Butcher Cumberland Comes Clean!

©Ellen Leslie

There was once a time when I never missed any changes to the London urban landscape. Those were the days when virtually all my research work was carried out within the six London transport zones. But now that I work all over the country, keeping tabs on new developments (happening at an alarming rate) in the centre of town, is trickier.   But last week I had to visit the Howard de Walden estate, just north of Oxford Street. I walked through Cavendish Square, close to Oxford Circus and was surprised to sense the fresh smell of soap. Believe you me, in this part of the world, soap is the last thing you expect! Also something was different about the square. I’ve known it all my life. What was it? The soap happened to be a clue.

For years there had been a large, late 18^th century stone plinth in the middle of the square, dedicated to the Duke of Cumberland (1721-1765).  This third son of George II had defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden (1746). This victory made him extremely popular for a short time, but it was his “pacification” of the Jacobites, his unbending punishment of any enemy sympathiser, that earned him the name “Butcher Cumberland”.

Despite his latter unpopularity the plinth, with a statue of the Duke of Cumberland on horseback on top, erected by his small but dedicated group of supporters, wasn’t removed until nearly 100 years later in 1868. The plinth remained, and that is how I remembered the square.

When I walked through last week though, the statue of “Butcher Cumberland” and horse had been “returned”. But something wasn’t quite right. The surface looked overly weather worn as if it had stood there fighting the elements for nearly 250 years …. and it smelt of soap. 

It transpired that it is in fact  a soap sculpture, created by South Korean artist Meekyoung Shin. Entitled, “Written in Soap, A Plinth Project”, it was erected in July last year and will be there for a year, so you still have a few months to go and see it for yourself. The purpose of the fast-eroding statue is to examine the passage of time, as it weathers through all four seasons of the year.

© theartnewspaper.com

Could this be the way forward for other statues of controversial individuals? Put up a soap carving for a few months and as it erodes before our eyes, we would be coerced to consider the reputation of the person depicted, whether the final analysis is good or bad ….

©Ellen Leslie

Samuel Hieronymous Grimm - No Fairy Tale

When I am researching a house which would have been of some repute and substance and also would have existed in the late 18th  century, I always check to see if it had been drawn by the Swiss artist Samuel Hieronymus Grimm. He was a fantastically detailed and accurate topographical artist who captured scenes and buildings with satisfying clarity. He started his career drawing alpine scenes in his native country and after working his way through France, settled in England in 1768. His greatest patron was Dr Richard Kaye, a clergyman whose career saw him rise from country parson to Dean of Lincoln. Dr Kaye amassed over two and a half thousand drawings by Grimm, the bulk of which he bequeathed to the British Museum. In the course of my work I have had two assignments where Grimm has captured the building in question. The first was Leyden House and neighbouring buildings along the Thames Bank at Mortlake, drawn in 1778. Today close to the end of today’s Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race.  See below.

Above and Below: Thames Bank, Mortlake in 1778

The second location was Hammonds Place in Burgess Hill in West Sussex.  Grimm had drawn over 900 images of Sussex in total (commissioned by Sir William Burrell in the 1780s). They were exhibited in 1797 and Hammonds Place was later included in a compendium of drawings of English manor houses, dated 1846 entitled “Studies of ancient domestic architecture, principally selected from original drawings in the collection of the late Sir William Burrell, with some brief observations on the application of ancient architecture to the pictorial composition of modern edifices” .

It was obviously considered appropriate at some point to make alterations to the images. The first image is the most revealing, showing the original barn at Hammonds Farm. However the image that was eventually published in 1846 (altered by an unknown hand) shows the building in isolation with neighbouring buildings camouflaged by trees and neater lines giving the house a less lived-in appearance.

In addition to the panoramic views, Grimm had also drawn details of some of the buildings. In the case of Hammonds Place, the front door of this predominantly Elizabethan manor house. This was made all the more pleasurable when you see that the said door is still there, if a little weather-worn, 200 years later!

 If you are interested to know more, Grimm’s drawings are available to view through the British Museum, the British Library and the V&A Drawings Collection.

Kew Palace

This weekend, I had the fantastic opportunity to go on a photographic course at Kew Palace, in Richmond. It was run by Historic Royal Palaces and led by photographer Emily Harris. I love taking pictures of architecture, as I hope my Facebook and Flickr pages show, but I was useless at photographing indoors and this course was specifically for learning how to capture historic interiors with a digital SLR camera. We were a select group of 7 and had the small but perfectly formed “Palace” to ourselves as the place is officially closed to the public in the autumn and winter months.

Kew Palace is one of HRP’s more recent restorations. I had the privilege of visiting it half way through the restoration/conservation back in 2006, so it was a pleasure to see the place in a more finished state. Not that it is has been completely returned to resemble a royal residence. While some rooms have been painstakingly decorated and furnished to show how the house may have looked in about 1808, there are whole rooms untouched, with bare floorboards and unfinished walls. These allow you to see how the walls were constructed, layer by layer and give a fleeting look at the earlier, 17^th century fabric of the building behind.

Kew Palace has its origins in the 16^th century, with a Tudor undercroft as testament. It used to be called The Dutch House as it is constructed in the unmistakeable Dutch style and inside is laid out over 3 floors with the undercroft below and servants living quarters in the attic.

The exterior structure we see today was built in the 17^th century, the home of a wealthy merchant and was then converted to be a home for King George III his wife Queen Charlotte and 10 of their 15 children. Spending my day there, I learned that the house was mainly for the children and the Queen. George lived in an extension to the house, long since demolished. This was because George III was the unfortunate monarch who suffered from the disease “Porphyria” which manifested itself mainly in apparent raving madness.

But in his moments of sanity George and his wife were a devoted loving couple, who enjoyed the relative simplicity and small scale living at Kew with their children. Not that it was much fun for 3 of their daughters who lived there; liking its remoteness and their lack of a social life to being in a nunnery!

When one’s abiding passions are historic buildings and photography there isn't much about an historic interiors photography day at Kew that I could fault. In fact there wasn't. As a result, I like to think I can now take a mean interior shot and that this’ll translate in the research I prepare for my clients. But above all, my abiding memory will be having such privileged access for a whole day in one of Historic Royal Palace’s most beautiful and remarkable buildings.

Some of the photographs I took from the day will be posted on the Historic Buildings Research Facebook page and on my Flickr page too.