Unfinished symphony

Steffie Shields highlights Vanbrugh 300 celebrations at Grimsthorpe Castle.

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts.”
As You Like It, William Shakespeare

This year the Vanbrugh 300 Festival will celebrate the life and works of Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726).

Thanks to wide-ranging interests and talents, this cloth-merchant’s son of Flemish origin rose to be a man of many parts: as soldier, partisan activist supporting Protestant William of Orange, and, for four years, a prisoner for espionage in the Bastille, Paris.

Later, as a member of the renowned Kit-Cat Club, Vanbrugh mixed with noblemen, writers and politicians, but more importantly made a profound impact on 18th century society as a theatre owner/manager and acclaimed playwright.

Re-inventing himself anew at the age of 35, Vanbrugh is remembered most for his heroic architecture – and a legendary row with Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who went on to fire him from Blenheim!

His first major project, the magnificent Castle Howard demonstrates his confidence knew no bounds. His vivid imagination regarding surrounding settings and garden buildings prospered with fruitful collaborations, including with London gardener, Stephen Switzer.

Vanbrugh’s extraordinary legacy continues to enrich horizons and 21st-century culture in many parts of the country.

Grimsthorpe Castle is one of six country houses participating across the country in a Vanbrugh 300 heritage trail, alongside Blenheim (Oxfordshire), Castle Howard (Yorkshire), Kimbolton (Cambridgeshire), Seaton Delaval (Northumberland) and Stowe (Buckinghamshire).

Historical boost
Exhibitions and events masterminded by the Georgian Group will spotlight such monumental heritage, hoping to engage local communities and schools and boost regional tourism and local economies.

A modest castle was built at Grimsthorpe for Gilbert de Gant, Earl of Lincoln, beside a small Danish farming settlement. Its 13th-century, three-storey, square King John’s Tower still dominates the castle’s south-east corner. The Cistercian Vaudey Abbey was founded nearby, in the remote valley of the River West Glen in south-west South Kesteven. Later Henry VIII granted their lands to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, who married into the Willoughby de Eresby family.

The abbey’s pillaged stone was put to good use to enlarge the castle. After the Restoration, Robert Bertie, 3rd Earl of Lindsey, added a new Palladian front in classical taste to the mostly intact courtyard construction and canalised the river.

Forty years later, Vanbrugh’s last baroque masterpiece introduced the most ‘right royal’ drama, though his premature death led to an “unfinished symphony”.

Robert Bertie, 4th Earl of Lindsey, one of Marlborough’s generals, was both a distant kinsman of Vanbrugh, and close friend. They travelled together in France and to the Hague. In 1711 his brother Peregrine, also Vanbrugh’s friend, passed away.

That year saw the architect as a signatory of the marriage contract for Robert’s son, another Peregrine.

This happier occasion may have led to the Earl commissioning Vanbrugh’s associate to improve the castle setting. Switzer designed a Wilderness Garden, ‘The Oaks’, a plantation with winding walks, to screen the Four-Mile Riding approach.

Consequently, on arrival from the Great London Road southwest, important visitors experienced a dramatic, sudden reveal of the castle framed by a double avenue of trees.

New status
In 1714, Hanoverian King George I, succeeded to the throne. Vanbrugh was the first citizen to receive a knighthood, and a year later was appointed Surveyor to the Royal Hospital at Greenwich. At this time, Robert Bertie was created 1st Duke of Ancaster. Naturally, he asked his friend to draw up plans for upgrading his rural Lincolnshire home to reflect this new status.

Having built himself a small villa and belvedere in Surrey (now called Claremont), Vanbrugh selected a high vantage point for a similar eye-catcher at Swinstead Manor, the Berties’ original family residence. His lofty, twin-towered summerhouse, complete with banquet room, enabled arresting, panoramic views of Grimsthorpe Castle and continues to ornament its landscape park.

Vanbrugh completed surveys and drawings for a radical alteration of the castle’s north, south, and east or west elevations, yet little progress was made.

In 1719, Vanbrugh was appointed a trustee of the duke’s will, and married Marie Henriettea Yarburgh, daughter of Marlborough’s aide-de-camp, Colonel James Yarburgh.

Following the duke’s death four years later, his heir determined that the North Front encasement should finally go ahead.

The 2nd Duke of Ancaster also agreed to be godfather to Vanbrugh’s son John. Unfortunately, on 26th March 1726, Vanbrugh died of asthma and was buried in Wren’s St Stephen’s Church, Walbrook in London.

The northwest elevation was completed by 1730. Meanwhile, Switzer interpreted Vanbrugh’s flair for staging the landscape by extending an “arrowhead” bastion garden to the south with arresting views across the well-watered deer park.

His star-shaped fortress design, as at Blenheim, reflected the Bertie military tradition, consisting of a series of low stone walls, ditches and gardens walks through diverse trees and yew hedges.

In 1730, Holbeach-born antiquarian Dr William Stukeley, the duke’s chaplain, sketched a rotunda, topped with flaming torches of Enlightenment. Vanbrugh had been the first in the country to introduce such a Roman garden building to take in grand prospects at Stowe.

Since a mount terminates Switzer’s ‘Grime’s Walk’ in early surveys, one wonders was Stukeley’s envisioned rotunda ever built, as an epilogue, an appropriate memorial to Vanbrugh?

Unique mix
Visiting today, negotiating the long approach drive from the north, one’s anticipation is rewarded with the spectacle of ‘one of Vanbrugh’s most serene compositions’, according to the late architectural historian, John Harris. Bold, fortress-like square towers stand east and west of the encased grand hall that, together with the forecourt adjoined by smaller square pavilions either side, command the ridge.

Famous for breaking the skyline with baroque form and ornamentation, Vanbrugh heightened the theatre with mythical Greek god statues: ‘Hercules and Antaeus’ symbolising heroic strength against adversity, and the ‘Rape of Persephone’ to represent love, loss and the cyclical nature of life.

Notice centre stage on the balustraded parapet, the Ancaster Coat of Arms complete with ducal crown.

Vanbrugh appreciated the artistic sovereignty of heraldry, since being chosen Clarencieux King of Arms, an officer in London’s College of Arms. The story of Grimsthorpe, writ large against cloudscapes, conveys early origins of settlement, the wild man representing the marauding Danes and the holy Cistercian monk. In addition, a pertinent detail, also seen in the Willoughby family crest in Eresby Church: three battering rams denoting military service. These are also carved on the entablature surmounting two magnificent pairs of banded Tuscan columns either side of the hall front. Inside Vanbrugh’s equally epic, two-storey great hall plays with light and shadow both in the pavement etched with black marble, and in arcades all around on both levels, where paintings of Kings of England boast significant links with royalty.

Vanbrugh’s “unfinished symphony”, arguably his best work in terms of scale, proportion and response to location, set Grimsthorpe Castle fair and square on the ridge to match the immensity of the surrounding setting.

His unique mix of classical baroque architecture, more Roman than Palladian, introduced theatrical style in Ancaster stone to ensure the Bertie story endured in the heart of the premier historic park in Lincolnshire.

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) commented on Vanbrugh’s work at Grimsthorpe:

“There is a greater display of imagination than is to be found perhaps in any other”

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