About Volume 2

Historical Review Article Abstracts, volume 2

Volume 2 Editorial

English Heritage, as the editorial of volume 1 of this Review observed, 'is an executive agency, not an academic institution'. Thus the majority of the articles in volume 2 have been generated by English Heritage’s activity or operational needs, rather than by disinterested contemplation or ‘pure’ historical research.

Some of this activity is literally material – to preserve major buildings from degeneration. English Heritage acquired Apethorpe Hall in 2004 to prevent the deterioration already in train and the destructive conversion which was proposed. This great house was formerly almost unknown, yet the potential sources (and types) of information about it are considerable, and were hardly sampled. An extensive and specifically skilled research project was needed to inform critical conservation of the fabric. In due course the findings of this project will be integrated as a single publication, but specific discoveries, some of which relate to other buildings, can stand alone, and Pete Smith’s article in this volume is one of them.

The 1915 roof on the Roman lighthouse at Dover needed to be replaced in 1999. The scaffold erected for this gave the first opportunity to survey the fabric above ground level, using techniques unavailable both when it was first recorded in 1722, and last recorded in 1929. Kevin Booth’s survey was not directly required to inform the design of the new roof, but English Heritage’s policy is also to increase the understanding of our sites.  As the Roman lighthouse at Dover is one of the only three surviving in the world, the discoveries which were made in the course of the survey, revising previous opinion about its structure, appearance and use, are of international consequence. They will guide future conservation and improve the information offered to visitors.

Some of English Heritage's activities, however, are aimed at improving the presentation of our properties, and dedicated research is required for that. Part of a larger project to improve the presentation of Kenilworth Castle was a major exhibition on the use of the castle by Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, as a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. The two articles on Kenilworth in this volume arose in part from the research for this exhibition. Elizabeth Goldring’s piece vividly transforms these vast royal and noble, medieval and Renaissance ruins into the luxurious palace of a major courtier. Richard Morris’s article describes Leicester's proposal for its further aggrandisement and attributes the proposal drawing (one of the earliest English architectural drawings to have been found), to Henry Hawthorne, and architect in the service of the Elizabethan Court.

It was also partly for presentational reasons that the Paul Saunders tapestries at Audley End House were rehung in 2005 – to complete and correct the presentation of the ground-floor apartment. But rehanging them in this way also rectified the unsuitable conservation of the tapestries, hitherto rolled and in store since 1979. Their full history was needed to determine how and where to rehang them, and this research appears here in Gareth Hughes's article.

Susan Jenkins's revision of the catalogue of the great picture collection at Apsley House will form the basis for an improved display of the Waterloo Gallery there. But it also meets a scholarly, as well as a presentational need. The circumstances of the collection’s formation had not been published in full; her article in this volume remedies that deficiency by publishing excerpts from the duke of Wellington’s correspondence on the subject.

Only part of the 18th- and 19th-century defences of the Western Heights at Dover (the Drop Redoubt) is an English Heritage property. The rest, the size of a small town, is in different ownerships, and Kent County Council commissioned the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (which was merged with English Heritage in 1999) to survey them. This was partly to assess their potential for tourism, but, in the case of the Drop Redoubt, it was also of direct conservation benefit to English Heritage. Unlike the equally large and symbolically conspicuous castle on the east side of the town, artillery defences are intended to be inconspicuous, and the defences of the Western Heights are thus unknown to most people. Paul Pattison’s historical account of the Citadel formed part of that survey, and reveals its story for the first time in these pages.

Nevertheless, not all of the articles in this volume are responses to practical requirements, but to historical issues raised and illustrated by English Heritage properties, and they result in greater understanding of the context and significance of the site in question. Andor Gomme's article revises an argument about Francis Smith of Warwick's designs for Sutton Scarsdale House which he advanced in 1981. He argues here that the drawings which were the basis for his 1981 argument are in fact proposals for Compton Verney, where Smith worked later, and thus should be subtracted from the knowledge-base for the former house, a property of English Heritage. In the course of his argument he makes some penetrating observations about Compton Verney, which include what is to date the most convincing attribution of its puzzling west front.

My article on the statues of Inigo Jones and Palladio at Chiswick House is the result of a chance discovery. A bill found among the papers of Lord Burlington suggests that the two famous statues at Chiswick might have been made by Giovanni-Battista Guelfi, who does not enjoy such elevated critical esteem as Michael Rysbrack, to whom the statues have been attributed since 1922. Chiswick house is managed by the Chiswick House and Gardens Trust, which English Heritage supports. It is the subject of an £8 million Heritage Lottery Fund bid and its presentation is a subject of robust debate. The discovery explored here therefore comes at a particularly opportune moment.

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Sample Spreads from Volume 2: