Elizabeth Nathaniels, ‘James and Decimus Burton’s Regency ...

text © the authors 2012

Elizabeth Nathaniels, ‘James and Decimus Burton’s Regency New Town, 1827–37’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xx, 2012, pp. 151–170

During the th anniversary year of the birth ofJames Burton (–) we can re-assess his work,not only as the leading master builder of late Georgianand Regency London but also as the creator of anentire new resort town on the Sussex coast, west ofHastings. The focus of this article will be on Burton’srole as planner of the remarkable townscape andlandscape of St Leonards-on-Sea. How and why didhe build it and what role did his son, the acclaimedarchitect Decimus Burton, play in its creation?

James Burton, the great builder and developer oflate Georgian London, is best known for his workin the Bedford and Foundling estates, and for thecrucial part he played in the building of RegentStreet and the Regent’s Park terraces. But, despiteliving in the most ‘chaste’ of classical villas inRegent’s Park, by the s he was encircled by fast-increasing urban development: ‘we in the park willbe soon surrounded by a ring of smoke’, commentedhis son Henry in . Sea bathing was approachingthe zenith of its popularity, and Burton’s diary from to mentions visits to Brighton, Margate,and Bognor, though not – despite the presence of aHastings Street in his Skinner estate developmentin Bloomsbury – to Hastings. And in he enteredinto negotiations for the purchase of a tract ofagricultural land in the long-since deserted parishesof St Leonards and St Mary Magdalene to the west ofHastings. Here he laid out St Leonards and, almostcertainly with the help of his son Decimus, built ‘oneof the first and most daring’ of the fashionableseaside resorts of the nineteenth century.

The land, which was part of the -acre GensingFarm, was put up for sale by the trustees of the lateCharles Eversfield following the passing of a privateAct of Parliament which allowed them to grantbuilding leases. It included a favourite tourist site –a valley with stream cutting through the cliff calledOld Woman’s Tap. (Fig. ) At the bottom stood alarge flat stone, locally named The Conqueror’sTable, said to have been where King William I haddined on the way to the Battle of Hastings.Thisvalley was soon to become the central feature of thenew town. The Conqueror’s table, however, was tobe unceremoniously removed and replaced by JamesBurton’s grand central St Leonards Hotel.

The Act proposed a spacious, dignified housingestate with ‘detached villas and other houses’disposed on plots of land no larger than fifteen acreseach, ‘very conveniently and eligibly situated forbuilding ground’. Purchasers were allowed to ‘allotparts thereof for squares, lawns, streets or roads, andto make drains, sewers and water courses, and to digbrick earth for the purpose aforesaid.’ A traditionalGeorgian grid of streets was envisaged, with crescentsand squares, but there was also a suggestion of theVictorian garden suburb, allowing for ‘detachedvillas and other houses’, much like the earliest plansfor St John’s Wood whose villas were, however,often semi-detached. The Act ‘permitted theTrustees to impose such restrictions as theywished’, though it ‘did not require that any particularrestriction be imposed.’ This vagueness wasprobably the source of problems encountered byJames Burton later on.

T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X X

JAMES AND DECIMUS BURTON’S REGENCYNEW TOWN, ‒

E L I Z A B E T H N A T H A N I E L S

Brighton, Thomas Reid Kemp’s Kemp Town, ‘thefirst example of formal Georgian town planningapplied to the seaside’ was begun by on his owninherited land just to the east of Brighton. Its rival,Brunswick Town, by one of Kemp’s architects,Charles Busby, followed a year later to the west.

Both featured terraces of houses, with no detachedresidences, and Kemp Town took years to complete.

Both Kemp and the architect/ developer Busby wereruined financially; Kemp had to flee his creditors toFrance, dying there in , and Busby becamebankrupt a year before his death in .

James Burton must have heard of Busby being‘bankrupted by his own buildings’, and in –the year in which he laid the foundation stone forSt Leonards – Kemp Town was described as being‘almost as desolate as Pompeii’. By contrast, in St Leonards was populated by a small army oflabourers, engaged in focused, supervised buildingactivity. Burton avoided the major reasons for the

During the s ‘new would-be fashionableresorts were springing up all along the south coast’.

Most, however, were grafted on to original fishingvillages, like Brighton, and it seemed that Hastingswas soon to catch up. A London paper in

claimed: ‘This fashionable summer retreat bids fairsoon to rival Brighton’. By , in the words of onevisitor, ‘the Fashion of the company’ was‘considerably improved’, and by members of theWoodgate family were reporting that the town was‘full’.The buildings were improving as well. Amongthese was Pelham Crescent, whose shopping arcadewas completed in . By the whole complexwas finished, with its raised, split crescent of eleganthouses embracing the classical, temple-like Church ofSt Mary in the Castle. A remarkable and originalcreation, it was designed by the architect Joseph Kay(–), surveyor since of the FoundlingEstate in Bloomsbury, Burton’s earliest large-scaledevelopment in Bloomsbury. At the same time, in

J A M E S A N D D E C I M U S B U R T O N ’ S R E G E N C Y N E W T O W N


Fig. . The site of Old Woman’s Tap, or Tapshaw, on the coast west of Hastings , where James Burtonbuilt his new town in 1828. This is an engraving made from a painting by J. M. W. Turner, looking

towards Bexhill and the Martello Towers in 1817. In the 1820s, at least two of the towers remained onthe western St Leonards coastline; one was washed away by the sea and the other blown up in the1870s, according to local newspaper reports. By kind permission of Hastings Public Library.

O R I G I N A L L A N D P U R C H A S E S

A N D E A R L Y P L A N S

The original acres of freehold land for whichJames Burton negotiated during cut acrossfields (Fig. ). Some of their names echoed theancient settlement of the abandoned parish, such asKiln Plot, Old House Meadow, and Chapel Field.The Burton land was in the form of an invertedletter T, the horizontal element running along theseashore yards and the vertical running inland,approximately – yards, to include anagriculturally impossible valley. Set precisely betweenthe parishes of St Leonards and St Mary Magdalen,the stream or ‘tap’ was to serve the new town andcreate two ponds.

Burton’s estate at St Leonards was acquired,freehold, in two parts, the first acres in

costing £, and a further thirteen acres in for£,.The first Agreement to sell the freehold ofland in and around Old Woman’s Tap was drawn upby the trustees of the Eversfield Estate on December. This consisted of fields above, sloping into thevalley and a strip of flat land below the cliff edge. Adeposit of £,was paid by Burton on December. The purchase was completed and paid for on February , just a day or two before the layingof the foundation stone of the first villa on March.

The original agreement included a requirement that

Brighton failures. Being economically and politicallyastute, he eschewed Busby’s radicalism andKemp’s un-businesslike high-mindedness, and heembraced that sine qua non for Regency seasidesuccess: royal patronage. Thanks to his son Decimus’scontacts in Tunbridge Wells, the major coup wasto attract, by , the Duchess of Kent, and herdaughter Princess Victoria, the future Queen ofEngland, for a winter stay. Even though JamesBurton’s financial losses also were said to be great,

he was not bankrupted by the town, his wealth atdeath in being £,. And despite seriousproblems with weather, sea incursion, and even hisown ill-health, Burton completed the nucleus of hisSt Leonards development. Within eighteen monthsof its foundation a grand opening dinner was held atthe St Leonards Hotel in October , and exactlytwo years later, by March , he had drafted apublic announcement describing the attractions andbuildings of St Leonards as already complete. (Fig. )



Fig. . Description of the new town almost certainlywritten by James Burton, dated . By kind permission

of the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

Fig. . Drawing from conveyance of freehold land to JamesBurton by the Eversfield Estate trustees,dated .

By kind permission of the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

adjoining Eversfield land. The resulting Conveyanceof was a ‘mutual tidying-up’,with the EversfieldEstate agreeing to take over the building of the newroad in return for Burton closing his tollgate andbuying extra land. As for the animals, Burton was tobe responsible for fencing off his own land – andfacing up to a problem already encountered by theEyre Estate’s ‘galloping cows.’

Burton had indeed overstepped his boundaries.To the north, he built the east side of his NorthLodge – a substantial dwelling – on Eversfield land,later acquiring an extra strip which allowed for thebuilding of Decimus Burton’s Italianate BastonLodge, in the s. To the west, he encroachedupon Eversfield land for his Archery Ground, theSt Leonards Archers having been formed in .

Finally more property was acquired just north ofMercatoria, the designated service area.’

Even before the Eversfield Act had receivedRoyal Assent in June , early drawings in theHastings Museum, dated March the same year, showthat Burton had already been planning the newtown.What is astonishing is the nature of theseplans. At this time there was little suggestion of‘Regent’s Park by the sea’. Instead there were rows ofjam-packed orthogonal groups of terraces stretching

Burton should build a new road across fields toshorten the route between London and St Leonards;the second agreement of included an undertakingby the Eversfield Estate to build the road themselvesand to allow for payment of £, over a period offive years.(Fig. ) Study of the legal documentsreveals that problems must have arisen over road-building, toll gates, the charging of tolls, animalsroaming the streets and Burton’s infringement onto



Fig. . Drawing from the second conveyance of land toJames Burton dated . By kind permission of the

Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

Fig. . The first sketch plan of St Leonards dated March , showing James Burton’s attempt to impose the rectangular rigour of the grid onto a picturesque valley.


Burton aimed to re-create his Bloomsbury success,with terraced housing laid out on a grid pattern ofinland streets. Perhaps he also wished to challengehis younger rival architect, Joseph Kay, and create aspectacular Pelham Crescent of his own. But it is onething to have ideas about a yet un-surveyed piece ofland sixty miles away and another to be on the spot,realising the true nature of the site. The dimensionsof James Burton’s earliest plans made in Londonsuggest he was working on a long shoreline stripof land somewhat wider than the actual plot heeventually bought in , which ranged from to yards wide. In the early months of he musthave been working from his own visual memoryrather than from a detailed survey. The plan thateventually emerged was different, making better useof the topography of the site and thereby betterexpressing the spirit of the place. (Fig. )

One element which endured from Regent’s Park– the Neo-classical terraces along the seafront – was afeature which occasioned delight and praise at thetime. ‘None but the unrivalled crescents of Bathand Bristol is superior to the Marina of St Leonards’enthused the influential Dr A B Granville, whonevertheless criticised other aspects of Burton’s

too far inland for the limited site running along theflat shoreline, with the charming irregular valleyforced into a rectangular shape, the stream runningneatly in a straight line through the middle of it.(Fig. ) It was as if it belonged to an earlier, eighteenthcentury tradition, the ‘perfect regularity anduniformity’ advocated by Lord Kames in the s.

Nevertheless, the plans included a crescent, thatrequirement for a fashionable resort. This crescent,facing the sea, was to be about feet across and toconsist of two arms of curved terraced houses with ahotel in the centre. The whole crescent encircled asea-facing villa in gardens, on the same axis. Afurther undated drawing shows the crescent ingreater detail complete with colonnade along theseafront, with shops and baths. A drawing labelled‘Harold Plan’, dated a month later on April,abandons the idea of the large crescent and proposesrectangular gardens, with a triple villa – a housedivided into three – in the middle, fronted by bathsalong the sea and many seafront terraces. Inland,further terraces form a series of squares where thecentral garden area seems to be shared, in themanner later adopted in s Kensington.

These early sketch plans suggest that James



Fig. . An 1846 map of St Leonards, showing additional land acquired by the Burton Estate, some of it (coloured pink) put up for sale. By kind permission of the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

Neoclassical shorefront there is a terraced grid ofstreets, originally a specially-designed area forartisans, shopkeepers and laundresses. Elevated byLatinate names – ‘Mercatoria’ and ‘Lavatoria’– itremains today a high-density, village-like place. Here,fronting the former Mews, James Burton demonstratedsomething relatively new: a concern for the ‘lowerorders’. He knew that no community could existwithout its essential services, and these neededdecent accommodation.

Perhaps Burton also wished to redeem hisreputation from the Bloomsbury Foundling Estatework where, as was customary in the s, he hadbuilt third- and fourth-rate houses immediatelybehind those of the gentry, or along the edges of theestate. They were often ‘unauthorised’, quicklybecame slums, and were much criticised by somemembers of the Foundling Estate buildingcommittee.Much like some of the early nineteenthcentury houses of old Hastings around The Bourne,

this was a form of squalor James Burton obviouslywished to avoid with his own new town. By hehad published and posted his Cottage Regulationsrecommended for the Preservation of Health.Thiscontained exhortations about the cleanliness of theperson, as well as of the house, and advice aboutavoiding ‘raw vegetables’ and liquor and keeping‘moral habits, industry, and order’.

Burton’s concern for cleanliness in built formresulted in what is probably the only known small

plan.Generally painted the traditional Bath stonecream, this stuccoed range, later to be extended invarying degrees of success all along the seafront toHastings, remains its most outstanding feature today.Another Regent’s Park feature was the residential or‘villa park’, the semi-private subscription gardensin the valley. Here Burton broke away from theGeorgian rectangular rigour of rectilinear streets andcreated a grouping of loosely scattered villas andcottages suggesting the garden suburbs of the future.

Even today – despite parked cars and otherinsensitive twentieth-century intrusions – St Leonardsis best appreciated as a whole. No individual building,as it stands now, can claim to be masterpiece in itsown right. It is the setting and the landscape-ledarchitecture of the hinterland which form itsprincipal interest.

T H E B U I L D I N G S O F E A R L Y

S T L E O N A R D S

The architecture of the Burtons’ St Leonards hasbeen discussed elsewhere, and I will concentrateon what appear to be the most original andunacknowledged elements of the design, focusing onthe early years up to James Burton’s death in .First, the buildings will be described according todifferent social groups, starting with the artisans’ andservice sector. Built on the hill rising from the central



Fig. . The service area of St Leonards, showing thelarge, centrally located Mews tucked behind both thecommercial grid planned streets of Mercatoria andLavatoria Square, with East Ascent running up to itand Maze Hill and the gardens to the left. The Lawnis one of the later ‘architectural groups’ designed under the supervision of Decimus Burton. By kindpermission of the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

We now come to the main groups of intendedvisitors and residents: wealthy invalids and largefamilies. ‘The buildings we understand are notintended for lodging houses, but as commodiousresidences for large, respectable families,’ stated theSussex Advertiser as early as February . Thiscertainly accords with James Burton’s intentions, aswas the fashion of the time, so well satirized by JaneAusten in her unfinished novel Sanditon.

Large respectable families could have chosen from the

square specially designed for laundresses. CalledLavatoria, it led out of Mercatoria, whose centrallyplaced pub, the Horse and Groom, was one of thefirst buildings of the town. The remains of Lavatoriatoday, with its delicate ornament detail applied tosimple small terraced houses, speaks volumes for theinterest Burton had for the ‘lower orders’ – eventhough he assured his potential wealthy visitors that‘inferior’ residences were separated from the‘principal residences’ in ‘Architectural Groups’.

The shape of the square is now lost, replaced byfront gardens and road, forming the top end of whatis now Norman Road. (Fig. )

East Ascent, leading down steeply from Mercatoriabehind the original seafront Marina (now replacedby the enormous s Marine Court), was a mixtureof houses often combining offices and shops in avariety of simple stripped-down classical structureswith one keynote building which has an elegant,porticoed entrance. A public house was originallytucked away behind these houses, backing onto thelarge mews behind. Fronting the mews area to thewest was the lower part of Maze Hill. Here was a rowof unusual stuccoed houses with Gothic detailswhich were probably intended for the less affluentvisitors.They have no gardens at the back or front,yet at the same time they benefit from a view acrossSt Leonards Gardens and maintain the eighteenth-century tradition of a piano nobile drawing room onthe first floor. (Fig. ).

One of the first three buildings put up in

was South Colonnade (now demolished), a row ofshops with dwellings above, built immediately on theseafront. It was here, in April , that a daughter ofa grocer became the first newly-born inhabitant ofthe town – an event duly celebrated by a gift from theBurtons of a silver tea service. Also completed in was the archway entrance gate, East Lodge,trumpeting the traveller’s arrival at the new town onthe main road from Hastings. And finally there wasBurton’s own West Villa, or simply No. Marina,later called Crown House (see below).



Fig. . The Maze Hill houses: stuccoed Gothic terraces,similar to some of the images of original buildingsdesigned for the Eyre Estate in St. John’s Wood.

Elizabeth Nathaniels.

George III, Sidmouth with the Duke of Kent, andBrighton with the Prince Regent. The first royal toarrive in St Leonards was Princess Sophia ofGloucester, in . She stayed in the formidable‘Castellated Villa’ a large, brooding Tudoresqueresidence near the North Lodge entrance to thetown, overlooking its own gardens and pond, as wellas the main gardens beyond. This was quicklyrenamed Gloucester Lodge and so it remains today.

