Coade Stone in Georgian Architecture

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Coade Stone in Georgian ArchitectureAuthor(s): Alison KellySource: Architectural History, Vol. 28 (1985), pp. 71-101Published by: SAHGB Publications LimitedStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1568527 .

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Coade stone in Georgian

architecture by ALISON KELLY

When Josiah Wedgwood put his chimneypiece plaques on the market, he complained bitterly to his partner Bentley that 'we could not prevail upon the architects to be godfathers to our child'. It would have caused him even more pain to realize that his

contemporary Eleanor Coade had succeeded where he had failed, in obtaining commissions from practically every major architect of her time. This happy relationship continued after her death when the firm was owned by her distant relation William

Croggon.2 The extent of their work has been little appreciated, because it is normally mistaken for carved natural stone. In a short article it is only possible to include a

minority of the architects from Sir Robert Taylor to Sir Charles Barry, or to put it alphabetically from Adam to Yenn, who used Coade stone or Coade scagliola. A selection has to be made, and those architects chosen who either used Coade stone particularly lavishly, or used it in unusual and characteristic ways.

Eleanor Coade's success is not surprising when it is realized that she could offer not

only statues and other decorative pieces which were available in other media - plaster for indoors and lead and stone for outdoors - but could make architectural decorations such as capitals, plaques, quoins, string-courses, friezes and chimneypieces which could be incorporated into buildings in the same way as natural stone features. While she was not the first in this field, she seems soon to have established a dominant position and her work was even advertised abroad.3 It is the unexpectedness of her contribution in this field which is presumably the reason why her work has been so little studied. Even Rupert Gunnis, who was the first to make a serious investigation of her output, gave a good list of her monuments and statues, but only mentioned a small fraction of her architectural commissions.4

Surviving records of the manufactory are some help in tracing these. The business began in I769,5 and in I784 a catalogue was produced, of which copies survive in the British Library, Victoria and Albert Museum Library and probably elsewhere. It lists more than seven hundred and fifty items. From 1777 onwards, engraved plates had been made of the firm's products, and these were assembled into booklets of various formats which can be found in the British Library, Guildhall Library and Sir John Soane's Museum. 6 They were put together probably (none have title-pages) in the later I780s. Collation of the catalogue and the engravings allows many of the items to be identified and given their factory names.

In 1799, Eleanor Coade, then in partnership with her cousin John Sealy, opened a showroom at Pedlar's Acre, at the Surrey end of Westminster Bridge. A handbook,



ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 28:1985

Coade's Gallery,7 was published to describe the layout and exhibits, which included many not in the catalogue. The chief value of this production lies in the list, included by Coade and Sealy, of the places where Coade stone had been used in the thirty years since the business began. The designs were not normally mentioned, and there are difficulties when the name of a large town such as Doncaster is listed as a site; but even so, a surprising number of the four hundred and more places mentioned can be identified, and with the help of Colvin's Dictionary of British Architects the architects traced.

In about 1813,8 an undated pamphlet was issued to publicize the recently completed pediment decoration in memory of Nelson at the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich. This gave a list of the firm's major works, including a number carried out between 1799 and 1813. In 1813, Sealy died, and a remote Cornish relation of Eleanor Coade, William

Croggon,9 forty-five years her junior, became manager. He ran the firm from Sealy's death until hers in 1821, and his order book, day book and letter book are in the Public Record Office. 10 They are there because he was not left the business, and must have engaged in some Chancery litigation with the executors over its purchase. His work books, being evidence in court, have remained in public ownership. They were foutid by John P. Ruch, and formed the basis of his article on Coade stone in the Regency period, published in Architectural History in 1968. Croggon of necessity began a new set of work books, and for the period of his ownership from 1821 to I833, when he went bankrupt, 11 no records have been found. Croggon's son, Thomas John, refounded the business in 1835, on his father's death, and his firm (as Croggon (1835) and Co.) survived until c. 1983;12 but he was interested in other projects, and very little more Coade stone was made. The latest pieces I have seen are dated 1840, and the moulds and remaining stock were sold in 1843.13 It can be seen, therefore, that the survival of the firm's records is erratic; from 1769 to 1799 most sites are listed, though I have found some belonging to this period which are not included, and which Mrs Coade must have forgotten; from 1799 to 1813, major commissions are listed; from 1813 to 1821, there is a full record of pieces, prices and customers; after 1821 there is nothing at all.

Mrs Coade was lucky in the period in which she began work. By 1769, Adam's interpretation of neo-classicism, with its characteristic small-scale classical detail, low-relief medallions of figures in Roman costume and festooned friezes, had become the height of fashion. There was a large public for more of the same kind, and Mrs Coade could supply it. Her interpretation was so satisfactory that Adam, the Wyatts and others whose customers might well have afforded carved natural stone, were perfectly satisfied with Eleanor Coade's product. Adam could no doubt have per- suaded wealthy Lady Home that she needed to pay for natural stone, but the decorations on the exterior of 20 Portman Square came from the kilns at Lambeth.

Sir William Chambers was the most important establishment figure in architecture by the 1770s, and in 1772 he did Mrs Coade a great service. Horace Walpole had asked her to make him a pair of gate-piers near the chapel in the woods at Strawberry Hill. They were based by James Essex on the early fourteenth-century tomb of Bishop de Luda in Ely Cathedral, and had crocketed spires covered with Gothic tracery, with tall, very thin piers at the corners, each with its own small pinnacle. Mrs Coade charged ? 50 for them and Walpole thought this too much. No agreement being possible, they

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COADE STONE IN GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE

decided to go to arbitration; Mrs Coade appointed a Mr Kemble Watley, while Walpole, aspiring higher, chose Chambers. He devoted himself to the matter with admirable seriousness, visiting the factory and talking to the workmen, and in the end signed a certificate jointly with Watley: 'Upon examination of the books, models, casts, moulds etc. and upon questioning the men at the manufactory and inspecting into the nature of the work, we are of opinion that the piers made and erected at Twickenham for the Hon. Mr. Walpole cost Mrs. Coade ?151.I4.o1 exclusive of profit'. 14

The disappointed Walpole naturally did not employ her again, but right at the beginning of her career she had been shown to be a scrupulously honest trader by one of the most respected architects of the day; it must have been an invaluable recommenda- tion. The gate-piers, which had been engraved in 1778,15 became catalogue item 503, but I have never seen any. The pencil-like corner piers, over 6 ft high and less than 5 in. square in section, could easily have been knocked off, and the design was not a practical one for outdoor use.

CHAMBERS himself went on to use Coade stone. Mrs Coade's 1799 list mentions vases on the parapet of Somerset House, and these twenty-nine vases were designed by Chambers (the design surviving in the Soane Museum) in I787. They cost ?193, and are still in situ. 16 Their portly shape, with swags and spiral gadrooning, was frequently repeated.

Manresa House, Roehampton, has festoons of leaves above a doorway in the basement of the portico, and Chambers used Coade stone again at Stanmore House, and at his own house, Whitton Place. Both houses are on the 1799 list, but they have been demolished, and it is not now possible to find out what was used. For Rath- farnham Castle, County Wicklow, where Chambers worked in I770-71, the 1799 list, more communicative than usual, mentions 'Pannels of the Sciences, Patteras etc.'. Sir William's style, however, was not particularly suited to the display of Coade stone; nor was Sir Robert Taylor's, but he too patronized Mrs Coade.

TAYLOR'S splendid portico at Gorhambury (P1. Ia) owes its Corinthian capitals to Mrs Coade. In recent years, the house has been re-faced, and the new Portland stone matches the Coade stone exactly. It would not have been possible to attribute the capitals to her if the bills for them had not survived in the Hertfordshire Record Office. In the account book of the 3rd Viscount Grimston we read: 'April Igth 1782, to Mrs. Coade in part of her bill for capitals at the new house, ?250'. On 20 March 1783 he paid the remainder, ?92.17 For this he had ten capitals for columns and six pilaster capitals for the front of the house, and four capitals for attached columns and two pilaster capitals for the back. Mrs Coade charged for capitals by the number of their decorated faces; free-standing columns needed capitals with four faces, attached columns three, and pilasters one. She therefore charged ?5 I4s. od. per face for this size and Order. Ionic was less. Taylor also used Coade stone at Heveningham Hall, Suffolk (1799 list). A line of medallions of the design called 'griffins and ornament' runs above the first- floor windows, and above the centre of the front is an elaborate composition with figures, vases and a frieze of swags.

While everyone knows that ADAM used Liardet's Cement, and references to it can be found in almost every book written about him, the fact that he also used Coade stone is

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not well known.18 The Coade plaques with swags and paterae, or with low relief figures, were particularly suited to the Adam style; he had used them, carved in natural stone, on the south front at Kedleston, and we can find similar Coade work on a number of his houses. At Newby Hall, they can be seen on the extensions built for William Weddell (I799 list). At Great Saxham Hall, they seem originally to have been set between the ground and first floor windows until at some later date mouldings put round the windows left no room for them. The plaques now lean forlornly against the house. Fortunately, a fine Coade coat of arms, with palms, and the capitals of the portico remain in situ (1799 list). The Theatre and Market Hall at Bury St Edmonds has a fine display of plaques, with three swags of husks and paterae, on all four sides, as well as capitals and urns in niches.

Probably the commission from Adam which was most useful to Mrs Coade, since it was prominent in a very fashionable new development in London, was Home House, now 20 Portman Square. No doubt because of this, she was specific in her 1799 list. She had supplied, she said, 'Pannels of oak, Capitals, Medallions, Ballusters etc'. The panels of oak refer to the oak-leaf festoons on oblong panels on the front of the house; the medallions must be the round plaques on the back, which show girls riding strange sea monsters. At both front and back, the Coade stone plaques are set between two string courses of a guilloche pattern which was often used elsewhere - e.g. in Gower St or at Belmont, Faversham. The capitals for the porch, an unorthodox Doric, and those of the back partico, an Ionic Order which Margaret Whinney19 says is from Piranesi's Della Magnificenza ed Architettura de'Romani, plate xx, must be those mentioned by Mrs Coade; and possibly under her 'etc.' might be included the bucrania on the porch and the large paterae, now heavily shaded by the later balcony, above the ground floor windows. The balusters, unless they were reused when the top storey was added, may not have survived. All these items appear in the catalogue and are shown in the Coade engravings. It was Mrs Coade's custom to include, in her stock-in-trade, designs (like Walpole's gate-piers) which had been made for a particular commission, and of which she retained the moulds. It is not therefore possible to say if any of the Home House decorations were first made for Adam, or were already stock designs. As only one drawing of the outside of Home House (for the porch) survives among Adam drawings at Sir John Soane's Museum, no further evidence on this is likely to be forthcoming.

