Rufford Abbey and its Gardens in the 17th and 18th Centuries

RUFFORD ABBEY AND ITS GARDENS IN THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES

122 English Heritage Historical Review, Volume 4, 2009


English Heritage Historical Review, Volume 4, 2009 123

INTRODUCTIONAfter a final flourish of royal visits in the years before the First World War, Rufford Abbey in Nottinghamshire had become a shattered ruin by 1956. In that year its owners, Nottinghamshire County Council, began demolition work. Only the late 12th-century undercroft, outer parlour and lay brothers’ refectory, which had formed the west range of the former Cistercian abbey, were considered important enough to be scheduled as an Ancient Monument and saved from destruction. These ruins were subsequently taken into the guardianship of the Ancient Monuments Branch of the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works and passed into the care of English Heritage in 1984 (Figs 2 and 3).

Apart from an article published in the Pall Mall Magazine in 1898, and another in Country Life in 1903, relatively little has been published about this once important country house situated on the edge of Sherwood Forest.1 Some attempt was made by the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works to understand the form of the original abbey buildings when the house was largely demolished in 1956,2 and Nottinghamshire

County Council has produced a number of useful guidebooks to the house and estate which have expanded elements of the history of the house and its owners.3

FROM THE SUPPRESSION TO THE CIVIL WARIn 1537 the Cistercian abbey at Rufford and its immediate estate of 1,004 acres (406ha), valued at £246 15s 6d, became the property of the Crown; and in 1538 the estate, with 16 outlying granges, was given, along with other estates in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Wales, to George Talbot (1468–1538), fourth earl of Shrewsbury, in exchange for all his estates in Ireland.4 Shrewsbury was one of the largest landowners in England, whose seats included Pontefract Castle, South Wingfield Manor, Tutbury Castle and Sheffield Manor. Rufford Abbey may have been used as a hunting lodge, but it was not until George Talbot (c.1522–1590), sixth earl of Shrewsbury, inherited in 1560 that the former abbey buildings at Rufford were converted into a house. William Camden recorded that Rufford was:

Rufford Abbey and its Gardens in the 17th and 18th CenturiesPete Smith

Rufford Abbey was largely demolished in 1956, although the remains of the former Cistercian

abbey buildings, and part of the 16th- or 17th-century house into which the abbey buildings were

converted, are displayed as ruins. The house, built for one of the most influential politicians of

Charles II’s reign, the first marquess of Halifax (‘the Trimmer’), is here attributed to a recently

discovered architect, William Taylor. Around the house lay a huge baroque garden designed by

a gardener whose name appears to have been Thonous. In the 1730s Sir George Savile, seventh

baronet, a fellow of the Royal Society who was evidently interested in hydrostatics, designed

waterworks in a form which was technically complex, but which might be aesthetically categorized

as rococo; his designs are without any known parallel. Sir George’s son, the eighth baronet,

famous as a pioneer of parliamentary reform, replaced most of his predecessors’ gardens by a

landscape garden of standard later 18th-century type, and engaged John Platt of Rotherham to

construct useful buildings for the estate.

Fig. 1: Survey plan of the

gardens, Rufford Abbey,

about 1690 (Plan II).





famous for the Earle of Shrewsburies house which within our remembrance George Talbot, Earle of Shrewsburies built with that magnificence, as beseemeth so great an Earle, and yet such as was not to be envied.5

The sixth earl’s second wife was the inveterate builder, Bess of Hardwick, and she may have influenced the conversion of the former lay brothers’ range of the abbey buildings into a country house.6

In 1590 the Rufford estate passed to Gilbert Talbot (1552–1616), seventh earl of Shrewsbury. Little is known about the house’s development before the 17th century, but in 1611 Sir John Holles, sheriff of Nottingham, in charge of searching Rufford Abbey for hidden arms, described it thus:

The house within, a confused labyrinth, underneath all vaults; above entries, closets, oratories, many stairs down and up, trap doors to issue forth and trap doors to lead into garrets, so as in my search I was never so puzzled in my life.7

Even so, the house was large enough to accommodate James I and the prince of Wales, who visited three times (August 1612, September 1616 and August 1619) to indulge the king’s

favourite pastime, stag hunting in Sherwood Forest. It may have been better to accommodate the king’s retinue that the house was enlarged in the early 17th century.

A survey plan of 1637 by John Bunting8 includes a block plan of the abbey (Fig. 4) which suggests that the former west range of the monastic cloister had been converted and extended on its eastern side.9 The south cross-wing, including the surviving kitchen, also appears to have been in existence by this date. The house appears then to have occupied roughly the same dimensions as the present ruins. The surviving west front of the house, with its large mullion and transom windows (Fig. 3), and the gabled south block, must pre-date Bunting’s survey, although the Elizabethan-style porch on the west front was remodelled by Anthony Salvin between 1837 and 1841.10

Around 1580 Lady Mary Talbot, the seventh earl’s younger sister, married Sir George Savile (c.1550–1622), first baronet, of Thornhill, 2 miles south-east of Dewsbury, Yorkshire. The death of the seventh earl in 1616, and his younger brother, Edward, the eighth earl, in 1618, both without male heirs, led to the partial break-up of the Shrewsbury estates. Through this division Lady Savile’s descendants eventually inherited the Rufford estate. In fact Sir George Savile

died in 1622, and it was only in 1626 that his grandson, another Sir George (1611–26), the second baronet, actually inherited Rufford Abbey, on the death of Jane, the dowager countess of Shrewsbury. The second baronet died in December that same year, at the age of 15, and his estates and title passed to his 14-year-old brother, Sir William, the third baronet. Rufford Abbey therefore became part of the Savile estates, which were mainly in the West Riding. Thornhill Hall was a moated late medieval house which would probably have remained the Saviles’ principal residence if it had not been for the events of the Civil War.

SIR WILLIAM SAVILE (1612–44), THIRD BARONETSir William came into his inheritance in 1633. In that year the imbalance between the Saviles’ increased wealth and status, and the small scale and old-fashioned appearance of their principal houses, was emphasized in a letter from Sir William’s uncle, Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford:

Considering that your houses in my judgement are not suitable to your quality, nor yet your plate and furniture, I conceive your expense ought to be reduced to two thirds of your

estate, the rest saved to accommodating of you in that kind.11

Sir William entertained Charles I at Rufford on his way to Nottingham to raise his standard in 1642, and was appointed governor of the royalist garrison at York in 1643, but died there of camp fever on 24 January 1644. His wife, Anne, daughter of Thomas, Lord Coventry, held Sheffield Castle for the king in 1644, even though she

Fig. 2: The ruins of Rufford

Abbey from the north-east.

Fig. 4: John Bunting,

survey of the Rufford estate,

1637 (detail).

Fig. 3: The ruins of Rufford

Abbey from the south-west.





was nine months pregnant. She and her children were eventually allowed to retire to the relative safety of Rufford Abbey by the besieging forces. In 1648 Thornhill Hall was garrisoned as part of the siege of Pontefract Castle, and was attacked by parliamentarian forces under Colonel Charles Fairfax and Sir Henry Cholmley on 18 July, when the house was blown up and burnt.12 Although shattered fragments of the house still survive, Thornhill Hall was never rebuilt. Rufford became the main seat of the Savile family and thus the focus for their architectural and horticultural endeavours.13

GEORGE SAVILE (1633–95), FIRST MARQUESS OF HALIFAXLady Savile’s eldest son, Sir George, the fourth baronet, was born at Thornhill on 11 November 1633. He was educated in London and Shrewsbury up to the age of 13, when he was sent to France to escape the clutches of his guardian, Lord Wharton. He visited Italy and Holland and returned to England in June 1652, aged 18. During his minority his estates, vested in trustees, were exempt from the fines and confiscations suffered by many royalist landowners. These estates included 40,000 acres (16,200ha) in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, 16,800 acres (6,800ha), including the Rufford estate, in Nottinghamshire and a further 7,000 acres (2,800ha) in Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Oxfordshire and Shropshire, with a total rental of £6,550 in 1651. In 1656 he married Lady Dorothy Spencer, daughter of the first earl of Sunderland, of Althorp, Northamptonshire, who brought a dowry of £10,000. She bore him

four sons and one daughter, and died in 1670. His second wife, Gertrude Pierrepont, granddaughter of the first earl of Kingston, of Thoresby Hall, Nottinghamshire, whom he married in November 1672, bore him a single daughter, and outlived him by over 30 years, dying in 1727.

Sir George rose to the highest political influence in the last years of Charles II’s reign and again in the first years of William and Mary’s. In James II’s reign his authorship of The Character of a Trimmer, advocating expedient, non-partisan decisions, gave him the name ‘the Trimmer’ under which he was immortalized first by Burnet and then by Macaulay. Thus, although accounted a cavalier for his entertainment of the duke of York in 1665 and his connection with the duke of Buckingham in 1677, he was classed as ‘thrice worthy’ by the opposition leader Anthony Ashley Cooper, first earl of Shaftesbury, who was his uncle by marriage. Yet as the king’s chief minister in 1681, he was active in collecting evidence against Shaftesbury, whom he regarded as a threat to the king’s peace. Again, although he opposed the exclusion of the duke of York in 1680, and was thus wrongly reviled as a promoter of popery, he opposed James’s ecclesiastical policy, and his Letter to a Dissenter was influential in warning Nonconformists not to be taken in by it.