Even more excitement was caused by the arrivalof Princess Victoria with her mother the Duchess ofKent for a winter stay in –.They were housedat West Villa (No. Marina, now Crown House),the first building of the new town, built for JamesBurton himself. This is surely the most interestingbuilding along the seafront. (Fig. ) Built from pre-fabricated elements sent down from London bysea, it is quite different from the average EnglishRegency villa and may have had a French inspiration,

seafront Neoclassical terraces. Facing south over sunand sea, with the central ranges offering first floorbalconies above the stout Greek Doric colonnades,they would seem ideal. However, ‘invalids’ – animportant long-stay tourist group – were cautioned bythe influential Dr Granville to avoid the seafront asbeing ‘particularly obnoxious’ for the delicate invalid,

‘placing him on the margin of a too frequently agitatedocean.’ Avoiding the awesomely Burkean ‘sublimity’of the seafront, Granville therefore proposed themore appropriate and sheltered ‘beauty’ of the villasand Gothic cottages, which he described as ‘that littleparadise to invalids’ in St Leonards Gardens. By themid to late s Granville was able to report that thesewere ‘much sought after by the wealthy invalids andalways occupied’ (my italics).

The interest and presence of aristocracy waswelcome, but royalty was the ultimate mark ofapproval. Weymouth had blossomed under



Fig. . Crown House today, facing the sea across busy traffic and a parking space. It almost miraculously survived bombing, which destroyed buildings on either side and behind it. Elizabeth Nathaniels.



Fig. b. The original double villa, not taking into account a setting whichquickly became urban, crowding out the space for leafy grand entrances from both sides, nudged out by the early buildings of East Ascent to the right.


Fig. a. The surviving one of two double villas on either side of the Assembly Rooms. One entrance is fromthe side and another from the front – not as originally intended, as can be seen from the idealised

contemporary perspective print. The general impression is of a single villa. Burtons’ St Leonards Society.

double or triple villa masquerading as a singledetached house. On either side of the AssemblyRooms, there were originally two very handsomestuccoed detached ‘double villas’, one of which hassurvived. (Fig. ) Subtly planned and elegantly builtin the stripped-down classic taste, there is a plan andelevation in the Hastings Museum of not merely adouble villa but of an ingeniously planned triplevilla, for No. Regent Street. By , bothBurtons had become masters of the semi-detachedhouse.The town was later to become almostsurrounded by the many more ‘double villas’ in‘Architectural Groups’ under Decimus Burton’saegis, in the s and s, often replacing stuccowith stone. This prevalence of the semi-detachedvilla form suggests the close contact James Burtonhad experienced with the Eyre Estate, where heworked as builder-developer from to .

Here the original Georgian-inspired layout of streets,crescents and circuses was also abandoned for a planincorporating a looser, less formal arrangement ofnumerous semi-detached houses.

reminiscent of the ‘vertical combinations’ of J.N.LDurand (–).The interior has been gutted,but the exterior is graceful and, in addition to theFrench influence it has a quality of ‘chaste’ EnglishPalladianism.The upper storey has four pairs ofIonic columns fronting a balcony and framing threelarge, recessed windows, while, below, on the groundfloor, the doors and windows were originallydiscreetly recessed. These have since been filled in.The coupled columns are reminiscent of the porticoof Decimus Burton’s Athenaeum, which he wascompleting at the same time. These in their turncould have been inspired by Nash’s use of coupledcolumns in Park Crescent. In short, a closeexamination of Crown House reveals it to be theresult of a studious and talented architectural mind.Could this have been the work of James Burton?

We now come to the early development of thesemi-detached house, named by the Burtons as the‘double villa’. From an eighteenth-century terracetrying to look like a single palace, the Burtons hadnow moved to an early nineteenth century idea: a



Fig. . East Lodge as first built. By kind permission of the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

included a full prospect of the sea. (Fig. ) Finally, aspart of the axially designed Hotel and AssemblyRooms, the southern entrance to the St LeonardsGardens is by South Lodge. This provides acharming visual introduction to the slopinglandscape seen through the arch. The lodge consistsof two simple stripped-down classical houses, theirfirst floors spanning the arched entrance to thegardens, similar in form, if not in style, to North Lodge.

The original detached houses in the park wereseemingly scattered artlessly around the edges andactually in the gardens. In fact these villas were notcasually disposed, but carefully sited on the contoursof the land and taking full advantage of the views.They followed the ideas of Humphry Repton, whohad worked at James Burton’s own country house,Mabledon in Kent, and on other schemes.Thelandscape-led architecture of its residential park isone of the most outstanding features of Burton’sSt Leonards. Its dramatic, undulating, multi-levelqualities have been summed up by landscapearchitect Philip Masters as ‘a distinctive landscape in

While none the three main lodges of earlySt Leonards may have been exactly a ‘trumpet at adistant gate’, they nevertheless played importantroles in heralding the new development. The EastLodge (Fig. ), straddling the road from Hastings inthe form of an archway, made it clear that the visitorwas entering a different town: not a part of Hastingsand certainly not its suburb. An odd lop-sidedbuilding with arch cut into a pediment, its finalremoval in was a material expression of a legalreality which had existed since when St Leonardsbecame merely a part of the Borough of Hastings.

From the north, the main entrance to the town inthe early years was through North Lodge, whichacted originally as a tollgate, as well as providingsubstantial dwellings on either side. Crenellated andasymmetrical, it is very much in the style of the lodgeat Blaise Castle near Bristol, possibly designed byJohn Nash.

Entering St Leonards by coach from Londonpresented an attractive picture of the gardensimmediately below which, in the early years,



Fig. . The view which greeted visitors from London entering through the North Lodge in . By kind permission of the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

Sir John Summerson’s post-Waterloo society when‘an aristocratic society with bourgeois leanings hadbecome a bourgeois society with aristocraticyearnings.’

W H O D E S I G N E D T H E B U R T O N S ’S T L E O N A R D S ?

There is considerable uncertainty about theauthorship of the buildings of St Leonards.Manyof the original documents are missing, and to attemptan answer we must consider the different character,motivation, education and social context of JamesBurton and his son. By , father and son were atopposite ends of the building spectrum. The father,who trained as a surveyor, built for profit. The son,educated as an architect, designed for clients. Hisbuildings amply fulfilled the triple Vitruvian principlesof firmitas, utilitas and venustas – firmness,commodity and delight. His father, on the otherhand, was an astute, ambitious, honest – but pushy –builder-developer who was capable of jettisoningboth firmness and delight for profit.He designedsome buildings, such as the Russell Assembly Rooms(later Russell Institution) in , which werecriticized both for their aesthetics and their flimsyconstruction.The son, on the other hand, wasreticent, and was considered a perfect gentlemanwho, although aided by the fortune and powerfulcontacts of his father, earned commissions on thebasis of architectural merit.Not only this, but heused the latest of techniques with cast and wroughtiron to ensure firmitas.We can be reasonably surethat, unlike some of those of his father, none ofDecimus Burton’s buildings fell down.

From an early age, Decimus Burton showedhimself to be a master of the Neo-classical style andan architect of grace and distinction. Aged seventeen,he had already designed the family’s Regent’s Parkhouse, The Holme (Fig. ) and its setting, whichstill exists (though altered) today. It has been

which enclosure and intimacy contrast abruptly withlong views to the sea’.The setting itself is anadaptation of a Georgian landscaped park, completewith ‘follies’ in the form of villas – notably the ClockHouse which looks like a church – a lake, windingwalks, entrance lodges and carefully designed semi-private gardens, so that each occupant could look outof his own villa over the gardens as if they were hisown, as at Regent’s Park, where ‘Each terrace of housesappears to be a palace; each villa, a country seat.’

Both Burtons were steeped in the traditions ofthe eighteenth century, where considerations oflandscape often came first. It was not uncommonfor landscape gardeners, from Lancelot ‘Capability’Brown to Humphry Repton, to suggest the type orstyle of house best suited a particular site. In the earlynineteenth century, there was a strong suggestionthat both professions could be combined, as theywere at St Leonards. Sir John Soane, whose lecturesDecimus Burton attended, proposed that it shouldbecome ‘a necessary part of an architect’s educationthat he should be well acquainted with the principlesof modern decorative landscape gardening.’ Sohere we have the happy conjunction of the twoprofessions producing a late Georgian version of agentleman’s estate for the middle classes, shared byseveral different dwellings, rather than for a singlearistocrat. St Leonards is a material expression of



Fig. . The Holme, seen from across the lake in Regent’s Park, in . By kind permission of the

Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

an intellectual and professional gulf – a virtualemotional chasm – must have existed between fatherand son. (Figs. & ) It is hardly surprising thatthe younger Burton, whose reputation had by nowso far outstripped that of his father, reportedly tookno interest in the paternal seaside venture. But thestory is not as simple as that. In , DecimusBurton was based in London in his recently completedoffice at No. Spring Gardens.While it has beenclaimed he disappeared to Tunbridge Wells todesign Calverley New Town as soon as his fatherwent to St Leonards, in , recently discovereddocuments show that he was not fully involved indesigning the Calverley New Town and the park atTunbridge Wells until the following year, .

Indeed, he maintained an office in London until hisretirement in .

By the early twentieth-century, Decimus Burton’sreputation had eclipsed his father’s. The firstattempt at a biography, in , states that ‘in

he began the laying out of St Leonards-on-Sea’(my italics), though the author went on to mention,

described as ‘One of the most romantic set-pieces inLondon’, despite being incorrectly identified asearning the disapproval of the Commissioners ofWoods and Forests. By he had ‘given thedesigns’ for the first two terraces in Regent’s Park –Cornwall Terrace, which ‘set the pattern for much ofthe future development’, and Clarence Terrace.He was also involved in most of the early villas of thepark.Having left his father’s office in , hewent on to create some of the most familiar buildingsof George IV’s ‘metropolitan improvements’, fromHyde Park Corner to the Athenaeum.

As a founder member of the Institute of Architects(later the RIBA) in ,Decimus Burtonrepresented a future Victorian generation whichwould place great value on firmitas, would deridestucco and flimsiness of construction and wouldfirmly separate the practice of architecture from thebusiness of building. His letters to a client in Kentfrom to , complete with specification,demonstrate that he was practising much in the sameway as a twentieth-century architect. So, by ,



Fig. . James Burton in later years. By kind permission ofthe Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

Fig. . Decimus Burton, portrait dated . By kindpermission of the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

historic and legal sources shows that, although JamesBurton was without doubt the original driving forceand the creator, the project gradually became afamily affair. As for the work of Decimus Burton, thequality of some of the early designs, such as those forCrown House and the Assembly Rooms, suggestshis authorship. Their direct, simple, yet originalNeo-classicism echoes his earlier London works,from his temple- like entrance lodges to Hyde Parkto the elegant portico of the Athenaeum.

However, the seven watercolours of St Leonardsin the collection of Hastings Museum are, with threeexceptions, signed by the initials JB (James Burton).

Of the three paintings without initials, however, oneis of the Assembly Rooms (Fig. ), another of SouthLodge and a third of ‘The West Terraces’. The firsthas been described as a ‘prostyle tetrastyle Dorictemple with flanking one storey wings’ whoseoutstanding characteristic is that of ‘two massesinterpenetrating transversely’, and has beencompared to some of Decimus Burton’s Hyde ParkLodges.The bold interpenetrating geometricshapes of the original design also have something ofthe quality of Ledoux’s ‘naked geometry’. InSouth Lodge (Fig. ) there are echoes of DecimusBurton’s The Holme. As for the West Terrace,which was not built exactly to plan, there are hints ofDecimus Burton’s Regent’s Park terraces.

en passant, that this was ‘one of his father’s latestbuilding enterprises. An attempt was made in thes to rescue James Burton from oblivion with athesis and an article by Peter Clarke. In the sJ. Manwaring Baines, the Curator of HastingsMuseum, collected information from civic recordsand local newspaper reports to produce the onlyreliable publication from sources then available.After commenting that ‘For some strange reason littlehas appeared in print about James Burton’, he flatlystated that he ‘single-handedly founded the littletown of St Leonards in ,’ and tended toattribute both the layout and the buildings to him.However, subsequent research into contextual



Fig. . The Assembly Rooms,engraving after James Burton’swatercolour. By kind permissionof the Hastings Museum andArt Gallery.

Fig. . The South Lodge, with Maze Hill Gothicterraces beyond. Burtons’ St Leonards Society.

‘My father is full of his new Speculation’, hecommented in a letter to George Bellas Greenough afew days before the laying of the foundation stone ofSt Leonards, ‘which we all regret, on his account …because it must, notwithstanding his asserting that itshall not, it must be the cause of anxiety and trouble tohim … & he forgets that his spirit (which thank Godis excellent) outruns his strength.’

Whatever the feelings of James Burton’s six sonsand four daughters, St Leonards became a familyaffair right from the beginning, Decimus almostcertainly sending down plans from London, Septimusundertaking all the legal work in Lincoln’s Inn,andAlfred studying architecture in his brother’s office,later becoming an associate of the then Institute ofBritish Architects, and moving to St Leonards by

Another view which includes Crown House(West Villa) is indeed initialed JB, but it makes thehouse into an ancillary feature, pushing it to one sideand almost off the page. (Fig. ) The laterengraved versions of the watercolours all containedthe initials JB. Why should a father put himselfforward as the creator of his son’s work?

Conflict, however obscured and concealed behindfamily loyalty, may have existed between father andson ever since the elder Burton compromised hisson’s work in Regent’s Park. Also, could there havebeen filial embarrassment at Nash’s complaints of theelder Burton’s poor taste?Despite this, it is highlylikely that Decimus Burton loyally supervised thedesign and shipment of pre-fabricated sections forCrown House and sent down drawings from London:



Fig. . Engraving after James Burton’s watercolour described as ‘The West Villa and adjoining houses on the Marina’.This first all-important villa, later known as Crown House, (Fig. ) is pushed to one side. It later housed the youngPrincess Victoria, and was almost certainly designed by Decimus Burton. It is interesting that, whereas the villa

was built exactly as depicted, the large terraces were considerably reduced in scale and simplified. By kind permission of the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

moving spirit behind a complete little new town.(Fig. ) He ensured its swift building by institutinga kind of competition between contractors as to whocould complete first and by supervising on thespot.He ensured its fashionable appeal on thebasis of charm and cleanliness and above all, with theassistance of his son, Decimus, he achieved theultimate Royal benediction by the visit of the futureQueen Victoria, three years before his death, whichoccurred in the same year as her accession in .For once, James Burton had built, not for profit, butfor delight. This master builder of late GeorgianLondon poured the family fortune and the skills offorty years of experience in town and landscapedevelopment into his final venture, which was lateradded to by his family, under the aegis of his morefamous son. It endures today as a place ofconsiderable charm and a lesson in superblandscape-led architecture.

. After his father’s death, Alfred managed theBurton estate in situ, even becoming Mayor ofHastings in . By the s, St Leonards hadbecome the main home for several members of thefamily. Apart from Alfred there were the Woods inNorth Lodge, the eldest son, William, in SouthLodge and the eldest daughter, Eliza, in a cottage onWest Hill. Later, there was Decimus himself who,after his father’s death, built himself a weekendcottage. Friends of the family also bought and leasedout houses. In the s Decimus Burton was actingfor his own family estate, much as John Nash haddone for the Commissioners of Woods and Forestsin Regent Street and Regent’s Park. Like Nash, healmost certainly had the final say over designs, manyof which may have been done by others.

Despite the problems of uncertain attribution,there is no doubt that in the nine years between

and , the elderly Burton was the creator, the



Fig. . Bird’s eye view from the south, c.. By kind permission of the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery.

NOTES

The term Regency is used here in a loose art-historical sense; the actual Regency ended in .

The Holme, designed by Burton’s seventeen-year-old son Decimus in . A Crown Estate LondonLease Book (No. , pp. –) records a buildinglease granted to James Burton for years fromOctober , the final Indenture being dated February .

University College Special Collections, Greenoughpapers, file .

Hastings Museum and Art Gallery (HASMG),Burton collection, FAM. (James Burton’s Diary,henceforward referred to as ‘Diary’). His insertionsof notes date up to , (p.⁾. Page numbers ceaseafter p. ; the remainder is referenced by year.

S. Muthesius, The English Terraced House (NewHaven & London, ), p. .

HASMG, ..(). G. Wooll, Picture of Hastings (Hastings ), p. . –Geo V (–), cap. . pp. –. M. Galinou, Cottages and Villas: The Birth of the

Garden Suburb (New Haven and London, ),p. .

Verbal communication with Richard Bryant LLB. D. Lloyd, Buildings of Portsmouth and Its Environs,(Portsmouth, ), p. .

R. Morrice, ‘Palestrina in Hastings’, GeorgianGroup Journal, (), p. .

G. & G Woodgate, A History of the Woodgates ofStonewall Park & of Summerhill in Kent (Wisbech,), p. .

R.Morrice, op. cit., p. . Ibid., p. . D.Olsen, Town Planning in London (New Haven

& London, ) p. . N. Antram & R. Morrice, Brighton and Hove(New Haven & London, ), p. .

S. Berry, ‘Thomas Read Kemp and the Shaping ofRegency Brighton c.–’, Georgian GroupJournal, (), p. .

Antram & Morrice., op. cit., p. . Berry, op. cit., p. . N. Bingham, C.A. Busby: The Regency Architect of

Brighton & Hove (London: RIBA Heinz Gallery,). p. .