Alnwick Castle, where Adam worked from 1770 to 1780, and Luton Hoo are both on the 1799 list. Both have been almost entirely rebuilt and I have traced no Coade survivals at either. Caenwood (Kenwood) is also on this list. The fiasco of the composition used for the decoration of the south front is well known. But can it be that there is some Coade stone on the north portico? The large medallion in the pediment is in very high relief and perfect condition. As it is painted, it is unlikely to be natural stone, and if it is plaster it is remarkably well preserved. Can it, and the capitals of the columns, which follow a Coade pattern fairly closely, be of Coade stone?

At Castle Upton, Co. Antrim, there is a mausoleum by Adam in which Coade stone was used, including two medallions of mourners, vases and an urn, dated I789,20 and at Croome Court Adam used Coade stone in yet another type of building - a garden temple. The Island Temple is shown among the Adam drawings in Sir John Soane's

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Museum21 and is inscribed 'Design for a building to be placed between the woods at Croome'. Clearly to be seen are two circular bas-reliefs of the Phrygian Shepherd and Shepherdess, a long plaque of the Aldobrandini Marriage (the Grecian Wedding) and two panels of griffins and ornament. All survive in it today, and interestingly the bill for them was paid through Capability Brown (who must have ordered, also, the pair of large sphinxes in Coade stone on the steps outside the house). The bill for the Temple pieces was modest, the Grecian Wedding cost 8 guineas, the two griffin panels Io guineas, the whole thing, including 'cases and cartage to ye inn', totalling ?26 13s. od.22

Pieces in the round are rarer among Adam's orders than bas-reliefs, but for Glasserton, Wigtownshire, the 1799 list mentions a 'Statue for lights'. Such figures were usually Vestal Virgins with one arm raised to hold a candle branch. At Culzean, the 'Cat Gates' are not surmounted by domestic cats, but by Egyptian lionesses copied from those at the Campidoglio in Rome.23 At Stowe more lions were ordered for the North portico, the ?40 bill for them being receipted in February I778.24 At Cullen House, Banff, there is a gateway with heraldic animals, arms etc. for which there is a drawing by Adam (vol. 36, 68-70) in Sir John Soane's Museum, though it does not seem to have been carried out for a long time.25 Further heraldry, with the family arms supported by eagles, is at Wedderburn, Berwickshire; the 1799 list mentions 'arms and supporters'.

One of Adam's last commissions, at Gosford near Edinburgh, dates from 1790, and combines the whole range of Coade designs which he had used elsewhere. This house has a stable block (also attributed to Adam c. 1790) decorated with a number of oblong plaques and roundels (P1. ib). Several of the plaques are designs, such as theJudgment of Paris, not traced elsewhere and presumably special orders, though the roundels are catalogue items.26 The main house has had a chequered career; it originally had two pavilions connected by wings to the central block, but only about a decade after completion the wings and pavilions were pulled down, to be replaced at the end of the nineteenth century by Adamesque pavilions by William Young.

About five years ago, Miss Catherine Cruft, of the Scottish National Monuments Record, found a large number of Coade plaques and roundels lying in long grass in an uncultivated part of the Gosford estate. If the plaques came from the pavilions, they must have been there for something like a hundred and sixty years. There is unfortunately no record of how they were used, as no drawings for Gosford appear to be in the collection in Sir John Soane's museum. They consist of oblong plaques of standard designs and a dozen roundels, all showing over life-size heads, a few of which can be found among the engravings, but the majority being clearly designed specially. They include a girl in a helmet inscribed 'SCOTIA', a man in a turban, a man wearing an elephant-head helmet and a Red Indian. These last four suggest that there was a scheme symbolizing the Four Continents, with Scotia representing Europe.

A drawing for well-dressed sphinxes wearing necklaces was recently discovered in the house.27 It came from the Adam office and was addressed to John Sealy, no doubt one of many drawings for the special items at Gosford. The sphinxes survive, and with the heraldic swans and lions, as well as the plaques and medallions, make the Gosford Coade collection unique, and a fitting conclusion to a collaboration between Robert and Adam and Eleanor Coade which had lasted for most of her firm's existence. She

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ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 28:I985

recognized its importance by specifying in her 1799 list 'Arms and Supporters, Pannels, Medallions etc. at the Earl of Wemyss'.

Adam described the work of 'Athenian' STUART as 'pityfulissimo'28 and it is

generally recognized that through his inattention his practice was smaller than it should have been. In only one case, Greenwich Hospital Chapel, have I found that he

employed Mrs Coade, and since William Newton seems to have been in virtual charge there, the commissions may have come from Newton, or from Benjamin West, who was connected with the Hospital for many decades. This is not the place to join in the

controversy over their relative responsibilites; it is the Coade pieces themselves which will be described here.

Thirty-two Ionic capitals for the scagliola pilasters along the walls of the Chapel were supplied in 1784.29 The pilasters themselves were not made at Lambeth, since the firm did not begin to make scagliola until c. I818; but when they needed to be refurbished in June 1818, the Coade firm was called in, and the workmen put in 361 days' work on the job.30 In the Greenwich Pediment pamphlet issued by the firm c. i81331 the statues supporting the communion table are mentioned. This is semi- circular, and supported by angels, which are now gilded, so that they might be taken for gilt wood or ormolu.32 The famous pulpit is of mahogany inset with roundels of Coade stone depicting the life of St Paul and designed by Benjamin West.33 They are now a warm, pale gold colour, and shiny, so that they look as if they were carved from boxwood or satinwood. This must be due to some kind of polish or varnish, and is

probably more in harmony with the mahogany than the original stone surface would have been. Mrs Coade also mentioned in her Greenwich pamphlet the panels in front of the galleries. These are now all painted, those on the long north and south sides showing the Arms of the Hospital in heraldic colours. At the west end, the organ-loft gallery also has a panel on which a pair ofputti play a duet on a harp. The balusters and this plaque are painted white with random grey streaks in imitation of marble, and

might be assumed to be carved and painted wood or plaster, if the moulds had not survived at Greenwich.34 Benjamin West was also responsible for the four statues in the ante-chapel. They represent Faith, Hope, Charity and Meekness, and three of them are of only moderate interest, being the usual classical girls with suitable attributes. The fourth, Charity, is however original and appealing. She sits on a bench with a baby on her lap and a small child standing in front and reaching up to her. A third child stands on the bench behind her, leaning over her shoulder to attract attention. It antedates by more than forty years Chantrey's famous group of Mrs Jordan and her children in a similar pose.

The Coade connection with Greenwich Hospital, thus begun in the I780s, included the spectacular pediment in memory of Nelson of I8Io-I235 and continued to at least I814, when the Governors ordered the Arms of the Hospital with palms and laurel for Yenn's new Trafalgar Block, where it still survives, at a cost of 150 guineas.36

JAMES WYATT made his name with the Pantheon, Oxford St, a building which is'on Mrs Coade's 1799 list where she mentioned capitals, paterae and arms for it; but a drawing as early as I77I37 shows that right at the beginning of his career he was planning to use Coade plaques and statues, and he continued to do so throughout. With his huge practice, he seems to have used Coade stone more than any other architect.

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Mostly, he preferred classical designs, but on two occasions at least he used Coade Gothic designs, at Sheffield Park38 and Milton Abbey church.39

Heaton Hall, Manchester,40 is the first of a series of houses by James and his brother Samuel where a bow-fronted, two-storeyed facade has plaques, medallions or paterae between the storeys. The attached columns at Heaton have elaborately detailed capitals, with beading outlining the volutes (P1. 2a), which has remained so sharp that guidebooks to the house as late as the I96os described them as being of metal, since the curators could not think of any other medium which would have retained its crispness for so long. As they were made by 1772, not long after the firm's foundation, it is probable that the design was first modelled for Wyatt (cf. P1. 2b). Mr James Lomax drew my attention to the fact that while capitals, string course and paterae are of Coade stone, the plaques on the bowed centre are carved in natural stone, and not particularly well done. Since the Wyatts subsequently used Coade stone plaques of this type by the dozen, it is possible either that Wyatt suggested to Eleanor Coade that she might make something of the kind, or that she saw the opportunity herself.

The Radcliffe Observatory at Oxford41 is a case in point (P1. 3a). The curved back has three long bas-reliefs modelled byJ. C. F. Rossi symbolizing Morning, Noon and Night, a special commission, the plaques of course being curved to follow the lines of the building. In addition, there are plaques of the signs of the Zodiac, Virgo being copied from one of the Winds of the Tower of the Winds in Athens. The upper part of the Observatory is based on this tower, and has copies of the original sculptures carved by John Bacon round the top. It is interesting to compare the natural stone Wind/Virgo with the Coade stone copy a few feet below. The Observatory, begun in 1773, took an inordinate time to complete. The Coade Catalogue of I784 offers only four Signs of the Zodiac, suggesting that the remaining eight had not yet been modelled.

At Liverpool Town Hall, the dome is crowned by a figure of Britannia, now gilded.42 It is also by Rossi who modelled many figures in Coade stone towards the end of the eighteenth century. More figures commissioned by Wyatt can be seen in a room at Bowden Park, Wiltshire, of I796.43 Here the figures, being for indoor use, could be 'bronzed', i.e. painted in a dark brown-black paint which successfully counterfeited actual bronze. Gunnis mentions two figures at Hothfield Place, now demolished; and statues of Flora and Pomona can be seen on the Orangery at Heveningham Hall, surmounted by bas-reliefs of the Borghese Dancers, a design which appealed to Mrs Coade's customers as well as to Wedgwood's. A lodge at Heveningham in what appears to be Wyatt's style also has Coade stone decoration,a delicate frieze of festoons and girls' heads and elaborate consoles.

At her showrooms on Westminster Bridge, Mrs Coade exhibited a tripod consisting of three figures with a circular abacus on their heads which, she said, was designed by Mr Wyatt for the Queen's Lodge at Frogmore.44 Enquiries at Windsor show that it is now untraced, but what I believe is the same design appears at West Wycome Park, where there are four torcheres consisting of three girls linked by garlands.45 It also appears among the Coade engravings, and a similar design, with the girls' arms raised to support the abacus, appeared in a pair of torcheres sold by Christies at Godmersham Park, Kent, on 6 to gJune I983. Whether this variation was also designed by Wyatt is not known. A late commission for figures was for Purley Park, Reading, in I813.