Savile was MP for Pontefract from 1660 until he was elevated to the Lords as Viscount Halifax in 1668, in delayed reward for his parents’ loyalty in the Civil War. He was appointed to the Privy Council in 1672, and rose in favour during the unsettled period of the Popish Plot, beginning in 1679. In July of that year he was created earl of Halifax, and, effectively chief minister from 1681, he was created marquess in August 1682. He served as Lord President of the Council in 1685 and as Speaker of the House of Lords in 1689. His constant involvement with politics from 1660, when he was first elected MP, until his retirement from office in 1693, meant that he spent almost all of his time in London; so much so that in 1686 he purchased a small suburban property, Berrymead Priory in Acton, Middlesex, for £760.14

Savile’s father died when he was 11, but his maternal family, in particular, were not bereft of architectural influences. Around 1655 his mother married Sir Thomas Chicheley, who had built Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire, to a large and distinctive design by an unknown architect from London in the 1630s.15 Her elder brother, the

second Lord Coventry, had built Croome Court, Worcestershire, to the design of a metropolitan architect, possibly John Webb, executed by some of the craftsmen of the Office of Works in the 1640s.16 Halifax’s father-in-law, the second earl of Sunderland, had rebuilt Althorp House, Northamptonshire, to the design of Anthony Ellis in 1666–8;17 and his friend (and eventual brother-in-law), the second duke of Newcastle, had enlarged Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire, in 1666–7, and rebuilt Nottingham Castle in 1674–84, possibly to the designs of Samuel Marsh.18 His mother’s younger sister, the Hon. Margaret Coventry, was married to the earl of Shaftesbury; although she died in 1649, Shaftesbury and his brother-in-law, Sir William Coventry, were trustees of the future Lord Halifax’s estates from about 1655. Shaftesbury enlarged St Giles’s House at Wimborne St Giles, Dorset, between 1670 and 1675, to the design of William Taylor.19 Finally, the Hon. Mary Coventry, youngest sister of Savile’s mother, was married to Sir Henry Frederick Thynne, and their son, the first Viscount Weymouth, altered Longleat House, Wiltshire, in 1682, also to the design of William Taylor.20

Though Halifax rarely resided at Rufford, he spent much money improving it and its gardens. In 1658 he moved the main Nottingham to Doncaster road, which ran immediately to the south of the house (Fig. 4), further to the north and west. This was presumably the first step towards laying out new gardens around the house and the creation of a new stable block and stable yard. The former, south-west of the abbey, was the first addition which he made, and can only have been begun after the repositioning of the road, perhaps to accommodate visits such as that made by the duke of York from 1 to 3 August 1665, when vast quantities of food were consumed.21 Built of brick with stone dressings, it is a quadrangle over 100ft (30m) square, with entrance archways in the centres of its north, east and west sides (Fig. 5). A large stable yard was laid out east of the stables and south of the house, and a separate coach house was built to the north, where the present coach house stands today. The stable building was altered in the 1730s and re-roofed in about 1890 by the architect John Birch for the first Lord Savile (1818–96), but it retains much of its original brick walling, especially on its north front.22 The surviving two-light stone mullion windows appear to be original in form, though much renewed in

the 19th century. The size of the stable building suggests that a large number of horses, reputedly 20, were to be accommodated, mostly for hunting, and it is possible that the building also contained a riding house. It was one of the earliest quadrangular-plan country house stables to be built in England.23

In 1669 Halifax acquired a site on the west side of St James’s Square in London.24 He began paying rates in 1673 on a newly completed house there, known as Halifax House in his lifetime, and subsequently the site of nos 17 and 18.25 Yet extensive alterations were carried out there in 1678 and 1679, recorded in the accounts for 1678 to 1680 of William Turner, Halifax’s steward in London.26 These accounts also record works to Rufford Abbey, and include the payment of £5 ‘To Mr Willm Taylor the Architector by my Lords ordr.’.27 Taylor was a London carpenter and surveyor, first identified by Howard Colvin

Fig. 6: First- and

second-floor plans of

Rufford Abbey in 1938, with

the north wing highlighted.

Fig. 5: Stable block,

Rufford Abbey,

from the north-west.





in 1978, but still largely unknown until 1998, when Bridget Clarke established him as architect to a particular circle of anti-court MPs, who were established mainly in the West Country and Shropshire; their leader was Shaftesbury, and their mentor was the philosopher John Locke.28 Only in 2008 was it established that between 1670 and 1675 Taylor had also designed an addition

to Shaftesbury’s own house at Wimborne St Giles, thereby closing the circle.29 It cannot be a coincidence that Shaftesbury had been married to Halifax’s aunt, and that he had been one of Halifax’s trustees in the 1650s. Turner’s payment to Taylor as ‘Architector’ was evidently for design, but it could relate either to Halifax House or to Rufford Abbey.

Halifax and Rufford AbbeySome time before 1664 Halifax enlarged Rufford Abbey to redress the shortcoming that Strafford had pointed out to his father some 30 years earlier. An inventory taken in 1642 lists only 37 rooms,30

while the hearth tax returns for Nottinghamshire in 1664 record Rufford as the third largest house in the county, with 58 hearths.31 In 1674 the hearth tax returns show further expansion, to 61 hearths.32 Robert Thoroton’s Antiquities of Nottinghamshire, first published in 1677, described it as the home of ‘sir George Savile, baronet, who much in larged and adorned this place [Rufford], and is since created viscount Halifax’.33

This enlargement is illuminated by William Turner’s accounts for 1678 to 1680, which include a number of entries itemized for Rufford. These items are internal decorative features, and suggest that building work was nearing completion. They include payments to Mr Smith of Lambeth of £29 ‘in full of his bill for Locks and Bolts sent to Rufford’,34 and to Andrew Duwitt ‘for 100 skins of gilt leather for ye eating Parler att Rufford’ and ‘for gilt leather for Rufford for ye Chapell and Beuffrut’.35 There is also a payment for ‘Goods bought for Rufford £310. 08. 06’, which include ‘a carved wooden chimney piece, another of the same, nine marble chimney pieces, and two large gilt sconces’,36 and further payments in the accounts for November 1678 to June 1679 for an additional marble chimneypiece, a carved door

and five pairs of sconces.37 Payments for November 1679 to March 1680 reflect even more clearly preparations for immediate occupancy, including a bible and prayer books, three dozen additional cane-bottom chairs, glass and paper.38

In January 1680 Halifax wrote that he anticipated ‘seeing my small works at Rufford, having yet only had the pleasure of disbursing for them’.39 In February, when he finally arrived there, he wrote to his brother, Henry:

I am once more got to my old tenement; which I had not seen since I had given orders to renew and repair it. It looketh now somewhat better than when you last was here; and besides the charm of your native soil, it hath something more to recommend itself to your kindness, than when it was so mixt with the old ruins of the abbey that it looked like a medley to superstition and sacriledge, and though I have still left some decay’d part of the old building, yet there are none of the rags of Rome remaining. It is now all heresye, which in my mind looketh pretty well, and I have at least as much reverence for it now as I had when it was encumbered with those sanctified ruins. In short, with all the faults that belong to such a misshapen building, patch’d up at so many several times … I find something here which pleaseth me.40

Fig. 9: The east front of

Rufford Abbey in 1938.

Fig. 7: The north front of

the north wing of Rufford

Abbey in 1956.

Fig. 8: The north and west

fronts of the north wing of

Rufford Abbey in 1938.





The north wingIt is probable that these fragments of information refer to the new north wing. From Halifax’s description it appears that this wing may have replaced what remained of the former abbey church. Its very thick spine wall may even have incorporated some of the west front of the church, though no evidence of this was identified during its demolition in 1956. The north wing survived into the 20th century (Fig. 6) largely unaltered, apart from the insertion of sashes and the addition of a first-floor bay window asymmetrically on the north front by Salvin in 1837–41 (Figs 7 and 8).41

The wing had three storeys, a hipped roof, dormer windows and a prominent modillioned cornice, contrasting with the older gabled house to the south. The ground floor, which linked to the basement of the pre-existing house, was slightly lower than the two equal-height floors above. The north front (Fig. 7) was the most ordered elevation, being symmetrical, nine windows wide and with a central doorway. All the windows had plain, raised shouldered surrounds, and the dormers had alternating triangular and segmental pediments. The only distinctive feature of this front was the grouping of modillions in threes: on the west front they were grouped in fours (Fig. 8), and on the east return they were grouped in two threes flanking a group of six (Fig. 9).

The much longer west front (Fig. 8) had an eight-window facade, although its roof ran on behind an earlier gabled wing retained from the old house. This very unusual arrangement spoils the symmetry of the new facade. The east front (Figs 9, 10 and 11) had six windows, more generously spaced, two of them in a one-window deep projection at its north end. A plan of the gardens made about 1680 (see Fig. 13) shows that there was a gap between the north wing and the older building, containing an apparently open passage reached by a flight of steps at the east end. The passage and steps are also shown on a proposal drawing for altering this front made in 1734 (see Fig. 17). The gap was later infilled by Salvin’s broader staircase wing.

The principal room in the north wing was the Long Gallery on the first floor, 108ft long by 22ft wide (33m x 6.7m), a late example of the type, and one of the few rooms in the wing which was photographed with its original decoration before the house was demolished in 1956 (Fig. 12). Its walls were lined with bolection panelled wainscot, still

surviving in 1956, although the two fireplaces on the east wall were evidently replaced in the 18th century. It is not clear whether the plaster ceiling, whose pattern was adapted from that in the Long Gallery at Hardwick, made in the 1590s, was thus old-fashioned, or whether it was put up by Anthony Salvin, who introduced a similar patterned ceiling over his new staircase, possibly a copy of the ceiling in the Long Gallery. Salvin was certainly responsible for the only other alteration to the gallery, the Jacobean-style bay window added at its north end.

Long galleries are rare in post-Restoration houses, although that at Rufford was not unique.42 There are long galleries at Althorp, built in 1666–8,43 and at Bolsover Castle (remodelled in 1666–7),44 Nottingham Castle (1674–84),45 Longleat (1682–4),46 Chatsworth (1687–96), Sudbury (1670s–1690s) and Shavington, Shropshire (1679–85).47 It might be that the type survived as the idiosyncratic requirement of a particular group of neighbours, friends and relations, were it not for William Taylor’s Long Gallery at Longleat. Furthermore, Halifax House also had a Long Gallery, even rarer in a London town house, but presumably also the work of William Taylor, and strengthening the case for Taylor’s authorship of the north wing at Rufford.

The north end of the Long Gallery occupied most of the western half of the first-floor north elevation. A similar proportion of the eastern half was taken up by the room identified as the ‘Gallery Bedroom’ on a plan made in 1938 (Fig. 6), which was the most important bedroom in the wing, overlooking the north parterre. It too was photographed before demolition, when it

Fig. 10 (facing page, top):

View of Rufford Abbey from

the north-east in the late

18th century.

Fig. 11 (facing page,

bottom): View of Rufford

Abbey from the south-east

in the late 18th century.

Fig. 12: The Long Gallery,

Rufford Abbey, in 1956.





retained its late 17th-century decoration – moulded coving, dado panelling, marble bolection-moulded chimneypiece and overmantel. The chimneypiece may be one of the nine marble chimneypieces shipped from London and accounted for by William Turner. The overmantel, which consisted of a carved mantel shelf with a raised bolection-moulded panel above, was flanked by ornately carved drops like those in the Long Gallery. The walls were hung with tapestries in bolection-moulded frames.

