, James Wyatt, 2011, pp. 233-38; P. Gauci, William Beckford: first Prime Minister of the London Empire, 2013; C. Dakers (ed.), Fonthill Recovered: a Cultural History, 2018; J. Orbach, Sir N. Pevsner & B. Cherry, The buildings of England: Wiltshire, 3rd edn., 2021, pp. 328-33; R. White, Georgian Arcadia, 2022 (forthcoming).

Coat of arms

Per pale, gules and azure, on a chevron argent between three martlets or, an eagle displayed, sable, within a bordure of the fourth, charged with a double tressure, flory and counterflory, of the first.

Can you help?

• If anyone can offer further information or corrections to any part of this article I should be most grateful. I am always particularly pleased to hear from current owners or the descendants of families associated with a property who can supply information from their own research or personal knowledge for inclusion.

Revision and acknowledgements

This post was first published 30 September 2022.