6

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ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 28: 985

These were the usual bronzed lamp-holding girls.46 Other Coade work must earlier have been supplied for this house, as it is on the 1799 list. Wyatt may also have been responsible for the purchase of the Coade Druid (now decapitated) for Erddig, when he was working there, since another at Croome Court, dated 1795, together with the Coade rusticated 'Dry Arch Bridge' of 1796 and a gateway surmounted by Coade vases of 1794 all appear to belong to the period when Wyatt was designing garden features there. 47

Lord Portsmouth's Gateway in the 1799 list must be the entrance to Hurstbourne Priors. The gate piers are now at Farleigh Wallop, crowned by seductive mermaids holding bronze mirrors and combs. Another gateway is at Blagdon, Northumber- land. 48 Called confusingly the Kale Cross, it was made as a gift to the city of Newcastle by the Ridley family, and later given back to them. Lions and Coade vases are on its top. The Holgate Monument at Brocklesby, Lincolnshire, is said to have been designed by Wyatt in Coade stone.49 It is a slim, triangular tapering structure, supported by three tortoises and with an urn on top. The design also occurs at Mount Edgcombe, Plymouth, Lucan House, County Kildare, and Stanmer Park, Brighton, The last is made of an exceptionally gritty body which I had difficulty in accepting as Coade stone until I discovered a pair of urns at Mottisfont Abbey, of the same formula and clearly marked, 'COADE LONDON I794'. I have not seen the others; I could find no mark on the Stanmer Park piece, but this is not surprising as there seem to be few if any stamps on Coade pieces as early as the I770s.

Wyatt's taste for plaques extended to his own house, I Foley Place. The 1799 list specifies 'Capitals, Pannels, Consoles, Trusses, Balusters etc. at the house of MrJames Wyatt'. Three plaques of reclining ladies and four oval paterae, together with Corin- thian capitals, can be seen in an old photograph of the front. 50 Further plaques of these reclining ladies can be seen on the lodges of Ottershaw Park, Surrey, where they at present shock the viewer, as the owners have painted them in natural colours, with pink putti.

Antony Dale refers to Coade plaques at Charlton Park, Wiltshire51 and at Wilton, where he noted classical bas-reliefs in the Cloister,52 subsequently removed. He also refers to a chimneypiece at Pishiobury Park, Hertfordshire as being by Wyatt, a rare example of a Coade chimneypiece being attributable to a particular architect. 54

Apart from these traced Coade examples a number ofJames Wyatt buildings appear in the 1799 list, without it being possible to trace what was used. They include Henham Hall, Suffolk;55 Sunning Hill Park, Berkshire; Copped Hall, Essex; Bryanston, Dorset, and Stoke House, Stoke Poges, for which later on, in 1813, some Coade busts were offered by the firm.56

SAMUEL WYATT was almost as devoted a user of Coade stone as his brother, employing it in much the same way. Doddington Hall in Cheshire has panels and medallions between the storeys,57 and Neale's Views of Seats (I829), shows Hooton Hall, also in Cheshire, to be almost a duplicate of Doddington. Only its lodges, with Coade plaques, survive.58 At Holkham, the Vinery and East Lodge both have Coade decoration; the Vinery of 1780 has paterae and a strip of guilloche string course, and the East Lodge (1799) has a specially designed round medallion with an ostrich crest and a wreath of oakleaves said to have been modelled by Bernasconi.59

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Herstmonceux Place60 is yet another example of the Wyatt two-storied, bow- fronted house with plaques between the ground and first floors, but the plaques here are unusual, since they are not catalogue numbers, but have larger and bolder motifs than most of the catalogue designs. In this they are nearest to those chosen by Thomas Leverton at Woodhall Park, Hertfordshire.61 It is a pity that these plaques have been painted white. However, the most appealing of this group of houses, by either of the brothers, must be Belmont, near Faversham, Kent (I792).62 Here, the basic design of Herstmonceux, of fifteen years before, has been greatly refined by Samuel, who includes a full range of Coade details - oblong plaques with oak leaf swags, as at Portman Square, other oblong plaques with festoons of flowers (a design which appears only in the British Library book of engravings, and which I have not seen anywhere else) a pair of bell kraters with human heads on the handles, only one of which survives, guilloche string courses, and round medallions of the Seasons, which show putti with flowers, corn, etc. and which are standard designs fitted on curved backgrounds to conform to the bows on the south front. In the middle of this front, there is an enjoyable architectural joke, a plaque (P1. 3b) which appears at first sight to show only one of the usual Baconian reclining ladies. But look closer; she lolls under a palm tree, and behind her, modelled in every detail and with the Coade plaques clearly visible, is Belmont House itself. The palm tree, and the gun ports beneath her which she contrives to ignore, recall the military career of Lord Harris, who built the house.

At Shugborough, Samuel Wyatt added a portico with Ionic Coade stone capitals in I792-98.63 He may also have added the Coade Druid which now sits in the ruins, previously untenanted, by the river. 64 This Druid is not very noticeable as most of his torso is missing, presumably dislodged by the fall of a rock. Also possibly on Wyatt's orders, a Coade plaque of griffins and ornament was added to the Cat Monument. The plaque, being pale and smooth, seems to have nothing to do, either in subject or in medium, with this bizarre composition in a dark, gritty stone, crowned by an urn with Admiral Anson's cat (which went round the world with him) curled up on the top.

In London, Samuel Wyatt was responsible for specially designed Arms of the Elder Brethren at Trinity House. 65 Though the interior was gutted in the war, the elegant exterior survives. In Birmingham, he was responsible for the Theatre Royal, for which he ordered medallions of Garrick and Shakespeare.66 The theatre has been demolished, but the plaques survive in the care of Birmingham Reference Library.67 In addition a number of other houses by Samuel Wyatt appear in the 1799 list, including Temple House, Hurley, Berkshire; Kinmel Park, Clwyd, and Penrhyn Castle near Bangor, all of which have either been demolished or rebuilt.68

The next generation of Wyatts, Lewis, Benjamin Dean, Philip and Sir Jeffry Wyatville, all used Coade stone or Coade scagliola, but in a less extensive way than their older relations, and their work cannot be detailed here.

Henry HOLLAND worked frequently with his father-in-law 'Capability' Brown, and the Orangery at Broadlands, Hampshire, with its spare Coade decoration of a triple-swag plaque surmounted by an urn, is likely to be his.69 A Borghese Vase in the garden could have been placed there by either of them. Berrington Hall, Herefordshire, is unquestionably Holland's, and has some small details in Coade stone inside the portico. Here I find the Coade cream colour, which I believe could be modified on

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demand, unhappy against the rich brown-pink of the sandstone used for the house; the effect must have been better at Carlton House, where the stonework was Portland, and would have harmonized with the trophies of arms supplied from Lambeth. These comprised trophies of war for the centre of the screen, four naval and military trophies for the ends of the screen, and also six copies of vases from Sir William Hamilton's collection. They were supplied in 1795 for ?I50, ?300 and ?45 respectively.70 The trophies (unless they were re-used at Buckingham Palace, see below) have disappeared; the vases, judging by the two surviving in Sir John Soane's Museum, were severely plain, with none of the Coade three-dimensional decoration. In this, of course, they copied the originals, where the decoration was painted; it is interesting to speculate whether Eleanor Coade had the abortive idea of following Josiah Wedgwood in the production of red-figure 'Greek' and 'Etruscan' vases.

Holland also used Coade stone figures at the first Brighton Pavilion. In Coade's Gallery71 Mrs Coade mentions that the statue of Fortitude in the exhibition was a duplicate of one of the six 'supplied in 1788 for his Royal Highness's Pavilion at Brighthelmstone'. The figures stood round the shallow central dome, each above a column, and it is clear they were an after-thought. An aquatint dated 1788 and belonging to Brighton Museum and Art Gallery shows the figures hastily etched in, with the dome showing through their outlines. The print must have been ready for issue, and had then to be amended to make it correspond to the Royal Pavilion's new look.

Holland's Debden Hall, Essex, is on Mrs Coade's I799 list; it has been demolished, and the illustrations of it,72 showing a house with an Ionic portico, are not detailed enough for any Coade stone to be identifiable. It should be mentioned, however, that Coade work still survives in the village church, where an extension to the chancel, designed by John Carter, is decorated with Coade stone heraldic plaques. The church also contains a font in a Perpendicular style73 designed by Henry's cousin Richard Holland. A replica of this font was shown in the Coade exhibition gallery74 and other duplicates of it were in Milton Abbey church (throughJames Wyatt) and St George's Chapel, Windsor (through Henry Emlyn). A simplified version of it went to Chelms- ford Parish Church (see below). Debden House was built for R. M. T. Chiswell, who also financed the extension to the church and presented the font, as its inscription records. The font and the decorations to the exterior of the church bear out Mrs Coade's contention that her stone would stand up to the worst of the British climate; the heraldic plaques on the outside show no more sign of weathering than the font which has been indoors for the same length of time - nearly 200 years.

Henry Holland was responsible for the development of the Hans Town area of Chelsea. Most has been rebuilt, but there are still, at the time of writing, five houses, 188-93 Sloane Street, which may have been designed by him and which have Coade stone doorway decorations. 188, 189 and 190 have Coade keystones; 191 has a doorway like those in Bedford Square; and I93 is similar to I91 but has no fanlight, but a Coade stone tympanum instead, with a bas-relief of a 'squat' (low oval-shaped) vase.

The mention of Bedford Square leads to an interesting consideration. The square is usually attributed to Thomas Leverton,75 and with one exception damaged in the war and restored in concrete, its collection of Coade stone doorways survives complete. In 1774 the London Building Act was passed which, with the aim of restricting fires,

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banned timber for doorways except for the door itself and its frame. The handsome Palladian doorway, with its columns and pediment, could no longer be used unless made of expensive stone, and a reasonable alternative was needed. Mrs Coade's answer to the problem was to produce the design of an archway surrounded by blocks and voussoirs of vermiculated rustication, with an ornamental keystone. The impressive result only cost six or seven pounds, and was quickly ready. Bedford Square began to go up in 1776. Subsequently, the same doorway design appeared in many streets in St Marylebone, and was a favourite of the architectJohnJohnson.