It is not possible to be certain that William Taylor designed the north wing. But if he did, it also raises the possibility that he was responsible for the facade added in 1691 to Barrowby Hall, Lincolnshire,48 a house owned by Halifax’s brother, Henry Savile, until the latter’s death in 1687, and lived in by Halifax’s son, William, Lord Eland, thereafter.49

The gardensIn 1881 Leonard Jacks recorded that the Long Gallery contained ‘a large picture of what is supposed to be the abbey in former days’, which might well have shown the house and its gardens in the 17th century.50 But the earliest surviving topographical views date from the last quarter of the 18th century, by which time both baroque and rococo gardens at Rufford had been laid out and swept away. However, they are recorded in a number of design drawings, one letter and a survey. Few of the drawings are signed, though some are dated. There are no surviving accounts to assist in their interpretation, but some remaining topographical features within the garden can help to elucidate what was actually constructed. The garden plans appear to fall within three different phases, corresponding to the three periods of building work on the house: about 1680, about 1695, and between 1728 and 1736.

The first baroque gardensBunting’s survey of 1637 (Fig. 4) gives no indication of gardens, although it includes ‘The Parke’ of 445 acres (180ha) south-west of the house, which had been established in the 16th century. What may be the earliest surviving garden design, here called Plan I (Fig. 13), a detailed ink drawing with delicate colour-washing, dates from around 1680, after the completion of the north wing, for it also gives the ground-floor plan of this in detail.51

Plan I is not complete: the southern part has been lost, and only part of the gardens in front of the east and west sides of the house are shown. But all these are shown in outline on another, cruder survey drawing, Plan II (Figs 1 and 14).52 This plan does not show the Bath-Summer House built in 1728 (see Figs 23 and 24), and has previously been dated to around 1725,53 but it also does not show the evidently mature trees which are drawn in a letter of 1725 (Fig. 15),54 and must therefore pre-date the latter by some time. It may even pre-date the fire of 1692 (see page 135): an exchange of letters between Halifax and his heir, Lord Eland, in 1690, reveals that one of the features shown on Plan II, the Wilderness, was in existence by that date.55

By combining the information from both these drawings it is possible to reconstruct the gardens in detail. Plan I shows a rectangular parterre, approximately 330ft (101m) long and just over 250ft (76m) wide, immediately north of the new north wing, labelled (on Plan II) ‘Kings Garden’. The centre of this parterre is not aligned symmetrically on the central doorway of the north wing, but a few feet to the east. Four large rectangular lawns are laid out around a central circular pond or bed (identified by a grey wash on Plan I). Each of these lawns has a square

Fig. 13: Plan of the garden

north of the house, Rufford

Abbey, about 1680 (Plan I).

Fig. 14: Detail from a

survey plan of the gardens,

Rufford Abbey, about 1690

(Plan II) (see also Fig. 1).





feature at its centre, perhaps pedestals supporting the octagonal urns with mermaid handles which still survive in various positions around the present gardens. The lawns are surrounded by narrow beds or channels (washed in grey on Plan I), edged with strips of lawn, and by narrow gravel paths or stone margins. There are narrow entrances or bridges to the lawns on each side. On the north and east sides of the parterre there are beds or channels behind strips of lawn, backed by brick walls (identified by pink wash on Plan I). On the south side there is another bed or channel immediately in front of the house, extended east and west by banked lawns, and at the east end a flight of steps leads to a rectangular gravel court east of the north wing. To the west of the parterre there is a banked lawn with three flights of steps which lead up to a terrace along the full length of the west front of the house, labelled ‘The Gravell Terras Walke’ on Plan II. This walk has

walls and narrow beds or channels to its north and west sides.

The gravel court east of the house is shown bounded to the east, like the parterre, by a narrow bed or channel, backed by a brick wall. At the south-east corner a long flight of steps leads up to a raised platform, labelled ‘Terras Walk’ on Plan II, with a rectangular lawn surrounded by gravel, and backed by a stone balustrade (washed in yellow on Plan I).56 A further flight of steps at the west end of this terrace leads up to a passage in the narrow gap between the north wing and the projecting gabled wing of the older house, presumably at first-floor level, as an elevation drawing of 1734 confirms (see Fig. 17). At the west end of this terrace is a door, shown with a pediment on the 1734 drawing.

To the south of the ‘Terras Walk’ is another parterre, marked ‘Fountain Court’ on Plan II; this was about 120ft (37m) square, and extended the full length of the recessed central section of the east front of the old house. Plan II shows four presumed lawns around a large, circular central feature, presumably a pond, with the eponymous fountain at its centre, although both lawns and pond are washed in grey. The lawns were separated by gravel paths, and Plan II shows that Fountain Court was surrounded by narrow beds on all four sides. On the east side was a wall with a central gateway, and to the south lay a building separating the court from the ‘Wood Yard’.

Along the west, entrance front of the house lay three irregular rectangular courts, marked as ‘The Greene Courts’ on Plan II. Plan I shows that at least the two northern courts were separated by a wall without any openings. The northern court, about 85ft by 70ft (26m x 21m), in front of the west facade of the north wing, contained a rectangular lawn surrounded by a gravel path. This court had a stone wall (washed in yellow on both Plans I and II) separating it from the raised ‘Gravell Terras Walke’ to the west, and a brick wall to the south with narrow beds or channels along both these sides. The two southern courts were divided by a bridge, which still survives today, forming the access to the main entrance of the house. The larger southern court extended beyond the south front of the house, and was bounded on its south side by a return of the ‘Gravell Terras Walke’ which separated it from the stable.

Plan II covers a larger area than Plan I. It shows the kitchen garden south-east of the house, the

entrance court to the west and the Wilderness to the north. The kitchen garden is shown as an irregular oval south-east of the stable yard. It is bounded by a stream on its north-western side feeding a pair of short canals laid out in an L-shape. The garden is divided by cross paths into roughly rectangular plots edged with trees, presumably fruit trees.

The rectangular entrance court between ‘The Gravell Terras Walke’ and ‘The Road from Nottingham’ is shown bounded by a brick wall, and subdivided into three, either by fences or stone walls, shown as yellow lines. The southern two-thirds, about 140ft (43m) square, is shown traversed by two double rows of trees forming a slightly angled avenue between a gate to the road and the main entrance of the house. The eastern part of the remaining third is marked ‘Cherry Holt’. The western part is shown to have contained an enclosed ‘Bowling Green’ with a small building at the centre of its western side. West of the tree-lined ‘Road from Nottingham’ a large, irregular trapezoid-shaped area is shown, with a central ride continuing the avenue across the entrance court. On either side of this ride open courts are shown, each with five regularly laid out clumps of trees planted in squares.57

North of both the entrance court and the ‘Kings Garden’, Plan II (Fig. 1) shows a trapezoid-shaped

‘Wilderness’, over 200ft (61m) long and on its eastern side about 100ft (30m) wide. It shows trees divided by grass paths into two parts, with a path running round the boundary. Both parts have diagonal paths, grass circles at their intersections, and half- or quarter-circles where they meet the boundary path. The longer western part also has a path running north–south.

The outline of some of this garden layout is still visible today. The southern half of the ‘Kings Garden’ can still be identified (Fig. 16). The present Queen Mother’s Walk runs parallel to the ‘Gravell Terras Walke’ , though further to the east, and the east side of the north parterre followed the line of the present ditch, though slightly further west. The present ‘Lime Tree Avenue’, which was the main drive, follows the line of the avenue across the entrance court shown on Plan II.

The fire of 1692

On the night of 23 December 1692 a serious fire damaged the older part of Rufford Abbey. The damage was reported in the letters of Jonathan Challoner, one of Halifax’s servants.58 On 24 December he wrote that the fire had begun in the yellow damask chamber and nearly reached Lady Halifax’s chamber before anything could be removed, but that it did not reach the new

Fig. 16: Aerial view of

Rufford Abbey from the

south-west.

Fig. 15: Illustrated letter

from Thomas Smith to Sir

George Savile, seventh

baronet, 7 April 1725.





buildings. Two days later Challoner wrote that the fire had consumed 21 rooms of the old building and all the furniture, although everything in the King’s Chamber and the Velvet Chamber had been removed and saved. On 31 December he mentioned that the fire had burned part of Halifax’s bedchamber and had reached the end of the great gallery and the evidence closet. Finally, on 4 January 1693, he wrote:

This day I had a surveyor to compute the damage only of the building consumed – he says that many of the walls, and stacks of chimneys fallen down, and the front of the flat building, which last fell within a day or two after I came home. In case your lordship design to rebuild it, after the same manner as it was before, it will (as he has computed it, all materials included) cost 2100 li: The ruins are in length 30 yds the breadth 13 yds.59

Evidently it was the older, southern, part of the house which was damaged. Since the west and south fronts with their mullioned windows and Jacobean gables still survive, presumably the ‘flat building’ which fell was the east front.

Letters from John Birch, Halifax’s steward at Rufford, detail the progress of the work. On 1 September 1694 he wrote:

The roof is now all up, and Eustas’s men hath begun already to Tyle, and the plumbers begins [sic] to cast Lead on Monday week. So I hope it will all be covered in by a fortnight after Michaelmas at furthest.60

On 16 March 1696 he wrote:

I hope the joiners by ye latter end of May will have finished their works, all but ye floors will but be laid rough, by reason ye deals are not

dry. Both pair of a Gates in ye yard before ye Coach House are hung.61

He also recorded problems with the roofs caused by heavy snow and disputes between himself and the surveyor.62 As his letters refer mostly to carpenters’ work and interior fitting-out of new rooms, work must have been nearly complete by early 1696. William III, while staying nearby at Welbeck Abbey, visited Rufford on 1 November 1695, and would have found the restoration largely completed.63 But his former Lord Privy Seal would not have entertained him; the Trimmer had died on 5 April from the effects of vomiting.

The architect with whom Birch disputed (presumably the same as the surveyor who computed the replacement cost in January 1693) was Charles Renny, an architect and surveyor from Rotherham.64 Some elements of Renny’s east elevation may be recorded in a drawing of 1734 which proposed further changes (Fig. 17).65 This drawing does not distinguish between what it records and what it proposes, so Renny’s contributions can only be guessed. It shows a nine-bay facade, repeating the architrave type of Taylor’s north wing, but on larger first-floor windows. The ground-floor windows are smaller, and might perhaps have survived the fire. The three at the north end have ogee-headed lights, apparently lighting the chapel. The two bays at each end lack the third storey of the north wing, but have a similar eaves cornice and a garret storey with similar dormers. The central five-window attic was presumably the addition proposed, so the original facade would have consisted of just the ground and first floors, with a continuous cornice and dormers.

The 1734 drawing does not record the double-flight garden stair in the centre of the east front (Fig. 18), which is also shown in a garden plan (Plan V; see Fig. 20) of about 1695. There are a number of examples of similar stairs dating from the 1690s. One was built on the west front of Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, around 1695, and another at West Dean House, Wiltshire, around 1700, for the fifth earl of Kingston-upon-Hull – the nephew of Halifax’s second wife – whose main seat, Thoresby Hall, adjoined the Rufford estate.66 Both these more ornamented examples were probably designed by William Talman, but the stair at Rufford was embellished by a rusticated arch and oval windows, like those found at Wotton House, Buckinghamshire, in 1704.67 It is possible that its

absence from the 1734 drawing indicates an intention to remove it at that time, because it was certainly shown in the garden plans drawn up around 1695 by an otherwise unknown Mr Thonous.

THONOUS’S GARDENSHalifax was succeeded as second marquess by his son, William (1655–1700), although only for five years.68 However, as Lord Eland, William had evidently already been responsible for improvements at Rufford. In 1690 he had told his father ‘that Rufford lodge was in ruins, the great gates dilapidated and the gardens neglected … the chief blame is to be laid at your Lordship’s door for not visiting ’em oftner’.69 Halifax replied: ‘You are to tell me your opinion what you would have done in everything about the house and park, since you are to be more concerned in it than I am for the remainder of my life.’70 In October 1695, six months after Eland’s succession as second marquess, work in the garden was under discussion; on 7 October John Birch wrote that he had ‘discoursed Jackson about removing the stairs of the Terras walk’. By the following March this was in progress; on 16 March Birch wrote that ‘ye stairs of ye Terras are going on with as fast as possible’.71

It may be this phase of gardening activity at Rufford that is recorded in four plans and one elevation drawing, here called Plans III, IV, V and VI.72 Plans III and V are large-scale finished plans, both precisely drawn in black ink with colour wash and similar distinctive scale bars. Plan IV is a variant detail of Plan V. Plan VI is a sheet with two drawings on it, both with similar scale bars to Plans III and V. One of these gives the plan of an amphitheatre whose site cannot be definitely located. The other gives the plan and elevation of a treillage arbour covering the ends of two terraces. The verso of Plan V is inscribed ‘Mr Thonous’s[?] Plann for East Side of ye House’, but all appear to be in the same hand, different from that of Plans I and II, and four have the distinctive style of scale bar.73 None is dated.

The first and largest of these designs, Plan III (Fig. 19), inscribed ‘New Wilderness’ on the reverse, proposed a remodelling of the gardens to the north of the north wing. It retained the basic outline of the King’s Garden, though remodelled: the four lawns were to be shifted slightly to the west to align the central avenue on the central doorway of the north front; the gravel paths were to be widened, particularly the central one; the

Fig. 18: The east front of

the southern part of Rufford

Abbey in 1956.

Fig. 17: Robert Birch,

elevation of east front of

Rufford Abbey, ‘as Proposed

to be Altered’, July 1734.





central feature and statues were to be removed and the surrounding beds and hedges replaced with topiary cones or pyramids, probably yews. Beyond the King’s Garden the earlier Wilderness was to be removed and replaced with banks of trees on either side of a broad and widening avenue, which divided into three and extended about 550yds (500m) northwards as far as the present Wellow Road. The present Broad Ride, though replanted in the late 18th century, occupies the same position as the original central avenue, although there is no sign today of the radiating avenues.

Either side of these radiating rides the plan proposed four irregularly shaped wilderness gardens within a trapezoid bounded by the Nottingham Road to the west, the Wellow Road to the north and a long straight canal to the east.

The north-west wilderness was to be triangular with a single serpentine path. The south-west wilderness was to be trapezoid, with a complex set of paths and open glades. The two wildernesses to the east were to be nearly rectangular, the southern one with diagonal cross paths and a mount with a spiral ramp in the north-west corner, and the northern one with crossing zigzag and half-circle paths; an attached flap shows the same arrangement in reverse. Plan IV is a sketch of an even more complex alternative for the south-west wilderness, indicating the sites for statues and seats.

Plan III also proposed a 700yd (640m) long canal, bordering the eastern side of the entire northern garden. If constructed, it would have been sited roughly where the western stream, which feeds the present lake, is today (see Fig. 35).

Fig. 20: ‘Mr. Thonous’,

proposal plan for the east

part of the garden, Rufford

Abbey, about 1695 (Plan V).

Fig. 19 (facing page):

‘Mr. Thonous’, proposal

plan for the north part

of the garden, Rufford

Abbey, about 1695

(Plan III), inscribed ‘New

Wilderness’ on the reverse.





Plan V (Fig. 20) is a design for a garden east of the house. The ‘Terras Walk’ and ‘Wood Yard’ shown in Plan II seem to be unaffected, and the

circular pond at the centre of the ‘Fountain Court’ was evidently to be retained, although the four small grass plats were to be replaced by a gravel circle edged with grass, and approached down a double-flight stair from the first floor of the house. This small garden opens out into a rectangular parterre about 585ft (178m) long and 345ft (105m) wide, occupying the site of ‘The Meadow before the house’ shown in Plan II, and more. The parterre consists of two long, narrow, grassed areas with convex quadrants cut from their corners. Both are divided by circular gravel walks surrounding a pedestal for a statue, and with cusp-shaped recesses on their east and west sides. The ‘Terras Walk’ of Plan II is aligned with the gravel walk which separates the two plats, and the southern plat is aligned on the double-flight stair in front of the old house. Like the north parterre, the plats are edged with pyramidal trees, and the gravel walk along the northern side is planted with a double row of trees. The 700 yard long canal illustrated in Plan III is shown terminating at the north-east corner of the parterre, and another canal, aligned on the axis from the double-flight stair, runs for 350ft (107m) eastwards and ends in a cascade. The angle at which the kitchen garden is set out in Plan II is visible south of the parterre, and Thonous was evidently unable to resist squeezing in a little bit of wilderness in the residual triangle. The irregular stream which fed the L-shaped canals in the kitchen garden of Plan II is taken in straight lengths around the east and south sides of the parterre in Plan V.

Plan VI (Fig. 21), inscribed ‘Slants to the Gravel Pits’, is a plan of an amphitheatre with stepped and sloping sides.74 It is large, 260ft (79m) wide and 110ft (33m) deep, with three stepped terraces and sloping grass banks.75 The plan is a rectilinear U, with the inner angles extruded as convex quadrants. The three terraces are each made up of a large and small bank with narrow steps between. The larger banks decrease in depth with each step, though the smaller banks are all the same depth. It is difficult to know where this feature might have been sited within these gardens.76 The only place where the topography could realistically accommodate such an amphitheatre is to the north-east of the house, where the southern end of the lake is now.77

The same sheet has a distinctive design for a treillage arbour (Fig. 22).78 The arbour was designed to link two terraces at different levels, and the three

steps between them. Altogether 21ft (6.5m) wide, 10ft 6in (3.2m) deep and 14ft 6in (4.4m) high, it has a square-planned pavilion on each terrace and a narrow one over the steps. All three pavilions have triangulated roofs whose apexes are at the same height, so the middle one is much steeper. All the apexes have carved finials. The square-planned pavilions each have a round-headed door. The walls of all three parts and the roof of the central one have a herringbone pattern treillage, while the roofs of the square-planned pavilions have a pattern of open circles and crosses within rectangular frames. There is no indication on the drawing of where this arbour might have been sited: Plans I and II show two adjacent terraces linked by steps where the ‘Kings Garden’ abuts ‘The Gravell Terras Walke’, but there are eight steps on Plan I, instead of the three shown in Plan VI. If this elevation is by Thonous, it is his only elevation drawing in the series, and suggests that he may have been a more accomplished garden designer than architect.

The designs contain some evidence of their date. The retention and adaptation of some features from Plans I and II (the ‘Kings Garden’ from Plan I, and the ‘Terras Walk’, ‘Wood Yard’ and the corner of the kitchen garden from Plan II) indicate that they post-date the latter. They certainly pre-date 1738, when a map by John Reynolds of the adjoining Thoresby estate (see Fig. 31), which includes a fraction of the northern part of the Rufford estate, shows the triple ride proposed in Plan III, evidently realized by that date.79 The cascade illustrated in Plan V was extant at least two years earlier, as ‘the Cascade in the New Park’ was discussed in a note dated 13 September 1736.80 In fact Plans III and V were both probably drawn up some 40 years earlier still. Plan V (Fig. 20) includes a block plan of the house without the off-centre projection on the east side, suggesting that these designs were part of a scheme for remodelling the entire east front of the house, a radical remodelling which is most likely to have been considered after the fire of 1692. These designs may therefore have been drawn to complement Charles Renny’s rebuilding of the southern end of the east front, completed in 1695.

Although Renny was ‘to be regularly seen in Rotherham market-place’,81 there is no indication of who Thonous was, and no garden designer of that name is known from elsewhere. It is possible that, as his name suggests, he was French. Triple

radial avenues were first designed for Vaux le Vicomte in the 1670s and were further developed at Versailles in the 1680s. The long straight canals, one ending in a cascade, also suggest knowledge of new French fashions in gardening. The complex maze-like paths within the wildernesses, although recurrent in the early 18th century, were a novelty in the 1690s. The earliest examples were designed by Le Nôtre for Versailles in the 1670s.82

It is possible that the Saviles were acquainted with these examples, for Halifax’s brother, Henry Savile, with whom he regularly corresponded, was Envoy Extraordinary to the court of Louis XIV in 1672–3 and 1678–83.83 Halifax’s son, Lord Eland, had travelled extensively in Italy, Spain, France and the Low Countries between 1685 and 1687, and may also have seen such novel garden features. One or other of them may have recruited Thonous. Although the extent, costliness and splendour of the proposals can be accounted for by the Saviles’ wealth and position, it is difficult to account for their extreme novelty in the 1690s without such knowledge.

SIR GEORGE SAVILE (1678–1743), SEVENTH BARONETThe second marquess left three daughters, one of whom was eventually to marry the architect earl of Burlington, and to inherit the house in St James’s Square. When the second marquess died in 1700 the peerages became extinct, but the baronetcy, created for the first marquess’s great-grandfather, was inherited by a bachelor cousin, as sixth baronet. At the latter’s death in 1704 the baronetcy passed to his great-nephew, George Savile, then a student at the Middle Temple, and son of the rector of Thornhill; he inherited Rufford, along with most of the estates and an income of £6,000.

Sir George saw himself as a country squire and did not aspire to high office, but he sat as MP for Yorkshire from 1728 to 1734 as a follower of his friend and kinsman, Sir Thomas Watson-Wentworth, Lord Malton and subsequently first marquess of Rockingham, who, as well as being an active politician, was the builder of Wentworth Woodhouse, then and still the biggest house in England. As a politician, Sir George’s principal achievement was the act of Parliament of 1731 which replaced Latin with English as the language of the law. His interests were practical and scientific, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1721. In 1722

Fig. 21: ‘Mr. Thonous’

(attrib.), proposal plan for

an amphitheatre in the

garden, Rufford Abbey,

about 1695 (Plan VI).

Fig. 22: ‘Mr. Thonous’

(attrib.), proposal plan

and elevation for a treillage

arbour in the garden,

Rufford Abbey, about 1695

(Plan VI).





he married Mary, the daughter of John Pratt of Dublin and Cabra Castle, co. Cavan, although reputedly the daughter of Henry Petty, first earl of Shelburne. They separated in 1734, on account of her affair with William Levinz, a county neighbour, and Sir George lived on alone at Rufford until his death in 1743.84

The Bath-Summer HouseThe first heated swimming pool in Britain had been constructed in 1703–4 by one of a circle

of south Yorkshire and north Nottinghamshire fellows of the Royal Society, who had a particular interest in hydrostatics.85 It may be that Sir George’s scientific interests, apparent in his own fellowship of the Royal Society, inspired him, too, to build a bath-house at Rufford in 1728. His architect was John Hallam, a protégé of Sir George’s neighbour, Sir Thomas Hewett of Shireoaks Hall, Nottinghamshire, who was himself interested in hydrostatics. From 1719 to his death in 1726 Hewett held the post of Surveyor-General of the King’s Works, and Hallam, also a native of Nottinghamshire, was Secretary to the Board and Clerk of Works at Whitehall, Westminster and St James’s until he was deprived of his official posts on Hewett’s death. Although Hallam was only a joiner by origin, his drawings for the Bath-Summer House at Rufford reveal that he was an accomplished draughtsman and creative designer (Fig. 23).86 The Bath-Summer House was built between 1728 and early 1730 by Robert Birch, mason, and John Bloydon, joiner.87

Constructed south of the stable yard, on part of what was the kitchen garden in the 1680s (Fig. 1), the Bath-Summer House still survives, and is one of the earliest examples of 18th-century treatments for ‘palsies, convulsions, hypocondriacal [sic] and gouty pains, rickets, rheumatic pains and even the

“blew devils”’.88 It was converted into a conservatory in the 19th century, though it has recently been restored and re-converted for the display of sculpture. It had a pool or canal (which partially survives), 85ft (26m) long and 12ft (3.7m) wide, surrounded by a rectangle of high brick walls, with an entrance doorway at the north-western end and an open-sided summer house at the opposite end. The pool was lined in stone with steps down and a sluice gate at one end for regulating the water intake. It narrows at its south-east end to pass through the central intercolumniation of the Doric colonnade on the north-west elevation of the summer house itself, where the pool was shallower. The colonnade is flanked by two towers, lit by circular windows and topped with ball finials; one tower gave access to the roof and the other acted as a changing room or store. Above the colonnade the roof has a balustrade and urns (Fig. 24); within, there are three stone niches on each wall. The other side, facing out onto the gardens, has a three-sided, canted bay window with large sashes, which overlooks a circular basin. John Hallam drew four different designs for this elevation, including a pointed or two-sided bay (Fig. 23), a dodecagonal bay and an irregular bay. From the basin, water was fed into a straight canal, about 300ft (91m) long, which extended to the south-east. This canal no longer exists, but a straight shallow ditch marks its original position.

The remodelling of the east frontA rudimentary drawing dated July 1734 is endorsed ‘Draught from Mr Birch of Part of the East side of Rufford House as Proposed to be Altered’ (Fig. 17).89 Mr Birch can be identified as Robert Birch, the mason who carried out the stonework on the Bath-Summer House in 1728–30, since another drawing in the same hand refers to the author as ‘Mr Birch the mason’.90 This drawing, already discussed in connection with the rebuilding after the 1692 fire, does not distinguish proposal from survey. But it is most likely that the proposed alteration was the addition of the central five attic windows, and this appears to be confirmed by an exactly contemporary estimate of proposed work which includes ‘glazing for sashes’ of £327 14s.91 This proposal was not carried out. Instead, a full-width, nine-window attic was added, surmounted by a pedimented and scrolled cartouche above the parapet (Fig. 18). Since the idiosyncratic detail of a common disproportion

between the wide windows in the piano nobile and the narrow ones in the attic, seen on Birch’s proposal, was included on the final facade, it seems most likely that Robert Birch was the designer of these alterations.

This drawing omits the external stair which Thonous’s plans illustrate, and which was probably added about 1695 (Fig. 20). The stair is shown in both late 18th-century views of the east front (Figs 10 and 11)92 and it survived to be photographed in the 1950s (Fig. 18). Perhaps the proposal intended that the stair should be removed, though this would have cut off the important suite of rooms contained in this range from the garden below. Whatever the reason, this proposal was not acted upon.

The room at the south end, referred to as the Dining Room on the 1938 plan (Fig. 6), was, on the basis of stylistic analogy, fitted up around 1734.

Fig. 25: Sir George Savile,

seventh baronet (attrib.),

proposal plan for canals

with heart-shaped islands,

Rufford Abbey, about

1734–5 (Plan VII).

Fig. 23: John Hallam,

proposal plan and

west elevation of the

Bath-Summer House,

Rufford Abbey, 1728.

Fig. 24: The north-west front

of the Bath-Summer House,

Rufford Abbey.





It had a deep arched alcove on its south side, too deep for a buffet, and presumably a bed recess; this was infilled in the late 19th century with a glass cabinet which contained ‘a magnificent collection of racing cups, mostly trophies [won] by the late Mr Henry Savile’.93 Tall pilasters flanked the alcove, with richly carved spandrels to the arch. The room had a high quality white marble chimneypiece with console brackets, and double leaf doors with six raised and fielded panels.

Around 1737 slight alterations were allegedly made to the stable block, perhaps also to Birch’s design.94

Sir George Savile’s gardensAlthough he inherited in 1704, the earliest surviving evidence of Sir George’s interest in gardening is found in an illustrated letter from his steward, Thomas Smith, dated 7 April 1725.95 This letter (Fig. 15) shows the house, referred to as ‘Rufford Hall’, and various avenues, woods and sightlines with captions. The house is on the left, with ‘Wellow Park’ at the top, ‘The Brail Wood’ at the bottom and the ‘Old Park’, or entrance avenue, across the centre of the page. The letter

concerns itself not with the gardens but with the surrounding woodlands, and particularly with ensuring that open views and rides were cut through them to give the best views. Such concerns were not evident in the designs of the 1680s and 1690s, and are indicative of the interest in the wider landscape that would eventually lead to the landscape gardens of the later 18th century.

The position now occupied by the culvert behind the Bath-Summer House is the site of a proposal shown on an unsigned, undated drawing here called Plan VII (Fig. 25), for three canals, one shown leading from a curved edge which is labelled ‘Walk Round ye Bath Bason’.96 Each of these canals is 7ft (2.1m) wide: two have central bulges containing heart-shaped islands, and the other has a meander or serpentine. Each is labelled ‘Stream of Water’ and the heart shapes are both labelled ‘Island’.

Another drawing, Plan VIII (Fig. 26), showing heart-shaped beds or basins, may be presumed to have come from the same hand, although also unsigned and undated.97 But an inscription on the verso identifies it as ‘My Masters Draught Plan’. Although this inscription might have been made

by a draughtsman or apprentice who referred to the designer as his master, it is more likely that ‘My Master’ was the master of the house, Sir George Savile. To the left of the heart shapes he has drawn two sets of three interlocked circles, the upper ones with concentric, the lower with eccentric borders. These exercises, drawn with the geometrical subtlety of an engineer, are consistent with the interests of a fellow of the Royal Society, and additionally suggest the possibility that the geometrical ingenuity of the various bath-house proposals may originate in another (lost) ‘My Master’s Draught’, drawn in fair by Hallam. The inscription on the verso also reveals that Plan VIII is a design for ‘the Parterre on the East Side of Rufford Hall’, and the shape of the enclosure around the beds or basins corresponds to that of the parterre illustrated in Plan V, including the ‘Terras Walk’ of Plans I and II. The right (eastern end) of the drawing appears at first sight to be blank, but careful observation reveals a long rectangular feature outlined faintly in pencil. This must be a southward extension of the canal bordering the east side of the north garden in Plans III and V, and pencil lines indicate what appears to be a bridge crossing it. The introduction of water to this area would allow the shapes to be basins rather than beds, perhaps more to the taste of a hydraulic engineer. The shaded areas, which taper to points too fine to be planting, may be slopes. The large and simple parterres of the 1690s were out of fashion by the 1730s and this experimental design is evidently moving towards the complex rococo layouts produced by designers like Thomas Wright in the 1750s.

The bridge can be identified as that shown in another drawing, Plan IX (Fig. 27), dated

2 January 1734.98 This is an elevation of a bridge corresponding in length to the bridge on Plan VIII, and the inscription refers to the ‘North and South Ends of the Arch’, which agrees with the bridge’s orientation on Plan VIII. The width of the canal (indicated by dotted lines) and the length of the abutments also seem to correspond closely to the parterre design. The inscription on this drawing also states that ‘the Crown of the Arch … maybe affected by the Wheels of Carriages’, suggesting that the bridge formed part of a carriage drive which led to the double-flight stair on the east front. The former Fountain Court in front of these steps had already been redesigned as an open circle in Plan V, wide enough to turn a carriage. It may be that the intention was to move the entrance to the house to the eastern side.

Just over a month later, on 13 February 1734, a draughtsman with the same handwriting, on this occasion identified as ‘Mr Birch’, drew the elevation of grass and stepped ramp, Plan X (Fig. 28).99 It is inscribed ‘Draught from Mr Birch the Mason of Part of the Wall and Palisade of the Parterre on the East side of Rufford House’.100 It shows a brick parapet with regular stone piers on the right, and a wooden palisade on the left, which might thus be interpreted as the less formal side, furthest from the house. The annotations reveal that parapet and palisade flank, from right to left, ‘Part of Parterre Walk’, ‘Two Yards Gravel’, ‘Five Yards Grass Terrace’, ‘One Yard Steps’, ‘Six Yards Grass Walk’; evidently this route was not for carriages. The length of parapet furthest to the left is extended downwards, and inscribed ‘Canal otter Grate’, indicating that it represents a bridge over a canal, here used to exclude otters. Presumably the garden canals were stocked with fish.


proposal plan of a bridge at

Rufford Abbey, 2 January

1734 (Plan IX).

Fig. 26: Sir George

Savile, seventh baronet

(attrib.), proposal plan for

remodelling the parterre

on the east side of Rufford

Abbey, about 1734–5

(Plan VIII).





The parapet wall shown in Birch’s drawing is of a similar height to the parapet shown in a drawing for gates, Plan XI (Fig. 29), which is inscribed ‘June 11, 1734. Draught of Gates & Palisades for East Side of Rufford House, bespoke of Mr Foulgham this day’.101 James Foulgham (1712–70), the second son of the better-known ironsmith, Francis Foulgham, was an ironsmith in Bridlesmith Gate, Nottingham.102 A memorandum dated 11 June 1734 evidently refers to these same gates: ‘The said James Foulgham is to Paint the Work before it comes from Nottingham and to pay the Carriage to Rufford; Sir George to find a Mason (and Lad) to fix up the Said work with Mr Foulgham.’103 The drawing shows a central pair of gates with an elaborate overthrow enclosing a cartouche, and flanked by ornate openwork piers with elaborate finials. Railings either side are shown ramped up to the gate piers and supported by lower, but equally ornate, openwork piers, and are themselves shown flanked by fronds

of iron vegetation in a triangular format set on the parapet walls. The site of these gates is not indicated, but a pair of gates of similar design survived to be photographed at the north end of the Broad Ride in the 1950s.104 They may have been moved to this site some time after 1734.

Entirely without comparison in 18th-century garden design is a third drawing in the same hand as Plans VII and VIII, doubtless ‘the Master’s’, Plan XII (Fig. 30).105 It shows an aqueduct, flowing between two surfaces marked ‘Canal: Walk’, consisting of three parallel sluices, the outer ones marked ‘Shallow Sluice’, and the central one ‘Deeper Sluice’. To left and right extend channels marked ‘Flood: Gutter’, one of which ends in a circle, perhaps a well or sump. Ahead of the aqueduct, beyond two dotted lines (perhaps representing a bridge), is a trefoil-shaped pool, whence a channel leads to a series of pools in the form of the numbers 1735; dotted lines indicate links between these, presumably subterranean

channels. The last of these runs into an ‘Aquaduct to ye Lake’, indicating that a lake of some sort was planned or even in existence at Rufford at this date; the present lake was not created until the 1750s. Unfortunately there are no notes on the drawing which indicate its position, but it may have been connected to the canals in front of the Bath-Summer House. It is captioned ‘Plan of Sluces – Flood-Gutters, Cataract-Aquaduct & from Wilderness-Canal’. The figure ‘1735’ is not meaningless; the drawing is dated ‘June 25th 1735’.

Memoranda record distances between individual garden features and numerous water features, although not always identifiably. One, dated 13 October 1733, refers to the ‘Stew Ponds’ and a ‘Great Pond’; another, dated 5 June 1735, refers to a ‘Cataract of Water for the Great Canal over against the Cave Walk in the Wilderness’ and to a ‘Lake’; while a third, dated 13 September 1736, refers to ‘the mount in the New Canal’ and a ‘Cascade in New Park’.106 It is evident that the surviving drawings are only a partial record of extensive water and built features, and the scale of the garden is shown by one entry which reads: ‘The Whole ground to be taken in Eastward from the House … 615 [ft] 10 [in]’.107 Unfortunately the area to the east of the house was extensively remodelled in the 19th and 20th centuries, destroying any potential topographical confirmation.108

John Reynolds’s survey of the Thoresby estate in 1738 (Fig. 31) reveals that Thonous’s proposed triple radiating avenue had been realized, possibly at even greater length by including part of the King’s Garden.109 The wildernesses either side of these avenues, if they were ever realized, had been allowed to grow out by 1738, as the contrived wildernesses of the Versailles style had been succeeded by a more naturalistic approach. The Thoresby survey does not show the long eastern canal proposed by Thonous (Fig. 19), but instead shows a serpentine canal within the eastern wilderness, reaching as far as the Wellow Road and fed by a straight aqueduct running parallel to and east of the house. The aqueduct ran parallel but 100yds (91m) west of the line of Thonous’s proposed long canal, and was presumably added in the 1730s. A surviving ditch follows its line along the east side of the former King’s Garden. The Thoresby survey also shows that the bowling green and its pavilion, shown on Plan II (Figs 1 and 14), were still in existence in 1738.

SIR GEORGE SAVILE (1726–84), EIGHTH BARONETThe seventh baronet died on 16 September 1743 and was succeeded as eighth baronet by his son, also George, then aged 17. This was ‘Independent Savile’, famous as the pioneer of parliamentary reform, and leader of the Yorkshire Association. He sat as MP for England’s largest county from 1759 to 1783, and was a political ally of the second marquess of Rockingham, whose base was at Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorkshire.110 In common with most progressive Whigs he was also an agricultural improver, and his efforts to enclose and landscape his estate appear to have resulted

Fig. 30: Sir George

Savile, seventh baronet

(attributed), proposal plan

for pools in the form ‘1735’,

Rufford Abbey, 25 June

1735 (Plan XII).

Fig. 31: John Reynolds,

survey plan of the Thoresby

estate, 1738 (detail,

showing the gardens to the

north of Rufford Abbey).


elevation of a ramp in the

parterre on the east side of

Rufford Abbey, 13 February

1734 (Plan X).

Fig. 29: James Foulgham,

proposal elevation of iron

gates, Rufford Abbey,

11 June 1734 (Plan XI).





in the obliteration of a large part of the more unusual baroque and rococo gardens at Rufford. He introduced new crops, including hops, which supplied the local brewing industry. Between 1743 and 1747 he and his trustees purchased the villages of Ollerton, Boughton, Kirton and Egmanton for £22,000 from the Markham family, thereby increasing the size of the Rufford estate by a further 1,860 acres (752ha) to 9,910 acres (4,010ha); and by the time of his death he had enclosed nearly 2,000 acres (809ha) of previously common land.

Sir George landscaped the park east and south of the house, and added a lake, complete with islands, east of Thonous’s avenues and the north-eastern wilderness, all of which is illustrated in John Chapman’s county map of 1774 (Fig. 32).111 The lake may be dated by agreements for building a bridge and ‘Dam on the New River at Rufford’ drawn up with the architect and builder John Platt of Rotherham in February and July 1758.112 As a local architect, Platt was an obvious choice, but he would also have had the particular recommendation of Lord Rockingham, for whom he acted as mason for most of his life.113

The recreational value of the lake was not overlooked: the earliest known view of it114 (Fig. 33) shows a small sailing boat, and Sir George had a boat house built on the west bank.115 But it also provided a head of water to power a corn mill,

prominently positioned at its northern end, which may also be attributed to Platt. The mill was built of brick with prominent stone quoins in the slightly old-fashioned manner characteristic of his work. It has two storeys, a hipped roof behind an eaves parapet, and an octagonal lantern like a provincial town hall. Three bays face the lake; the central one breaks forward and is pedimented, and has an open arch for the water wheel. The cupola was removed as early as 1790, and the windows on the south side, facing the lake, were removed when the building was enlarged and converted into a saw mill in the 19th century. But the north facade survives, similar in style, although the fenestration may have been altered in the 19th century, giving a slightly unorthodox six bays (Fig. 34). The overflow from the lake was channelled through a cascade, which has been much altered.

In 1765 Sir George was granted permission to re-route the Nottingham Road even further to the west away from Rufford Abbey. He was one of the trustees of the Turnpike Trust which built the road that still exists today. The two late 18th-century watercolour views show the gardens at this time (Figs 10 and 11). They illustrate no planting around the house, but mown lawns with only the outline of the baroque and rococo gardens, which had evidently been grubbed up. To mark the visit of King George III in 1786 Sir George replanted the Broad Walk with Dresden beeches, which were cut down by the War Office during their occupation of the house; the replacements are only now reaching maturity.

Sir George was evidently less concerned with his house than his grounds. It may have been in his time that the whole house was given sash windows with narrow glazing bars, and that two new chimneypieces were set up in the Long Gallery. But nothing else survives within that may be attributable to his initiative.

RICHARD LUMLEY-SAVILE (1757–1832)In 1784 the eighth baronet was succeeded by his nephew, the Hon. Richard Lumley, second son of the fourth earl of Scarbrough, of Sandbeck Park, Yorkshire. Sir George’s will stipulated that the Rufford estates could not be joined by inheritance to the Scarbrough estates. Thus, when Richard Lumley-Savile (as he became) inherited the Scarbrough estates in 1807 from his elder brother, George, fifth earl of Scarbrough, he forfeited the Savile estates. Rufford therefore passed to his

younger brother, the Revd and Hon. John Lumley (1761–1835), rector of Thornhill.

Richard Lumley-Savile continued his uncle’s policy of improvement and tree planting; in 23 years he planted a further 491 acres (199ha) of woodland, combined with an extension of the open parkland to the south-east. The earliest Ordnance Survey map shows this as it was in 1885

(Fig. 35). The lake had acquired a more irregular outline, particularly at its south-east corner, and the shelter belt in the north-east had become the huge New Park Wood, cut through with straight rides converging on a rond point. To the north-west this wood was linked by the Scotland Bank Plantation to the wood east of the lake, and to the south it was linked to Kennel Wood. From

Fig. 34: North side of the

corn mill at Rufford Abbey,

altered in the 19th century.

Fig. 33: View of the ‘South

front of Rufford Mill and

Dam’, late 18th century

(detail), showing the corn

mill built in 1758.

Fig. 32: J Chapman,

Nottinghamshire, 1774

(detail, showing

Rufford Abbey).





here the extended park stretched away to the south and east. One of the few known views of this park shows it from the east (Fig. 36).116 Most of it was converted into a golf course in the 20th century.

LATER HISTORYWhen the Revd John Lumley-Savile succeeded his brother Richard as seventh earl of Scarbrough in 1832, he inherited the Scarbrough estates, but refused to give up Rufford as required in Sir George Savile’s will. A ‘mean, grasping and cruel man’,117 he spent little money on developing either of his estates. On his death in 1835 the peerage and both estates passed to his son, John.