Ibid., p. . Diary, . He had joined the Whig Club in

London in , the same year that he ‘Engaged for

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

For reading and commenting on my text, I would liketo thank Nigel Frith, Tim Knox, Stefan Muthesius,Geoffrey Tyack and Philip Whitbourn; and for helpwith legal documents, Richard Bryant. For anunsolicited donation to support this research Iwould like to thank Guy Fearon. I would also like toacknowledge the help and encouragement givenby Irena Murray, Director of the British ArchitecturalLibrary and Charles Hind, Curator of the RIBADrawings and Archives collections, as well as thehelp received from Jeremy Linton of the CrownEstate, Christopher Whittick of the East SussexRecord office, Alison Hawkins of the HastingsMuseum, Zoe Edwards and the staff of HastingsReference Library, and the staff of the Centre forKentish Studies, Tunbridge Wells Museum andLibrary, University College London SpecialCollections and the libraries of Birkbeck, Institute ofHistorical Research, University College London andthe British Library. For their interest, encouragementand help, I would like to thank Neil Bingham,Richard Blackburn, Julia Fogg, Patrick Glass,Juanita Homan, Paul Joannides, Christopher Joyce,Raymond Kilgarriff, Christopher Maxwell-Stewart,Leslie Topp, Barbara Webber and ElizabethWilliamson.



Sea –Bathing Places :Southern Spas (London, ),pp. –.

M. Girouard, Cities and People (London, ), p.. P. Clarke, Peter, ‘James Burton’, Architectural

Review, (), pp. –; P. Clarke, ‘James andDecimus Burton’ (Dissertation, RIBA, );J. Baines, Burton’s St Leonards (Hastings, );P. Bohan, ‘James and Decimus Burton: ArchitecturalTrends in England Exemplified by Their Work,–’ (PhD Dissertation, Yale, );N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England:Sussex,(London, ), pp.–; Richard Reid, ‘St LeonardsInvaded’, Architectural Review, London,;C.Monkhouse, ‘Regent’s Park by the Sea’, CountryLife, February , pp. – and ‘PromotingSussex by the Sea’, Country Life, Febuary ;P. Miller, Decimus Burton, – (ExhibitionCatalogue, Building Centre Trust, London, );B.Funnell, Burton’s St Leonards: The Contributionof Decimus Burton (St Leonards, ); E. Nathaniels,‘Regent’s Park by the Sea’, The Georgian, Issue ,() pp. –.

Olsen, op. cit., pp. , , . M.Whittick ‘The Sanitary Battle of Hastings’,

Sussex Archaeological Collections, (), p.. HASMG: .., signed ‘James Burton,

St Leonards Dec. , ’. HASMG ... Muthesius, op. cit., p. : ‘rare examples of terraces

with Gothic details’. I am grateful to the occupants of Maze Hill who

have shown me their remarkable restoration. Baines, op. cit., p.. Ibid., p. . Jane Austen, Lady Susan; The Watsons; Sanditon.

Edited with an Introduction by Margaret Drabble,(London, ).

Granville, op. cit., p. . Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the

Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful(London, ). This book was being published indifferent editions in the s and s.

A.Granville, op. cit., p. . Although published in, Granville’s visit to St Leonards must havebeen before as he refers to James Burton in thepresent tense.

There are many notices of meetings to discuss theRoyal visit in the Burton Collection at the HastingsMuseum.

ground’ in Bloomsbury belonging to that leadingWhig, the fifth Duke of Bedford.

Bingham, p. ; Berry, op. cit., pp. , . The Tunbridge Wells Visitor Vol.No., October,

, ‘The Victoria National School’ title page. HASMG, LTS (Letter from Decimus Burton to

‘James Burton, St Leonards, Hastings’ from Calverley Parade, Tunbridge Wells, Sept. .):‘Dear All…. .the Duchess of Kent is pleased withthe arrangements made yesterday.’

C.Monkhouse, ‘Regent’s Park by the Sea’, CountryLife, February , p. .

R.Bowdler, ‘Burton, James’, Oxford Dictionary ofNational Biography, .

T. Brett, Brett’s History of Hastings and St Leonards(Hastings, ), p. (Henceforward ‘Brett’):Hastings Reference Library, Brett Collection.Thomas Brandon Brett, – was a talentedautodidact of humble origin who witnessed thebuilding of St Leonards, later becoming publisher/editor of Brett’s Gazette.

Woodgate, op. cit., p.. HASMG ... HASMG, FAM ., FAM .. UCL Special Collections, Greenough papers,

Folder , letter from James Burton to G.B.Greenough, February , refers to ‘that villa’ atSt Leonards, whose foundation stone was to be laidon March .

Richard Bryant, private communication. Galinou,.op. cit., p.. Brett, I, p. . Baines, p. . Apparently unaware of the

purchase, Baines mentioned that the Horse andGroom pub in Mercatoria ‘lay just outside theBurton boundary.

HASMG ... Kames, Lord [H.Home], Elements of Criticism,

vols (Edinburgh ), III, pp. –, cited byR. Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, The London TownGarden – (New Haven & London, ),p. .

HASMG ... HASMG ... Muthesius, op. cit., p., plate . T. Horsefield, The History, Antiquities, and

Topography of the County of Sussex (Lewes, ),p. .

A. Granville, The Spas of England and Principal



Decimus ‘… left school Sept and became myassistant in the office – commenced his career as anarchitect in Carlton Chambers April ’. There isno mention of his gaining a place at the RoyalAcademy Schools in 1817, or of his tuition fromthe much-respected George Maddox, or of hisMetropolitan Improvements. See The Builder,December .

A. Saunders, Regent's Park: A Study of theDevelopment of the Area from to the PresentDay, (Newton Abbot, ), p. –, citing JohnNash’s accusations.

Diary: , . J. Summerson, Georgian London (London, ),

p. describes it as combining ‘Greek Doriccolumns and Roman arches in a peculiarly gracelessfashion’. See also H. Hobhouse’s comments inThomas Cubitt, Master Builder (London, ),p. .