John JOHNSON was not a particularly renowned architect, but deserves a mention here because of his special fondness for Coade stone. He was County Surveyor for Essex, and built Chelmsford Shire Hall, a serene building decorated with three specially designed plaques by John Bacon Senior, ofJustice and Boy, Mercy and Boy, and Wisdom and Boy. These, though variations on the usual Coade reclining lady theme, are in much higher relief than normal, with parts fully detached from the background, and cost considerably more; ?141 was paid for them, and then an extra ?Io to Johnson for further expenses. 76Johnson was proud of the Shire Hall, and in I808 published a fine volume of plates77 of it, in which he said that 'all the ornamental parts of the front, including Plate XIV [detail of the Bacon plaques] are all finely executed in artificial stone, the last of which were modelled by the late eminent artistJ. Bacon Esq. R. A.'. Apart from the plaques, this Coade work consists of capitals of two sizes in a particular Ionic design, with a deep band of decoration below the necking and beaded volutes, different fromJames Wyatt's model, whichJohnson repeated at Woolverstone Hall. The Shire Hall also has small Coade paterae.

Not far from the Hall, Johnson designed a Naiad Conduit with a specially modelled Bacon figure, completed a year later than the Hall in 1793 and no doubt intended as an embellishment of its environs. Unfortunately it proved an inconvenience to traffic and for many years lay dismembered in Chelmsford Museum's store. It has happily been reassembled and is now inside the Shire Hall. 78

Also in the town centre is Moulsham Bridge, a delightful high-arched structure which still carries the main street's traffic. It has rotund balusters of Coade stone, and vertical oval plaques with River Gods' heads in the spandrels of the arch each side. The bill79 in the Essex Record Office shows how cheap, compared to special orders, catalogue items could be. The balusters cost 7s. each and the plaques ?3 Ios. od. each. Crates and packing, always an expensive item, were ?2 I4s. od., but lighter and ship's charges only 8s.

In I800 there was further work for the county Surveyor, when Chelmsford Parish Church collapsed. 80Johnson rebuilt the late fifteenth-century piers on the south side of the nave in Coade stone, and had instructions from John Sealy on how to do it.81 'A core of some sort, of course is carried through them, either rough pieces of stone or Brickwork, and that grouted in properly, and there is not the least Danger of their bearing any Weight'. The work was completed in 1803, and included, as well as the piers, 'the Gothic tracery ceiling, with the figures between the upper windows and the cherub corbills which support them' - the figures are angels and the corbels the usual cherubs' heads with wings - and the windows themselves with simplified Gothic tracery are also of Coade stone. Also included in the bills are ?Io worth of 'Gothic

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flowers in facia' which I have been unable to identify. To complete the reconstruction, which cost them ?6,628 2s. 81/4d. in all, the rebuilding committee wanted a font like the Debden one, but said they would only pay ?25, as against its catalogue price of ?3, as they had only intended to spend ?6 or ?7 on it.82 They got what they paid for, as the font, which is now in Chelmsford Museum, Oaklands Park, has Tudor roses instead of the finely detailed little figures on the Debden font.

Johnson's other commissions from the Coade factory were all in neo-classical style. Woolverstone Hall,83 Suffolk, shows a full range of Coade architectural details - vases, consoles, a large circular medallion of Diana the Huntress, and the same capitals as at Chelmsford Shire Hall. Of the three urns on the roof, one, ingeniously, is a chimney pot. Lewes County Hall repeats a number of motifs from Chelmsford, including the three Bacon plaques, with slight variations. By the time the Lewes building was complete, in 1812, Bacon had long been dead, and, no doubt because all the creative work had already been done on them, they were considerably cheaper, ?94 IOS. od.84 Apart from these, the Coade work at Lewes consists of 40 balusters, I6 imposts, 10 female head blocks (squeezed into the top corners of the first-floor windows) and 60 modillions. Gunnis says that the Royal Arms on the cornice are Coade stone, and this is probably correct, though as they are painted it is impossible, from ground level, to be certain. Mrs Coade made Royal Arms by the dozen.

John Johnson had family connections in Leicester, and there built the County Rooms,85 in Hotel Street and originally a hotel, with a front expressing the Assembly Rooms inside. At first floor level, three great tripartite windows within blind arches reach up into what would normally be the second floor. Two plaques of the Borghese Dancers in Coade stone diversify the large area of plain stonework between the widely spaced arches. Between the windows, which have small Coade Ionic capitals, are niches with statues which, for once, are in natural stone. As at Lewes, balusters are used at the bottom of the windows; and again as at Lewes, the little oblong blocks with their squeezed faces are used, here in aedicules which surround the niches; very small paterae are set along their friezes.

In her exhibition gallery Mrs Coade exhibited a chimneypiece 'from a design of Mr Johnson's', but I have been unable to identify it among the dozen or so chimneypieces illustrated in the Coade engravings. Johnson used the same doorway as those in Bedford Square for Hatfield Place, Hatfield Peveril;86 and he also used it effectively in London in New Cavendish Street (P1. 3c). Opposite the end of Mansfield Street, and forming an arresting eye-catcher, three of the Bedford Square doorways are set side by side, two of them being the entrances to nos 6I and 63 and the middle one a window.

Johnson's excursion into Gothic at Chelmsford was of necessity, but Henry EMLYN had Gothic design in his blood. Few visitors, unless they have their Pevsners in their hands, are aware, when they enter Emlyn's screen at St George's Chapel, Windsor, that they are standing under a vault of pottery; even if they do know it, it is very hard to reconcile this knowledge with what their eyes tell them, for the screen matches the rest of the building in colour and architectural style (P1. 4a). Only the arms of George III on a boss indicate that this Perpendicular structure dates from I790-92 and not from the end of the fifteenth century. The fan vaulting of the aisles has been copied accurately, and the feat of firing the huge stoneware blocks without distortion or discoloration was

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faultlessly carried out. The front, unfortunately, was replaced in the I920s in natural stone, and the whole structure had a very narrow escape, as the surveyor of the fabric thought that the screen was made of cement, and that the tie-rods holding the blocks together were a form of internal scaffolding.87

St George's also had a Coade stone font which stood in the Bray chapel. It was a near-duplicate of the Debden font, with the Beaufort portcullis instead of Mr Chis- well's heraldry.88 Lamentably, it was broken up for hard-core when the Bray Chapel became the site of the tomb of the Prince Imperial in I879.89 In her description of the

duplicate font shown in Coade's Gallery Mrs Coade carefully gave the impression, without actually saying so, that the Windsor font was the prototype, and the Debden font a copy; in fact the Debden font, of 1786, must be the first, since work at St George's began only in I790.

On the west front of the Chapel, there are three Coade statues, St George, Edward the Confessor and the Virgin and Child, all dating from the period of Emlyn's work. The two saints are no doubt replacements for decayed Tudor figures, but the Virgin presented a problem. Pote's Windsor Castle of 1749 shows figures in the two lower niches, but the niche at the top empty, where the Virgin had been.90 Groups of the Virgin and Child not having been publicly on view since the Reformation, Mrs Coade seems to have been at a loss for a model, and brought out the mould for the popular Vestal Virgin, which was at least suitable in one respect. For the Holy Child, there were several Coade putti to choose from, and the arms of the Vestal were adjusted to hold one of them. Vigorously waving its arms and legs, the baby seems about to escape from its mother's grasp and fall into the Horseshoe Cloister. Fortunately for Mrs Coade's reputation, this drama takes place at the top of the Chapel gable, and is hardly visible without binoculars.

Francis HIORNE also experimented in Gothic Coade stone. The church at Tetbury, Gloucestershire, was rebuilt by him, except for the tower, from I777. The huge windows of this church have a particularly delicate, cobweb pattern of Perpendicular tracery (P1. 4b) which immediately struck me, in its precision, colour and sharpness as being Coade stone; and Tetbury, without a building being specified, is on Mrs Coade's 1799 list. However, the church is generally considered to be built of Tetbury stone throughout. The documents concerning the rebuilding of the church (now in the Gloucester Record Office, and all filed together under D566 R2/5) showed that this had originally been intended. The Particulars, of 1776, specified that the walls were to be of 'Tetbury ashlar stone neatly hewen and set' and that 'All the Windows, Doors, Buttresses, Pinnacles . . .' were 'to be of the same stone'. This is repeated in the draft of a document called the Articles of Agreement; however in this text the words 'the same' before the stone specified for windows etc. has been crossed out and 'proper and suitable' written in instead. So 'proper and suitable' stone was to be permitted for the details. In the 1777 fair copy of the Articles of Agreement, signed and sealed, 'proper and suitable stone' has been incorporated in the text. As the same sum, ?3,484 os. od., was agreed for Tetbury stone throughout, and also for the proper and suitable substitute, Hiorne, who acted as master mason as well as architect, stood to gain from the emendation. Coade stone, being cast from moulds, was much cheaper than hand- cut natural stone.

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In the event, Coade stone was only used for the window tracery; buttresses, pinnacles and so on are in natural stone. Hiorne provided the materials, so no bills from Mrs Coade or any other supplier survive among the church records and we do not know how much he made on the transaction. After 200 years, the window tracery has retained its original creamy colour, whereas the stone of the body of the church now has much more grey in it. However a pinnacle replaced c. 1983 in Cotswold stone in its unweathered state makes a perfect match for the Coade stone. So the ensemble of Coade and Tetbury stone, when new, must have given every satisfaction to the church authorities.

Benjamin Henry LATROBE is of special interest to American architectural students; but before he emigrated Latrobe designed two houses in Sussex where his use of Coade stone deserves to be mentioned. At Ashdown House, East Grinstead, (1799 list) he used capitals copied from those on the North porch of the Erechtheion. When the Coade engravings were issued, at some date near the time of the 1784 catalogue, the engraving of the capital nearest to the Erechtheion design, and presumably representing it, is not correct. On the necking it has feathery motifs in place of the palmettes. However, by the time Latrobe needed the capitals, in I795, the second volume of the Antiquities of Athens9l had come out, and there was an accurate engraving for Mrs Coade to follow. The capitals and bases of the columns on the exterior of Ashdown House, and the capitals and bases of the pilasters of the oval hall inside the portico, are of Coade stone; and I believe that the curious capitals in the inner hall, now painted, are likely to be of Coade stone too.

The suave and graceful design of Ashdown House could have been the work of several other 1790s architects, but Hammerwood Park is wholly original. It is on the I799 list, and appears to have been built in 1792. At each end of a rather awkwardly proportioned central block, there are small temple-like projections with Doric porticos. Greek Doric had of course been used before this date, and in the list which Dr David Watkin has compiled, of Greek Doric examples in Great Britain,92 Hammer- wood Park only comes eleventh. But what is remarkable is that Latrobe used the Doric, not of the fifth century, as at the Parthenon, but of the sixth century as it can be seen in the so-called Basilica at Paestum. 93 Here the capitals, great inverted mushrooms which widely overhang the columns, are far removed, in their primitive strength, from the elegance expected from Georgian classical buildings. We recall what difficulties Goethe had, a few years earlier, in coming to terms with the Paestum temples;94 and it reflects great credit on a very young architect and on his patron John Sperling that the Hammerwood Park design should exist (P1. sa). Thomas Major's book on Paestum had some out in 1768, and contains a detailed measured drawing of the 'Basilican' Order, so that Latrobe and Mrs Coade had exact information to work on. The capitals, the fluted necking at the top of the columns and the large and heavy abaci are of Coade stone; the shafts are the same stone as the house. On the backs of the abaci of one of the porticos, only to be found if searched for, is a Greek inscription, one line to each abacus:

THC TOY IQANNOY CInEPAINFOY EIIAYAEQC IIPOXTYAH fPQTH APXITEKTQN B FE AATPOBE EHIOIE

TON AVOB ENEAYTON IHCOY XPICTOY KAI TON AEYTEPON THC X'MB' OAYMnIIAAAC95

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COADE STONE IN GEORGIAN ARCHITECTURE 85

This can be literally translated 'Of the residence ofJohn Sperling this is the first portico. The architects is B. H. Latrobe. He made it in the 1792 year of Jesus Christ and the second of the 642 Olympiad'. It is agreeable to think of Sperling, or Latrobe, pencil in hand, adding up the four-year periods between the celebrations of the Olympic Games, as if the contests were still continuing, and had not been proscribed in the early years of official Christianity.

As well as these extraordinary capitals, Latrobe used Coade stone plaques, set in the back walls of his porticos. They are based on the bas-reliefs on the Borghese Vase, which in the eighteenth century was thought to be by Phidias,96 and would therefore have seemed appropriate to Latrobe. Copies of this vase, and its near pair the Medici Vase, had been made by Mrs Coade from the earliest days of the firm, and were best sellers. Though plaques made from the reliefs on the vases were illustrated in the firm's engravings, the examples at Hammerwood Park are the only ones I have seen.

Both Nash and Soane are thought of as early nineteenth-century architects, but both were born in the I750s, and both were already using Coade stone at the same time as Latrobe, more than ten years theirjunior. NASH used Coade stone when he had to retire to Wales after his early bankruptcy. Ffynone, Hafod and Llysnewydd (spelt Lles- newydd) are all on Mrs Coade's I799 list. At Ffynone, Gunnis says that two Corinthian capitals were supplied in 1796 at a cost of I6 guineas, which means that they were not very large. Terence Davis97 gives a plan of the house which shows two columns in the dining room (now library) and this may have been their site. Hafod was destroyed by fire thirteen years after Nash's work there, and it is not now possible to know what he used at the house itself; but Sir John Summerson kindly showed me a pre-war photograph of a gateway in the Garden of Adam and Eve which appeared to be the standard Bedford Square model; and Messrs John Francis, Thomas Jones and Sons, auctioneers of Carmarthen, told me that a pair of Coade eagles was removed from Hafod to Aberglasney and came into their salerooms some years ago. Gunnis also mentions a font for Hafod, of 1792. For Llysnewydd, there is no further information about the Coade work. Terence Davis's plan shows that columns divided the two parts of the hall, and that the porch had the feature of three columns grouped L-wise at each corner. Sir Robert Taylor, in whose office Nash had trained, used this same arrange- ment of columns, though of course on a grand scale, at Gorhambury; as we have seen, the capitals there were of Coade stone, and it is possible that it was capitals that Mrs Coade provided for Llysnewydd.

Back in London, Nash continued his Coade connections. Grovelands at Southgate, the Casina at Dulwich, Sundridge Park at Bromley and Worcester Park at Ewell are all on Mrs Coade's 1799 list. Grovelands (Southgate Grove) is shown in Richardson's New Vitruvius Britannicus98 to have had a sphinx on its cornice, a pair of urns of the Somerset House type, and Ionic capitals. The sphinx and the vases have gone, but the capitals survive and are of Coade stone. Worcester Park has gone and I have found no illustrations of it. The Casina at Dulwich has also disappeared. Sundridge Park, Bromley, survives, but it was also worked on by Humphry Repton and Samuel Wyatt, and all of them used Coade stone. The exterior of the house is now painted, and identifying the Coade work underneath, if any survives, will require an extensive search.




With later Nash orders, we begin to come within the era of the Coade records in the PRO. In the Coade letter book, which begins in January 1813 (ten months before Sealy's death) there is a letter (p. 6) reminding Lord Foley that a bill for ?86 I4s. od. had been sent to him on i i September 1811, and requesting payment. Summerson99 dates Nash's reconstruction of Witley Court for Lord Foley c. I8I0, which would fit in well with the Coade bill, but unfortunately no details of it are given in the letter. The house was Victorianized and is now a ruin, so this commission is unlikely to be identified. Chichester Market House, by Nash, has the Arms of the town in Coade stone 100 and in view of his taste for the material there is no reason to suppose that the order came from anybody but himself.

Nash's long residence in the Isle of Wight brought some commissions. East Cowes Castle, his own house, is mentioned in Mrs Coade's 1799 list, not long after he bought the site. She does not say what he had, and the house has been demolished. Another venture in a Gothic style was a Marine Villa for Sir John Hippisley Cox'0l at West Cowes, for which '5 octangular pinnacles at I6 guineas each' were supplied early in I814.102 It is now part of the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club and I have been unable to find out if the pinnacles survive. Nash's friend George Ward ordered from Nash a curious dual-purpose structure - a tower for West Cowes church, which contains a memorial chapel for the Ward family on the ground floor. 103 The entry in Croggon's Order Book, November I8I6, is addressed to John Nash Esq. for George Ward Esq. and specifies '4 serpents on an outside ground 4 ft. diam. within, 12 gns. each, I pannel or pediment with Doves in Glory 9 ft Io ins. i6 gns., I shield of arms and crest 8 gns. and one round pannel with inscription encircled by serpents 6ft. diam. 25 gns.'. Serpents swallowing their own tails were symbols of eternity; on the West Cowes tower they surround clocks, one on each face. The Doves in Glory, the coat of arms and the panel with inscription at not now visible in photographs and may be inside the mausoleum.

Langham House was built by Nash opposite All Souls Langham Place as part of the Regent's Park, Regent Street developments. In 1817, Sir James Langham, Bart. ordered four figures of Vestals and Sibyls to carry lights, and to stand on pedestals with his coat of arms on the front. 104 A Pomona and a Flora were also ordered for the same purpose, and all were to have the fashionable bronze finish. While Nash's name is not specifically mentioned in this order, the figures would have been part of the interior fittings of the house, no doubt the hall, and probably ordered at his request. The Nash connection seems the more certain because he had already ordered similar figures for his own house in Dover Street. Croggon's Day Book for April 1814 specifies '2 figures of sculpture and architecture, 4 do. geometry, music, painting and poetry' for i 50 guineas. The four figures which were intended as a set can be seen in illustrations of the house105 standing between the three horizontal oval windows of the attic storey. The other two may have made themselves useful indoors, like those at Langham House. Doubtless because of orders received from Nash, only a nominal twelve shillings was charged for transporting the figures from Lambeth; less favoured customers usually had to pay several pounds.

Two of Nash's castle-residences, Ravensworth Castle at Gateshead and Lough Cutra Castle in Galway, had Gothic chimneypieces from the Coade factory. The

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Ravensworth example of 1814 has been destroyed.106 It cost I40 guineas. However, that at Lough Cutra survives. It was described as a 'rich Gothic chimneypiece from one at Windsor Castle'107 and cost 50 guineas in 1818. Lord Gort, who paid for it, was lucky in that, the year before, Mr Shirley of Ettington Park, Warwickshire, had ordered a similar chimneypiece derived from one at Windsor, and had not only to pay 10 guineas more for it, but also the 'Expenses at Windsor, Dubbin taking drawing and dims. of chimneypiece ?4 Ios. d.'. 108

Mrs Coade died in 1821 and William Croggon bought the business. As his workbooks for this later period are lost, records of commissions from Nash and anybody else have to be sought from sources outside the firm. As he used Coade stone so often before, it is probable that there are Nash commissions so far undiscovered, for instance for the later stages of the Regent's Park developments. One such commission is known, however: the capitals of All Souls, Langham Place, are of Coade stone (P1. 5b).109 The upper capitals are standard Corinthian, but the lower, Ionic, capitals demonstrate a characteristic foible which had appeared earlier at Watermen's Hall (by William Blackburn, 1780), the addition of a motif appropriate to the purpose of the building. At Watermen's Hall, dolphins stand on their heads in the Ionic capitals; at All Souls, the Christian function of Nash's building is expressed by little cherubim between the volutes.

Fortunately the most important of Nash's commissions for the Coade firm, the work at Buckingham Palace, is documented in the Crown records, and fully described in the History of the King's Works, volume vi. 10 Croggon (now working under his own name) was paid ?5,290 between 1826 and 1828, and ?6,003 in 1828. It will be remembered that a set of six Coade stone Virtues had been supplied for Holland's Royal Pavilion at Brighton, and an opportunity of repeating the idea occurred when Nash designed a dome over the bow on the garden side of Buckingham Palace. Another six Virtues appeared there, modelled by J. C. F. Rossi and costing I?,386. They were removed in I948 and are now behind the Royal Mews. Nine other statues were designed by Flaxman, and ornamented the three pediments of the open court- yard. Astronomy, Geography and History were on the south side, Painting, Sculpture and Architecture on the north, and Commerce, Neptune and Navigation in the middle. To accommodate Victoria's large family, Edward Blore built a fourth wing across the front of the Palace, and started the Coade statues off on a game of musical chairs. He took down the six figures from the side wings, and put Astronomy, Geography and History on the inner, west side of his new block. Sculpture and Architecture were put on the outer side, facing the Mall. He could find no home for Painting, and she was put up for sale in 1848, but withdrawn. Sculpture and Architecture were again displaced by Sir Aston Webb in 1913. Commerce, Neptune and Navigation survived in their original positions until 1948, when they were taken down, as being unsafe. Only fragments survive."' What happened to the rest is not clear, but fortunately there is a great deal more Coade stone work at the Palace still in place. Flaxman designed the frieze of the entablature which runs right round Nash's Palace. It is a leafy scroll design and was not completed at the time of Flaxman's death. Croggon also supplied the capitals on both the garden front and the original entrance front. On the garden front there are Coade stone consoles supporting the balconies.