In 1836 the eighth earl engaged the architects John Woodhead and William Hurst of Doncaster to make alterations and additions to the service buildings.118 But between 1837 and 1841 he engaged Anthony Salvin to carry out a major remodelling of the house in the Jacobean Revival style.119 Salvin’s alterations included the remodelling of the porch on the west front, the new bay window at the

north end of the Long Gallery, the new staircase wing on the east front and a new cupola over the south front, replacing the old cupola visible in late 18th-century views (Figs 10 and 36). Internally Salvin, with the assistance of Frederick Crace, remodelled many of the rooms, including the brick hall, with its Jacobean-style chimneypiece, the Library, with its elaborate plaster ceiling, and the Drawing Room or Saloon, which they remodelled in an eclectic French Empire style.120 Salvin also restored the medieval vaulted rooms to the former west range of the abbey.121 These alterations, which also included work to Ley Fields and Wellow House, two houses on the estate, cost a total of £13,167 1s 1½d. The work was overseen by the Clerk of Works, Robert Wilkinson.122

One of the eighth earl’s first actions on inheriting was to contest the will of Sir George Savile in a High Court action, which he eventually won, so that at the dawning of the Victorian age the estates of the Saviles and the Scarbroughs were legally combined. This joining of these estates was only short-lived,

however, because the eighth earl died unmarried in 1856, and the Scarbrough estate passed to a Lumley cousin. Rufford passed to the eighth earl’s illegitimate son, Captain Henry Savile. On his death in 1887 it passed to another of the eighth earl’s illegitimate sons, Sir John Savile, then ambassador to Italy, who was created Lord Savile in 1888. The stables were remodelled for him about 1890 to the design of yet another Mr Birch, the architect John Birch.123

The first Lord Savile died in 1896, and by special remainder his peerage was inherited by his nephew, John Lumley-Savile, who died in 1931. The house was closed up by his widow in 1932, and in 1938 her son’s trustees sold the house and its 18,000 acre (7,300ha) estate to the local property developer Sir Albert Ball. The nationalization of coal royalties in 1938 meant that the huge income produced from coal mining, developed on the estate since 1917, came to an end.124 The contents of the house were sold in a ten-day auction in October that year and much of the estate was auctioned off in the following month. The house and its park were purchased by Henry de Vere Clifton, another local developer, though almost immediately the house and grounds were requisitioned by the War Office. After the Second World War the former army huts were used by the Forestry Commission and the Civil Defence Corps occupied the stable block from 1950.

By this time the house had fallen into a poor state of repair and, although serious attempts were made to find a new use for it, the repair costs proved prohibitive.125 In 1952 the county council

purchased it and the surrounding 120 acres (49ha) of garden and parkland, and, after further unsuccessful attempts to find a use for the buildings, demolition and archaeological investigation began in 1956.126 In 1969 the county council designated the surviving gardens and park as a country park, and in the intervening years it has been successfully developed into a popular recreational centre, with the ruined fragment of the abbey buildings, in the care of English Heritage, at its heart.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSI am grateful to Lord Savile, Nottingham University Archives

and Nottinghamshire Archives Office for allowing me to

reproduce their documents and illustrations. This article

began life as a lecture on the gardens given at a one-day

conference on 15 July 2007, organized by Sue Blaxland for

the Leicestershire and Rutland Gardens Trust. I would like to

thank Paul Norton, the Project Officer for Interpretation at

Rufford Abbey, for sharing his detailed knowledge of Rufford;

Rosalys Coope, Sally Jeffery and Derek Adlam for their

observations and advice; and Richard Hewlings for his continued

encouragement, assistance and editorial skills. I would

particularly like to thank Professor Mark N Brown for sharing

the results of his researches into the first marquess of Halifax.

Fig. 36: View of Rufford

Abbey from the east, early

19th century.

NOTES1 Lord Savile [John Savile Lumley-Savile, second Baron Savile], ‘Rufford Abbey’, Pall Mall Magazine, 1898, 435–43; Anon., ‘Rufford Abbey, Nottinghamshire’, Country Life, XIV, 7 November 1903, 650–56. A chapter based on this Country Life article also appears in Charles Latham, In English Homes, London, 1909, 201–6.2 David M Wilson and John G Hurst, ‘Medieval Britain in 1957’, Medieval Archaeology, II, 1958, 191; R Gilyard-Beer, ‘Rufford Abbey:

Fig. 35: Ordnance

Survey, Nottinghamshire,

1885 (detail, showing

Rufford Abbey).





a brief note on the excavations undertaken in 1956–57’, Medieval Archaeology, IX, 1965, 161–3.3 D Hool, Rufford, Past and Present, Nottinghamshire County Council Leisure Services (hereafter NCCLS), 1980; G Elias, Rufford Abbey and Country House, NCCLS, 1992; S M Cooke, Rufford Abbey, Glimpses of the Past, NCCLS, 1994; Roly Smith, Rufford, Past … & Present, NCCLS, 2000; Adrian Henstock, Rufford from Abbey to Country House, Archive Resource Pack no. 3, Nottinghamshire Archives Service [n.d.]. For a fuller bibliography see Michael Brook, A Nottinghamshire Bibliography: Publications on Nottinghamshire History before 1998, Thoroton Society Record Series, XLII, 2002, 331–2.4 Robert Thoroton, The Antiquities of Nottinghamshire, edited and enlarged by John Throsby, III, Nottingham, 1796, repr. 1972, 337–8.5 William Camden (trans. Philemon Holland), Britannia, London, 1610, 550–51.6 It was at Rufford that in 1574 Bess’s daughter Elizabeth Cavendish met and married Charles Stuart, fifth earl of Lennox, fifth in line to the throne. The marriage angered Queen Elizabeth and resulted in 1575 in the birth of Arbella Stuart.7 Historic Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of his Grace the Duke of Portland, K.G., preserved at Welbeck Abbey, IX, London, 1923, 49; London, British Library, MS A., fos 47v–48r.8 Nottinghamshire Archives Office (hereafter NAO), RFL 3 L (acc. no. MP 449), black-and-white photographic copy, inscribed ‘Copied from original brought in by Mr Granville, Dukeries School, and belonging to someone in Ollerton, 22.11.1965’. The survey itself is inscribed ‘A Survey of the Lordship of Rufford in the countie of Nottingham Belonging to the Right Worshipful Sir William Savile taken in December Anno Domini 1637 … by me John Bunting’. The whereabouts of the original is not known.9 Two contemporary representations of Rufford Abbey are known: one on the Eyre tapestry map of Nottinghamshire of 1632 [M Clayton, ‘A tapestry map of Nottinghamshire’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, XXXVIII, 1934, 65–80] and the other on a survey plan of Edwinstowe by William Senior dated 1638 [NAO, ED 2/2 S]. However, neither appears to be an accurate rendition of the abbey at this time.10 Jill Allibone, Anthony Salvin, A Pioneer of Gothic Revival Architecture, Cambridge, 1987, 162.11 J T Cliffe, The Yorkshire Gentry from the Reformation to the Civil War, London, 1969, 103.12 Barbara H Nuttall, The Saviles of Thornhill Hall: Life at Thornhill Hall in the Reign of Charles I, Leeds, 1986, 65.13 The consolidated ruins of Thornhill Hall survive in a public park [Barbara H Nuttall, A History of Thornhill, Kirklees Cultural Services, 1995, pls 5, 7, 8 and 9].14 Mark N Brown, ‘Savile, George, first marquess of Halifax (1633–1695)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004, XLIX, 99–107; B D Henning (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1660–1690, London, 1983, III, 396–8.15 Henning, op. cit., II, 54; David Adshead, Wimpole: Architectural and Topographical Views, Swindon, 2007, 40–41.16 I am indebted to Richard Hewlings for this information. He had it by personal communication from the late Sir Howard Colvin, who did not publish his findings before his death.17 Howard Colvin, Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840, New Haven and London, 2008, 352.18 Ibid., 678.19 Richard Hewlings, ‘Achitaphel’s architect’, Georgian Group Journal, XVI, 2008, 4.20 Colvin, op. cit., 1030.21 NAO, DD. SR 102/215.22 John Birch, Examples of Stables, Hunting Boxes, Kennels, Riding Establishments etc., London and Edinburgh, 1892.23 Giles Worsley, The British Stable, New Haven and London, 2004, 72–101.24 His previous London house was the former Carlisle House in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which he leased from 1656 to 1659 and from 1662 to 1672, when it was acquired by Lord Powis. In the intervening years he lived in St John’s Street, Clerkenwell [David Pearce, London’s Mansions: The Palatial Houses of the Nobility, London, 1986, 45].25 F H W Sheppard (ed.), Survey of London, XXIX, London, 1960, 157.26 Sheffield, Sheffield Public Library (hereafter SPL), MD 151 d, e, f and g. I am grateful to Professor Mark N Brown for bringing these accounts to my attention and for allowing me to quote from his transcriptions.27 SPL, MD 151 d, ‘Will. Turner Account from Whitsunday ye 19th of May 1678 till Martins. 1678’.28 Colvin, op. cit., 1029–31; Bridget Clarke, ‘William Taylor: new

discoveries’, and John Harris, ‘William Taylor: further attributions’, Georgian Group Journal, VIII, 1998, 1–11 and 12–18.29 Hewlings, op. cit., 3–4.30 NAO, DD. SR 215/15/1. It is possible that this inventory does not include all the rooms in the house.31 Welbeck Abbey was the largest with 88 hearths; the next largest was Holme Pierrepont Hall with 62, followed by Thoresby Hall with 43 and Newstead Abbey with 41.32 W F Webster (ed.), Nottinghamshire Hearth Tax: 1664–1674, Thoroton Society Record Series, XXXVII, 1988, 47, 136.33 Thoroton, op. cit., 338.34 SPL, MD 151 f.35 SPL, MD 151 g.36 SPL, MD 151 e.37 Ibid.38 SPL, MD 151 g.39 William Durrant Cooper (ed.), Savile Correspondence: Letters to and from Henry Savile Esq., including his brother George, Marquess of Halifax, London, 1858, 134.40 Ibid., 137–8.41 NAO, Rare Books, 03.1q, Knight Frank and Rutley, Rufford Abbey: Preliminary Particulars of the Rufford Abbey Estate [n.d.].42 The inventory of 20 September 1642 includes a ‘Gallery’ [NAO, DD. SR 215/15].43 Rosalys Coope, ‘The gallery in England: names and meanings’, Architectural History, XXVII, 1984, 449.44 Rosalys Coope, ‘The “long gallery”: its origins, development, use and decoration’, Architectural History, XXIX, 1986, 56.45 Coope, ‘The gallery’, 449.46 Colvin, op. cit., 1030.47 Coope, ‘The “long gallery”’, 58 (Chatsworth, Sudbury and Shavington).48 Nikolaus Pevsner and John Harris, rev. Nicholas Antram, The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire, London, 1989, 119.49 Henning, op. cit., III, 398–9.50 Leonard Jacks, The Great Houses of Nottinghamshire, Nottingham, 1881, 111.51 NAO, DD. SR 202/23.52 NAO, DD. RF 5 L. There is also a second version of this plan drawn in pencil in the Savile Papers, NAO, DD. SR 202/47.53 NAO, typescript catalogue of the Savile papers, 1958.54 NAO, DD. SR 211/237/135.55 H C Foxcroft, The Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, II, London, 1898, 132.56 It may be noted, however, that the buttresses to this parapet are shown in Plan I on the inside of this terrace, suggesting that it is sunken, not raised.57 The second version of this drawing shows a slightly different layout to this court, with a central circular feature on the avenue, half- and quarter-circles around the edges, and a different arrangement of pedestals [NAO, DD. SR 202/47].58 NAO, DD. SR, online inventory. Jonathan Challoner was also a tenant, and is named in two leases, dated 1691 and 1692; he appears to have held a high post in Savile’s household [I am grateful to Professor Mark N Brown for bringing this information to my attention].59 Chatsworth, Devonshire MSS, Box 4, bundle 2. The Savile-Finch papers contain letters from Jonathan Challoner to the marquess of Halifax between 18 October 1690 and 10 June 1693. I am grateful to Professor Mark N Brown for bringing this information to my attention.60 Devonshire MSS, Box 4, bundle 7.61 Devonshire MSS, Box 4, bundle 3.62 In the handwritten inventory of Devonshire MSS, Box 4, bundle 7, John Birch’s letter to Halifax, 29 January 1695, is described thus: ‘recommends painter and encloses his rates; defends roof and building’. In this context the following inventory descriptions of letters to Halifax from Birch in bundles 7 and 13 are pertinent:1 Sept. 1694: roof now up8 Sept. 1694: disputes between Eustas and Renny over building10 Nov. 1694: self defence against criticism and Renny17 Nov. 1694: poor progress of carpenters26 Nov. 1694: carpenters etc.29 Dec. 1694: forward progress of carpenters26 Jan. 1694/5: changes to flat roof and drainage; stairs; country painter recommended and enclose his rates4 Feb. 1694/5: thaw exposed faults in roof, now righted; stairs oak; wainscot painting; almshouse Egyptian marble; chimney piece; clocks27 Feb. 1694/5: roof faults; suggests dismissing Renny6 Mch. 1694/5: no need of Renny11 Mch. 1694/5: Renny; iron gates; needs more supplies.