Decimus Burton’s reported words in ParliamentaryReports and other official documents and personalletters demonstrate his reticence. (For example:Parliamentary Papers, : Report from the SelectCommittee on the Office of Works and PublicBuildings, June , pp. –; RIBA, CrokerCorrespondence). J. Wilson Croker had to persuadehim to write to the Duke of Devonshire whenPaxton was claiming sole authorship of Burton’sdesigns for the Chatsworth conservatory.

Saunders, op. cit., p cites Sir Charles Arbuthnot,Head of the Office of Woods and Forests who hadrecommended Decimus Burton because hepreferred Burton’s buildings ‘above all others inthe Park for their elegant correctness.’ The‘gentlemanly’ quality of Decimus Burton’srelationship with clients and others is stressed in hisobituaries, e.g. The Builder, December .

S. Brindle, ‘The Wellington Arch and the WesternEntrance to London’, Georgian Group Journal (), p. .

The collapse of buildings in St Leonards erected bydifferent builders under James Burton’s supervisionwas reported by Brett, op. cit., p. and Baines, p. .

HASMG: .. is a sketch site plan of TheHolme, including outline landscape details. Thereare other early sketch plans and elevations for TheHolme in this archive.

J.M. Crook, ‘The villas in Regent’s Park’, CountryLife, July , p. .

Brett, op. cit., p. . H. R. Hitchcock, Architecture:Nineteenth and

Twentieth Centuries (New Haven and London,), p. .

D. Arnold, ‘The Architect and the Metropolis: Thework of James and Decimus Burton in London andDublin, c.–’(PhD Dissertation, Universityof London, ), pp. –: sales details of aportion of Decimus Burton’s library which listsmany books on French and Italian architecture,including Percier and Fontaine, Baltard, Palladioand Piranesi.

HASMG: ... Many of Decimus Burton’s own designs for

Calverley Park in Tunbridge Wells are for doublevillas.

HASMG :..This phrase comes from ahandwritten prospectus by James Burton, see Fig. .

Galinou, op. cit., p. , . Ibid. Compare original plan on p. with what was

actually built, p. . Tim Mowl, Trumpet at a Distant Gate: The Lodge

as Prelude to the Country House (London, ). Baines, op. cit., p. Diary: , Hitchcock, op. cit., pp. – P. Masters, ‘St Leonards Garden Conservation Plan’

(Report to Hastings Borough Council, ) J. M. Crook, ‘Metropolitan Improvements: John

Nash and the Picturesque’, in London, World City–, ed. Celina Fox (New Haven & London), p. .

Decimus Burton is listed as much as a gardendesigner as an architect, for example, M.Hadfield,R. Harling, L. Highton, British Gardeners:A Biographical Dictionary (London, );R. Desmond, The Dictionary of British and IrishBotanists and Horticulturalists, including plantcollectors, flower painters and garden designers(London, ).

D. Watkin, Sir John Soane: Enlightenment Thoughtand the Royal Academy Lectures (Cambridge, ),pp. , . See also G.Tyack, ‘The ReptonianRevolution’, Country Life, September, .

J. Summerson, Architecture in Britain, to (New Haven & London, ). p. .

H. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of BritishArchitects – (London, ), p. .

James Burton’s Diary merely says (p. ) that



RIBA biographical file. R. Jones, op. cit. part , p. . P. Clarke, ‘James and Decimus Burton’, (RIBA

Dissertation, August, ); P.Clarke, ‘JamesBurton’, The Architectural Review, , (September,), pp. –.

Baines, op. cit., p. . HASMG; ..–; .. Bohan, op. cit., p. . One of Sir John Summerson’s felicitous expressions

(see The Classical Language of Architecture, p. ). Bohan, op. cit., p. . HASMG:... Saunders, op. cit., pp. , –. University College London Special Collections.

Greenough papers, Folder . P.S. by DecimusBurton on a letter written by James Burton toGeorge Bellas Greenough, February , .

RIBA Library, biographical file (Alfred Burton–).

Baines, op. cit., p. . Ibid. Mrs Wood was James Burton’s daughter Jane. UCL Special collections, Greenough papers,

contains an account for rents paid to G B Greenoughin for houses in Marina, in Undercliff and in ‘Conqueror Square’ for a grand total of £ shillings and three pence for six months.

East Sussex Record Office: AMS // typicallysays ‘according to plans to be approved by DecimusBurton, Esq.’

Brett, op. cit., p..

D. Arnold, Re-presenting the Metropolis (Aldershot,), p. ; Crook, ‘Villas in Regent’s Park’, p. ;Saunders, op. cit. , p. . All three report whatmust have been a case of mistaken identity.According to James Anderson (‘Marylebone Parkand the New Street…’, London PhD Dissertation, p.) the letter of complaint was written byJames Pillar about a completed villa, dated June . The Holme was not started until andcompleted in . (See footnote ).

P. Miller, op. cit., p.. A. Saunders, op. cit. and A.Saunders, The Regent’s

Park Villas (London, ). Diary, p.. J. Elmes, Metropolitan Improvements, or London in

the Nineteenth Century, (London, ). Elmesexpressed contemporary pride and enthusiasm andincluded eight of Decimus Burton’s works.

RIBA biographical file. Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Folder

U E Bundle . Baines op. cit., p.. UCL special collections. Greenough papers, Folder

. A letter of January from DecimusBurton to George Bellas Greenough mentions hishouse-warming party at Spring Gardents on theth ‘which went off well’.

Jones, Ronald P, ‘The Life and Work of DecimusBurton. .’, Architectural Review, . p. : ‘thebeginning of his retirement from public work.’

P. Whitbourn,Decimus Burton Esquire, Architectand Gentleman (–) (Second edition,Tunbridge Wells, ), p. .



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