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They are oddly Mannerist, with grotesque, open-mouthed faces and it would be interesting to know their source. Recalling Carlton House, there are naval and military trophies (four of each) for the east front, and Royal Arms for the Guard Houses at each end of the Palace, for which Croggon received ?I,260 as late as I834. On the terrace outside the garden front, there are six vases stamped Croggon Lambeth, and a further six, of the same design but said to be of inferior quality, marked J. S. Blashfield,112 which presumably were added at some date after Croggon had given up Coade stone production. Blashfield began his terracotta manufacture after I85I.113 The balustrade of the terrace and the roof parapet on the west side are also of Coade stone. 114 Inside the Palace, Coade stone and scagliola terms survived outside the entrances to the Picture Gallery and Throne Room until I93 I.115 They had busts of Raphael and Michelangelo, and fortunately duplicates of these busts survive as terms in the garden of Sir George Beaumont's house, Coleorton Hall.

In I825, copies of the Medici and Borghese Vases were supplied for Royal Lodge, Windsor, 'to the order ofJohn Nash Esq.', and during the next year special pedestals were designed for them with a different bas-relief of appropriate style on each face, and the Royal cipher in the frieze. The detailed bill survives in the Windsor Archives116 and shows that the cost of modelling the designs in clay came to nearly ?200, but that the actual manufacture in Coade stone was only ?84. The pair of vases, for which the moulds had been available since the 1770s, came to the same sum. Both vases have been moved from Royal Lodge. One is missing,17 and the other came to rest in the Iris Garden at Kew Gardens, probably at a time when the gardens were still in private royal occupation.

SOANE used Coade stone a good deal, but the survival rate of his works is much lower than of Nash's, and his London buildings have been particularly savaged, so that much less can be said about them than about Nash's work. Like Nash, he was a country house architect in his earlier years, and some of these houses survive. At Wood Eaton, near Oxford, the Manor House has a porch with Ionic Coade capitals and a frieze of swags and bucrania. Gunnis says that it is based on the temple at Miletus, but this presumably refers only to the capitals. Soane's work here was done in I79I. At Earsham, Norfolk, which Soane altered from 1784 onwards, there is a Music Room (originally planned as a greenhouse) which has what appears to be a Coade plaque in its pediment;118 Dorothy Stroud says that the Coade firm, with others, is mentioned in Soane's accounts for Earsham. At Langley Park, Norfolk, chimneypots and paterae were supplied for the combined gateways and lodges in I79I. The chimneypots are of a type also supplied for the Buckingham Lodges at Stowe (architect not known to me), circular in section, and fluted. 119 At Shotesham Park, Norfolk, there are Ionic pilaster capitals, and the original drawing reproduced by Miss Stroud120 shows that paterae were also intended above the tripartite ground-floor windows. Another early Soane country house was Cuffnells, in Hampshire. It was of the Wyatt type, with plaques between the ground and first floors. It was demolished after the war, but the late Duke of Wellington (the architect Gerald Wellesley) bought the plaques and incorporated them in the decorations of the swimming pool he designed at Stratfield Saye inside a former conservatory.121 One plaque is of the ordinary festoon type as at Portman Square, another is a Ceres - again a standard design - but the other two, one with an

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Irish harp and the other with a girl pointing to a map of Ireland, must have been designed specially for George Rose, who employed Soane at Cuffnells.

Also belonging to this early period of Soane's career was Buckingham House, Pall Mall, and with it we come to Soane's favourite designs among Mrs Coade's produc- tions, Erechtheion caryatids. There are none in the 1784 catalogue, and it seems probable that they were modelled first for Soane. They are not of the exact Athenian model, but were given arms similar to those of the large set of caryatids made for the Emperor Hadrian at Tivoli. Eight of them supported the domed ceiling of the stairwell of Buckingham House. 122 This house was destroyed early this century, but most of the caryatids may survive at Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire. The grounds of this house were laid out in the I92os by Lord Fairhaven, and contain six Coade caryatids, three of which are dated 1793. (The other three are undated.) Soane was at Buckingham House in I790-93, and the figures still retain, in sheltered folds and crannies, traces of the black paint which was used for 'bronzing' figures for indoor use. It should perhaps be emphasized that Soane's taste for caryatids was formed long before Lord Elgin brought back his marbles, and must have been stimulated by the engravings in volume 2 of the Antiquities of Athens.

Two of Soane's country houses of the I790s, Tyringham and Pitshill, Sussex, appear in Mrs Coade's 1799 list, but precisely what was done at either cannot now be identified. The same is true of the 'decorative details, 1793' referred to by Gunnis at the now demolished Simonds Brewery, Reading. A few years later c. 800o, Soane did extensive work at Albury Park in Surrey. The house was Gothicized in 1842 and the capitals from Soane's work now lie in the garden, near John Evelyn's 'Roman' garden features of the seventeenth century and look as if they belonged to them. 123

While these country houses were under construction, Soane had embarked on the Bank of England, and his first orders were for his favourite caryatids. In 1795, 'modelling I2 statues for the dome of the Rotunda at 15 guineas' came, with masons' and labourers' charges and cartage, to ?200 2s. od. 124 Soane repeated the design he had already used at Buckingham House, of a drum with the caryatids supporting a dome, and in I799 he repeated it again, this time for the Transfer Office. By then the figures had gone up to 20 guineas each. In I8oI he required decorations for the Lothbury Court, and ordered four vases, with flowers and flutes, inJune for ?5 I 6s. 6d. including modelling and fixing. There was a repeat order for four more in July. Dorothy Stroud shows a photograph of four of them on a screen of columns leading to the President's Court. 125 A model for a large figure of Europa was made at a cost of ?I4os. od. and the figure itself cost ?88 Ios. od., as did those of Asia, Africa and America. The total for the Lothbury Court, including the attendance of the modeller, came to ?514 19s. 6d.

These rather dull figures survive in situ, but when Sir Herbert Baker reconstructed the Bank in the I920s and I930s, he removed the domes supported by the caryatids. Both sets of caryatids are now in one hall, supporting two artificially-lit domes.

Without the capitals on their heads, the caryatids appear again on Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, Soane's country house (1802), and on 13 Lincolns Inn Fields, his town house (I812). In all Soane, who never tired of repeating a good idea, used more than three dozen of them.

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Apart from an order for balustrades at Moggerhanger House, Bedfordshire, in i808,126 the remainder of Soane's Coade connections concern buildings either demolished or drastically altered. The Infirmary of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, bombed to pieces in the war, was supplied with Royal Arms in I8Io,127 one of the firm's many such orders. The New Law Courts at Westminster, on a site adjacent to Westminster Hall, were built in I82o-25, and William Croggon supplied decorative details for them,128 unfortunately after his work books had gone to the Chancery Court. They were demolished in 1883. The Privy Council and Board of Trade building of 1824-27 also had decorative details from Croggon.l29 Dorothy Stroud mentions that the Privy Council Chamber had Siena marble columns and illustrates these. 130

Such columns would have been extremely costly, and since Soane used scagliola in other buildings, it seems possible that this was the material used in this room. In any case, Barry removed them, among many other alterations, little more than ten years later. 131 The Royal Entrance and stairway to the House of Lords date from 1823, and the Ante-Room at the entrance to the House of Lords had doorways flanked by scagliola columns and pilasters. 132 A letter from Croggon to Soane, dated 18 March 1826, in the Library of Sir John Soane's Museum, was written in justification of the costs of these eight scagliola pieces, which cost ?236 7s. 7d. He remarked that the columns were the usual price of 7s. per foot (for the 'skeleton', or wood core), but that the square piers, having so many angles and arrises, could not be done under 8s. Clearly, Soane had complained. The building did not survive the fire of 1834. Further scagliola columns were ordered for the Freemasons' Hall in Great Queen Street built from 1828-31. The four Ionic columns here cost ?I29 9s. od. and were of giallo antico colour. The bill for them is in Sir John Soane's Museum, but the Hall itself was demolished in 1864.

As such orders show, scagliola manufacture became an important part of the firm's output in the Regency period and after. In the three years from 1818, when he began to make it, Croggon doubled its manufacture annually, and we can only conjecture what it was after 1821. From its use at the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace, we may conclude that Croggon's product satisfied the most exacting customers. William WILKINS was one of these, and he used it at Downing College, where his giallo antico pilasters survive in the hall.133 The fourteen pilasters cost the College ?402 Os. od. Wilkins ordered more scagliola, also of giallo antico, for Dunmore Castle, Falkirk,134 in 1820, this time for columns as well as pilasters. A plan of the house, in the Scottish National Monuments Record, indicates that the columns were in the library; it has now been demolished.

Though Wilkins's work is largely in a classical style, he provided the Coade firm with its largest domestic Gothic commission. This was for Dalmeny House, Lothian Region, 1814-17 (P1. 6), for which panels, battlements, Tudor chimneys, a coat of arms, pinnacles etc. were provided at a total cost of nearly ?5,000. 135 The use of moulds allowed elaborate decoration to be carried out, each merlon, for instance, having a pair of blind arches and each crenelle a stylized flower. The chimneys are made up of quadrant shaped sections, four to a course, each having a raised fleur-de-lis, Tudor rose or other motif on the show part of the house, while those of the kitchen area are plain. All have spiky star tops, so that the house has the busy skyline of East Barsham Manor,

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his main model, which, interestingly, has some early Tudor terracotta decoration. The number of patterns allowed Wilkins to group his chimneys in stacks of six together, without having to repeat a motif.

On the entrance front of Dalmeny House, which has the greatest amount of Coade work, the natural and the Coade stone blend well together, so that, for the average viewer, the Coade stone is 'invisible'. Round on the north side, some Coade work stands out in a different tone, giving rise to a belief that this is the only Coade stone in the building. The reason why in one place it matches, and in another does not, illustrates the nature of this ceramic body. Earlier this century136 there was a serious fire, which badly stained the stonework on the north side. The Coade stone was of course stained with smoke too, so at first the whole wall was a uniform dark grey. But the Coade stone was impervious, and the rain driving in from the north-west, gradually washed it clean again, while the natural stone retained its smoky colour.