I am grateful to Mark N Brown for bringing this information to my attention and for providing this transcription.63 Chatsworth, Devonshire MSS, Box 4, bundle 13.64 Colvin, op. cit., 851.65 NAO, DD. SR 215/13/13.66 Peter Smith, ‘West Dean House, Wiltshire’, Georgian Group Journal, IX, 1999, 86–106.67 Pete Smith, ‘Wotton House’, forthcoming.68 Brown, loc. cit.; Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley and D W Hayton (eds), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1690–1715, Cambridge, 2002, V, 373–4.69 Foxcroft, op. cit., 132.70 Ibid., 131.71 Chatsworth, Devonshire MSS, Box 4, bundle 3.72 NAO, DD. SR 202/6, 202/9B and 202/7.73 The typescript catalogue to the Savile Papers mistakenly interpreted this name as ‘Mr Thom’, and D V Fowkes compounded this mistake in his article, ‘Nottinghamshire parks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, LXXI, 1967, 75. Alternative interpretations could be ‘Phonous’s’, ‘Thinous’s’ or ‘Thenous’s’.74 NAO, DD. SR 202/1 (left side).75 At first sight this drawing could just as easily be interpreted as a projecting stage rather than an amphitheatre, but the shading on the arbour drawing on the same sheet definitely indicates that the shading on the top of the bank represents a downward slope.76 The reference to ‘Gravel Pits’ might appear to refer to the area which is marked as gravel pits on early Ordnance Survey maps; however, this area would then have been on the west side of the Nottingham to Doncaster road, and there is definitely no sign of this or any other garden features in this area on the Thoresby estate map of 1738 (see Fig. 31) [Nottingham University Archives (hereafter NUA), MA. 4 P 20].77 This drawing is catalogued with a letter concerned with a draft ‘Bill for Rishworth Reservoirs’, which does not appear to have anything to do with the drawing [NAO, DD. SR 202/2].78 NAO, DD. SR 202/1 (right side).79 NUA, MA. 4 P 20, a black-and-white photographic copy of the survey. The whereabouts of the original survey is not known.80 Jason Mordan, Rufford Abbey Historic Park and Garden, Nottinghamshire: A Study, compiled for Nottinghamshire County Council [n.d.], 13.81 Colvin, op. cit., 851.82 W H Adams, The French Garden, London, 1979, 79–102, pls 82, 92, 93.83 Henning, op. cit., III, 398; David J Sturdy, ‘Savile, Henry (1642–1687)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004, XLIX, 119–21.84 Romney Sedgwick, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1715–1754, London, 1970, II, 409; A A Hanham, ‘Savile, Sir George (bap. 1678, d. 1743)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn, January 2008, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9336685 Alice Dugdale, ‘The first heated swimming pool in modern times?’, Georgian Group Journal, XII, 2002, 1–7.86 Alice Dugdale, ‘John Hallam: a poor country joiner’, Georgian Group Journal, VII, 1997, 37–42; NAO, DD. SR 202/3; 202/15/4; 211/14/4; 211/58/1, 3, 5, 9, 10, 15, 16; 215/53; XBM 85.87 Dugdale, ‘John Hallam’, 41; NAO, DD. SR 211/14 and 211/58/10. Robert Birch was paid £98 15s 11d for all the stonework, excluding the paving, rail, balusters and urns [NAO, DD. SR 215/53/2].88 Dugdale, ‘John Hallam’, 38.89 NAO, DD. SR 215/13/13.90 NAO, DD. SR 215/14.91 NAO, DD. SR 215/13/11.92 NAO, XPR 6/13 and 6/14.93 Savile, op. cit., 442.94 Hool, op. cit., 23.95 NAO, DD. SR 211/227/135. A transcription of this letter appears in the Appendix to Mordan, op. cit. It is inscribed ‘Th: Smith. April 7th 1725. Viz: Horses Sent from Rufford this day. – Brail Vista’, and on the reverse ‘To Sr. Geo: Savile Bart: In Pall Mall London. Single Sheet’.96 NAO, DD. SR 215/14/4.97 NAO, DD. SR 202/14. Inscribed ‘This Plan Laid Down by a Scale of Ten Yards In An Inch’ and on the reverse inscribed ‘My Masters Draught Plan for the Parterre on the East Side of Rufford Hall’.98 NAO, DD. SR 202/12. This drawing is entitled ‘Draught for a bridge from the East Side of Rufford House over a Designed Canal’. The inscription reads: ‘NB. The Arch, And all the Wall under Water, And Six Inches above the Surface of the Water is to be Stone. – And all the rest of the Wall Brick. – The North and South Ends of the Arch in Sight to be

faced with Mansfield Stone. All the rest of the underside of the Arch, And All the Faces of the Walls, which the Water may possibly come at, to be of Warsop Stones, if they can be got large enough. As also the Crown of the Arch which maybe affected by the Wheels of Carriages. – – – NB. The Dotted Line expresses the Shape of the Bottom of the Canal, very shallow and an easy Slope for Six Feet from the Shore. – The Depths in other Parts as in the Figures. – All the Walls to be filled in behind with Eakring or Wellow Stones.’ There is another almost identical drawing, NAO, DD. SR 202/11/1A, entitled ‘Plan of Bridge over the Great Canal at Rufford’.99 NAO, DD. SR 215/34.100 Ibid.101 NAO, DD. SR XBM 9 S.102 Edward Saunders, Biographical Dictionary of English Wrought Iron Smiths of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Walpole Society, LXVII, 2005, 287–8.103 NAO, DD. SR 215/13/6, ‘Memorandum of Agreement Between Sir George Savile and Mr James Foulgham for a pair of Iron Gates for the East Side of Rufford House’.104 Swindon, English Heritage, National Monuments Record, AA 51/71 and 73.105 NAO, DD. SR 215/13/1.106 NAO, DD. SR 202/13; 215/13/1 and 10.107 NAO, DD. SR 202/13.108 Excavation of the lake in 1972 produced archaeological evidence which confirms that some new water features were constructed here at this time. This evidence consisted of a number of ‘isolated timbers [which] survived in situ and also a length of timber-built leet or duct covered over with square slabs of timber’, which were found on the west side of the lake. In 1977 a selection of these timbers was sampled and the one with the latest year-rings was securely dated to 1727, leading to the conclusion that this ‘leet’, which presumably formed part of these complex water gardens, had ‘a construction date of c.1735–40’ [R R Laxton, C D Litton, W G Simpson and P J Whitley, ‘Dendrochronology in the East Midlands’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, LXXXIII, 1979, 30–31].109 It is quite possible that this parterre had not been removed; it may simply be an inaccuracy on this huge survey drawing.110 Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1754–1790, London, 1964, III, 405–9; John Cannon, ‘Savile, Sir George (1726–1784)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004, XLIX, 107–9.111 NAO, N 27 L.112 One estimate, NAO DD. SR 215/57/1, is dated ‘20 Feb. 1758’, and the other, NAO DD. SR 215/57/2, is entitled ‘Estimate for the Dam on the New River at Rufford, John Platt, 4 July 1758’.113 Colvin, op. cit., 808; J D Potts, Platt of Rotherham, Mason-Architects 1700–1810, Sheffield, 1959, passim.114 NAO, XPR 6/15.115 An extreme example of the passion for boating was to be found very near Rufford. The fifth Lord Byron constructed forts around his lake at Newstead and built a miniature fleet to engage in mock battles [Rosalys Coope, ‘Newstead Abbey in the eighteenth century’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, LXXXIII, 1979, 57].116 Nottingham, Nottingham Local Studies Library, Doubleday Collection, 51056.117 Hool, op. cit., 14.118 NAO, DD. SR 202/22; Colvin, op. cit., 550–51.119 Allibone, op. cit., 162.120 NAO, DD. SR 215/66/3, detailed accounts for redecorating the Drawing Room.121 John Fletcher (ed.), Where Truth Abides: Diaries of the 4th Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyme (1822–1850), Bakewell, 2001, 174–5, entry for 20 February 1837.122 NAO, DD. SR 215/67/1–8.123 The development of the gardens at Rufford Abbey in the 19th and 20th centuries is discussed in Philip E Jones, Great Nottinghamshire Gardens, NCC Community Services, 2001, 35–8, and in Philip E Jones, ‘The Edwardian gardens at Rufford’, The Nottinghamshire Historian, no. 80, Spring/Summer 2008, 10–12.124 Pete Smith, ‘The survival of the fittest? Welbeck Abbey and the great houses of Nottinghamshire in the twentieth century’, in Malcolm Airs (ed.), The Twentieth Century Great House, Oxford, 2002, 47.125 The supposed cost of restoration was £60,000, although the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings publicly challenged this figure, and suggested that a more realistic figure was £11,750 [Giles Worsley, England’s Lost Houses from the Archives of Country Life, London, 2002, 130–33].126 Wilson and Hurst, loc. cit.; Gilyard-Beer, loc. cit.

Documents

Rufford Abbey and its Gardens in the 17th and 18th Centuries