Putting commemorative statues on columns became very fashionable in the early nineteenth century, and the Coade firm had a good share of commissions, including George III on Dunston Pillar, Lord Hill at Shrewsbury and Nelson at Montreal. In 1817, the Norfolk Nelson Column Committee commissioned the Coade firm to make allegorical statues for a column designed by Wilkins for Great Yarmouth.137 The chosen design consisted of a column on the capital of which stood six Victories holding laurel wreaths. On their heads they supported an abacus on which stood a huge figure of Britannia. The Times of I April I8I9138 contains an advertisement from E. Coade inviting the public to view 'a colossal statue of Britannia about 14 feet high' destined for Great Yarmouth. It was all immensely expensive, the figure of Britannia alone costing the Committee ?892. The column still stands, but sadly metamorphosed. At some time in the nineteenth century the Coade figures were replaced in concrete. 139 It is proposed to replace them again in fibreglass.

This is an inappropriately sad note on which to conclude this review of some of the commissions carried out by the Coade firm. The popularity of the material with so many architects and its proven durability suggest that failures such as that at Great Yarmouth were almost unknown. Mark Blanchard, of the Terra Cotta Works in Blackfriars Road, may be allowed the last word on the subject. Advertising in the Builder on 29 December 1855, he said that he was 'late of Coade's original works and successor to them in the manufacture of this invaluable material that has been so successfully adopted for nearly a century by our eminent architects and others, in the adornment of our noblest buildings, and is the only tried material that is capable to stand the ravages of time unimpaired'.

NOTES

I Alison Kelly, Decorative Wedgwood in Architecture and Furniture (1965), p. 76. 2 The following is a list of those architects, and some more strictly definable as builders, who are known to have used Coade stone, or whose buildings include or included examples of it of the appropriate period. Users of Coade scagliola are also included. The list is correct to October 1984. Robert Adam, Mario Asprucci the Younger, Thomas Atkinson, Sir Charles Barry, Francis Bedford, Richard Billing the Elder and Younger (of Reading), William Blackburn, Joseph Bonomi, Edward Bardwell Brazier, Robert William Furze Brettingham, Lancelot Brown, Arthur Browne (of Norwich), Charles Bulfinch, James

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Burn (of Haddington), James Burton, Charles Augustus Busby, George Byfield, Charles Cameron? ('Statues, Busts, Chimneypieces, Vases etc.' ordered for 'Zarsko Zelo' seem likely to have been ordered by him for the Cameron Gallery or Catherine's apartments at Tsarskoe Selo, but it has not been possible to obtain information on this from Russia), James Carr (ofClerkenwell), John Carr (of York), John Carter, Sir William Chambers, Thomas Chawner, Samuel Pepys Cockerell, Placido Columbani, Kenton Couse, John Crunden, Thomas Cubitt, Thomas Cundy the Elder and Younger, George Dance the Younger, James Defferd (of Bangor), George Draper (of Chichester). Francis Edwards, Richard Edwin, Archibald Elliott the Younger, Richard Elsam (of Dover), Henry Emlyn, James Essex, William Farrell (ofDublin),John Foulston, Charles Fowler, James Gandon, Joseph Michael Gandy, George Gibson, James Gillespie Graham, Edward Gifford or Gyfford, Henry Hakewell, Thomas Hardwick the Younger, Thomas Harrison, Edward Haycock, Samuel Hayes (of Wicklow), Henry Holland, Thomas Hopper, Aaron Henry Hurst, William Jay (of Savannah), John Johnson, Francis Johnston (of Dublin), John Johnston (of Rio de Janeiro), Joseph Kay, Richard Payne Knight, Edward Lapidge, David Laing, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Thomas Leverton, James Lewis, John Meadows, James Medland, Robert Mitchell, Robert Mylne, Alexander Nasmyth (of Edinburgh), Peter Nicholson, Michael Novosielski, John Buonarotti Papworth, Joseph Patience the Younger, John Paterson, William Pilkington, John Plaw, James Playfair, William Fuller Pocock, William Porden, John Powning (of Exeter). John Raffield, John Biagio Rebecca, Humphry Repton, Henry Rhodes, George Richardson, John Roberts (of Waterford), William Robertson (of Waterford), Peter Frederick Robinson, Samuel Robinson, Paul Sandby, Francis Sandys, Samuel Saxon, Michael Searles, Archibald Simpson (of Aberdeen), Charles C. Smith (of Warwick), Sir Robert Smirke, David Stephenson, Francis Stone (of Norwich), John Tasker, Charles Heathcote Tatham, James Taylor, Sir Robert Taylor, Thomas Taylor (of Leeds), Mark Graystone Thompson, W. Tierney Clarke, William Tyler, Charles Watson (of York), - Welland and - Bowden (ofMonaghan), William Wilkins the Elder and the Younger, Samuel Woolley (of Dublin), Thomas Wright, Benjamin Dean Wyatt, James Wyatt, Lewis Wyatt, Philip Wyatt, Samuel Wyatt, SirJeffry Wyatville, J. Wynne, John Yenn. 3 Mrs Nancy Valpy's recent researches have brought to light the names of several hitherto unknown makers active for short periods in Eleanor Coade's early years. Mrs Valpy studied the entries in the Daily Advertiser, an advertising paper which exists in a complete run only in the Library of Congress in Washington. Only odd copies survive in this country. Mrs Valpy's findings will be published in the English Ceramic Circle Transactions, probably in 1985. I am indebted to her for showing them to me. I am also indebted to Mr Simon Jervis of the Victoria and Albert Museum for telling me of an article on Coade stone 'Ueber Herrn Coade's Lithodipira [sic] oder Kunst Backerstein-Fabrik zu Lambeth in England'Journal des Luxus und der Moden, 11 (Leipzig, 1787), pp. 171-73. Over five months during 1788, the whole Coade catalogue was printed in the magazine. 4 Rupert Gunnis, Dictionary ofBritish Sculptors 1660-1840 (I953), Coade entry, pp. Io5-09. Also Croggon (misspelt Croggan) entry pp. I I6-I7. It should however be said that Gunnis was primarily interested in sculpture rather than architecture. 5 Mrs Coade's statement in Coade's Gallery, 1799, the handbook to her exhibition premises at Westminster Bridge (Pedlar's Acre). 6 The British Library copy (the only one with two plates per page) has a hand-written brown-paper cover which states that it was published in I777-79. Though some of the plates have these dates, others have no date and show pieces designed after the date of issue of the Coade catalogue in 1784. The book must therefore have been put together from plates made at different times, probably in the later I780s. It is not known who made the brown paper cover, which has caused confusion. The other two books have no covers or title-pages, but frontispieces of the card of entry to the premises, designed by Bacon. 7 The only copy I have seen is in the British Library. 8 The only copy I have seen is in the Scottish National Library, Acc 5 I 1, Box 12. It has a pencilled date of 1813, which seems likely to be correct. 9 William Croggon was descended in some way from Eleanor Coade's aunt Frances Enchmarch, who married Walter Oke. A Walter Oke Croggon makes his appearance in the Croggon family, but Mr James Croggon, the present-day historian of the family, of Grampound, tells me that he has not yet worked out W. O. Croggon's relationship to William Croggon. Io Public Record Office, C. I I/Io6.

I Information from MrJames Croggon. 12 Information from Mr Harry Knott, Director of the firm, in I977. The firm has now disappeared from the industrial lists. 13 Minet Library, Lambeth, I2/64. Card of admission to the sale at Lambeth of Coade stock on 2I July and following days, 1843. Auctioneers Rushworth andJarvis, Savile Row, Regent Street. 14 British Museum Add. MS 4 133. Gunnis (op. cit.) gives the story. 15 This is one of the dated plates.

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16 Gunnis, op. cit. The 1799 list mentions 'vases on the parapet and Royal Arms'. There is a Royal Arms in the basement, but it is dated I831 (information from Mr F. J. Collins), so the George III example must have been removed. 17 Hertfordshire Record Office, Grimston MSS, account book XI 71. I8 I have found extensive references to it only in Margaret Whinney, Home House (1969). 19 Whinney, op. cit. 20 Illustrated in Georgian Society ofDublin, II (I9I0); also Country Life, 13 July 1978, p. 2126, fig. 2. 21 Vol. 44, I04-o6. 22 Photocopy of the bill, paid I2July 1779, kindly supplied by MrJohn Hardy, Victoria and Albert Museum. 23 Information from Mr David Learmont, Scottish National Trust. 24 Michael McCarthy, 'The Rebuilding of Stowe House I770-I777', The Huntington Library Quarterly, May 1973. 25 Croggon's Order Book, May and June I816. 26 Colin McWilliam, The Buildings of Scotland: Lothian (1978), p. 224. The fact that the plaques are Coade stone is not mentioned. 27 In the Scottish National Monuments Record and shown to me by Miss Cruft. 28 John Fleming, Robert Adam and his Circle (1962), p. 258. 29 Description of the Grand Model of Neptune giving up the Body of Nelson . .. to Britannia. No date, but probably 1813. Scottish National Library Acc. 5111 Box I2.

30 Croggon's Day Book, December 1818. The cost was ?154 I7s. 6d. 31 Seen. 29. 32 The gilding was added after 1945 in memory of Naval chaplains killed in the war. Information from the Rev. David Evans, Chaplain to the Royal Naval College, in I979. 33 As the inscription on one of them states. 34 Kindly shown to me by the Rev. David Evans in 1979. 35 Alison Kelly, 'A Camouflage Queen by the River - Mrs Coade at Greenwich', Country Life, 25January I979. 36 Croggon Day Book, July I814. 37 Antony Dale,James Wyatt (1956), Frontispiece. 38 The house was Gothicized in I776-77. Small crocketed Coade pinnacles stand on the corners of gables, and there are a few Coade stone Gothic flowers and a rather flat coat of arms. A print of 1778 shows that the pinnacles originally stood on cornices, and that the present battlements (not of Coade stone) are later. 39 The font for Milton Abbey Church is described in Coade's Gallery (1799). See below (Debden and St George's Chapel). It has been removed and its present whereabouts is unknown. 40 I799 list. 41 I799 list. 42 Monthly Magazine (I799), p. 904. 43 1799 list. 44 Coade's Gallery (1799). 45 Alison Kelly, 'Coade stone in National Trust houses', National Trust Studies 1980, plates 19, 20.

46 Coade Letter Book, PRO C. I I I/o6, September 1813, p. 7. 47 Colvin, op. cit., p. 949, mentions work in the grounds of Croome 1794-1801. I799 list. 48 1799 list and further information supplied by Lady Ridley. 49 John Harris and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings ofEngland: Lincolnshire (1964), p. 200.

50 Reginald Turnor, James Wyatt (1950), plate on p. 74. 51 Antony Dale, op. cit., p. 33. 52 Antony Dale, op. cit. p. 164. 53 About I960. Information from the present Earl of Pembroke. 54 Antony Dale, op. cit. p. 52. 55 Gunnis, op. cit. 56 Coade Letter Book, 7January 1813, p. I. 57 Christopher Hussey, Mid-Georgian (1963), plates 322, 323. 58 Neale's Views of Seats, v (second series, 1829). 59 J. M. Robinson, 'Holkham', Country Life, 21 November I974. 60 1799 list. 6I I799 list. 62 1799 list.

63 Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings ofEngland: Staffordshire (I974), p. 237. 64 It is not shown in the painting of this part of the gardens by F. T. Dall 1769, at the house. 65 The 1799 list mentions Arms, Statues etc. at the Trinity Houses at Water Lane, Tower Street and Tower Hill. 66 1799 list. 67 I am told by the librarian that they will be re-used.

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68 Mr Douglas Hague, of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, informs me that a Coade coat of arms survives at Penrhyn Castle, in Hopper's reconstruction. 69 G. Jackson-Stops in an article on Broadlands, Country Life, i8 December 1980, attributes the extension of the Orangery to Holland. Dorothy Stroud, Capability Brown (1975), p. 138, attributes it to Brown. 70 Survey ofLondon, xx (1940), chapter 8, Trafalgar Square. 7I As well as the list of commissions frequently referred to here, Coade's Gallery includes a considerable amount of text which is worth study. 72 Plates of the house and Debden Church are in a folio folder entitled Mint Portfolio in Essex County Record Office. 73 Neale's Views of Seats, I (1818), says that 'the font presented also by Mr. Chiswell was executed at Coade's artificial stone manufactory in 1786 from designs by R. Holland'. 74 Accompanied by a long and eulogistic description in Coade's Gallery. The Milton Abbey and Windsor fonts are also mentioned. 75 The designs for Bedford Square to which four building agreements of 1776 relate were deposited in the Bedford Estate Office but are now lost. The builders were William Scott, brickmaker, and Robert Grews, carpenter, who could well have produced the designs themselves; they also agreed to lay out the centre of the square under the direction of Robert Palmer, surveyor (see Colvin, p. 614). Leverton seems to have come on the scene relatively late, and in 1797 stated that he 'had a principal concern in promoting the finishing of Bedford Square, and built among other houses in it that of the Lord Chancellor besides several on my own account, in one of which I now reside'. (Ex inf. Frank Kelsall.) 76 Essex County Record Office, Q/S Bb 348/I. 77 JohnJohnson, Plans, Sections and Perspective Elevations of the Essex County Hall at Chelmsford (I808). 78 Information from Miss Nancy Briggs, Essex County Record Office. 79 Essex County Record Office, Q. Fab66 East Packet 52/I no. 25 E P 1787. 80 A full description of the rebuilding with the relevant correspondence, is in Essex Review, xc (July 193 I), oo ff., by the Rev. J. F. Williams. 81 Letter of 3 August 180o, quoted by Williams, op. cit. 82 Williams, op. cit. 83 1799 list. 84 R. F. Dell, Sussex Archaeological Collections, Vol.C, p. 9, quotes the commission. I am indebted to Mr Brian Austin for the reference. 85 I799 list. 86 Information from Miss Nancy Briggs. 87 Ida Darlington, Bulletin of the Society of the Friends of St. George's Chapel (I955). Information from Mr F. J. Collins, whose father was a member of the architectural staff of the Chapel early this century, and was familiar with a crack unchanging over many years, which nevertheless alarmed the surveyor. 88 Ida Darlington, op. cit., shows a photograph of 1872 of the font in the Chapel. 89 Ida Darlington, op. cit. 90 Ida Darlington, op. cit. 9I H. Colvin, op. cit., p. 795, points out that the volume is dated I787, but was not actually published until I789. 92 David Watkin, Thomas Hope and the Neo-classical Idea (I968), p. 245. 93 He was the first, and as far as I have been able to discover, the only English neo-classical architect to use it. 94 'Italianische Reise', entry for 27 March 1787. Quoted in English by Nikolaus Pevsner, Studies in Art, Architecture and Design, I (1968), p. 69. 95 The inscription has been confirmed for me by the owner, Mr David Pinnegar. I am grateful to Miss Margaret Cunningham for translating it. 96 Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique (198 ), pp. 315, 3 16. 97 Terence Davis, John Nash the Prince Regent's Architect (1966), p. 25. 98 G. Richardson, New Vitruvius Britannicus (1802). John Summerson, The Life and Work ofJohn Nash, Architect (1980), plate Ioa. 99 Summerson, op. cit., plate I9b. Ioo Information supplied by Mr F. J. Collins. 01I There seems to be some confusion as to whether his name was Hippisley Coxe (Summerson and Croggon) or

Coxe Hippisley (Colvin). 102 Croggon Order Book, February 1814. 103 I am grateful to SirJohn Summerson for casting light on what at first appeared an incomprehensible order. Io4 Croggon Order Book, January 1817. I05 Davis, op. cit., plate 38. io6 Croggon Order Book, July 1815. 107 Croggon Order Book, December 1818.

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o08 Croggon Order Book, October 1817, June 1818. o09 Gunnis, op. cit., p. I6, Croggon entry.

IIo H. M. Colvin,J. M. Crook and M. H. Port, History of the King's Works, VI (I973), 271, 282, 283, 300, 301. II History of the King's Works, VI, 300.

112 H. Clifford Smith, Buckingham Palace (93 I), p. 65. I 3 Blashfield catalogue c. I8 5 5 in the Victoria and Albert Museum Library. Also in the Library is his An Account of the History and Manufacture ofAncient and Modern Terracotta and its use in Architecture as a durable and elegant Materialfor Decoration (i855), in which he praised Coade stone and remarked of Buckingham Palace that 'in making the recent alterations it was found that the only works which had stood the test of frost, sun and rain were these terracottas'. I 14 Clifford Smith, op. cit., p. 64. II5 G. de Bellaigue, J. Harris and 0. Millar, Buckingham Palace (1968), p. 79. I 6 Royal Archives, Windsor 26736. 117 Information from the Comptroller of the Queen Mother's Household, who kindly instituted a search for me.

I8 Dorothy Stroud, The Architecture of Sir John Soane (I96I), p. 32, plate 17. Pierre de la Ruffiniere du Prey has

recently pointed out (John Soane, the Making of an Architect) that Soane's first dated buildings, in Adams Place, Southwark, I780-82, had a cornice of swags and bucrania shown in a Coade engraving of 1778. No. I86 in the Coade catalogue, its cost I2s. per foot. I 9 Stroud, op. cit., p. 32 plate 22. I20 Stroud, op. cit., p. 32 plates 23, 25. 121 Stroud, op. cit., gives the date of Cuffnells as 1794 (p. 160). 122 Stroud, op. cit., p. 35, plate 55. 123 Information from MrJ. A. H. Kingswell. 124 Information from the Curator of the Bank of England. 125 Information from the Curator of the Bank of England. Stroud, op. cit., plate 74. 126 Stroud, op. cit., plate 143. The drawing for it is in Drawer 1114, in SirJohn Soane's Museum. I27 Stroud, op. cit., p. IIO. 128 Gunnis, op. cit., Croggon entry. 129 Gunnis, op. cit., Croggon entry. 130 Stroud, op. cit., plate 216.

131 Stroud, op. cit., p. 134. 132 Stroud, op. cit., p. 132. 133 Croggon Order Book, July 1819, 'Downing College Cambridge for Mr Wilkins I4 flat pilasters I6ft. o1/4 ins. projection, same imitation of giallo antique as Covent Garden'.Smirke's Covent Garden was of I809-I0,

while Croggon did not begin to make scagliola until I8I8, so the reference must be to colour only. 134 Croggon Day Book, February I82I, 'Lord Dunmore, ordered by Mr Wilkins, Dunmore Castle, Falkirk, Ireland [sic], 4 columns, 4 pilasters giallo antico . . . 249. 5. o.' This included transport and erection. 135 The orders for Dalmeny begin on October I8I5 and continue for about two years, in Croggon's Order and Day Books. They are too detailed and extensive for inclusion here. 136 Information from the late Dowager Countess of Rosebery. 137 Croggon Day Book, June I8I8, 'Six statues ?302. 17. 6. Britania [sic] ?892'. Wreaths and an olive branch in copper came to ?34 I Is. 6d. 138 Information from Mr Brian Austin. 139 Information from Mr Robert Breakell, who climbed the column.

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PI. Ia Gorhambury, Hertfordshire, portico, by Sir Robert Taylor, 1777

P1. ib Gosford House, Lothian, stable block attributed to Robert Adam, c. 1790



P1. 2a Heaton Hall, Lancashire, capital ongarden font, byJames Wyatt, 1772

P1. 2b Engraving oflonic capital, issuedfor Mrs Coade to illustrate the firm'sproducts, 1774, detail



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P1. 3a Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford, by James Wyatt, 1776-94

P1. 3b Belmont, Kent, by Samuel Wyatt, 1792, detail ofCoade stoneplaque

P1. 3c 61 and 63, New Cavendish Street, London, byJohnJohnson, 1776-77

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P1. 4a St George's Chapel, Windsor, vault of west screen, by Henry Emlyn, 1790-92

P1. 4b Tetbury church, Gloucestershire, by Francis Hiorne, 1777-81, detail of window



P1. 5a Hammerwood Park, Sussex, by B. H. Latrobe, 1792, detail ofportico capitals

P1. 5b All Souls, Langham Place, London, byJohn Nash, 1822-25, detail ofportico capitals



P1. 6 Dalmeny House, Lothian, by William Wilkins, 1814-17



Coade Stone in Georgian Architecture

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