One of Wright’s arbours with a roof “decorated with artificial Ivy, Honey-suckles, Pine-Apples, Green and Grey Mos, &c. to the Builder’s Fancy.”
After last week’s post about William Wrighte and his Grotesque Architecture today I’m going to look at his contemporary, and almost namesake, Thomas Wright for whom he’s often mistaken and not just because of their names. They were both architects of fantastical rustic garden buildings. However unlike William about whom we know nothing we know an awful lot about Thomas.
He was a pioneering 18th century astronomer who published widely on astronomical and navigational matters which earned him the support and patronage of many of the scientific and political elite. However he was also notoriously modest so that in his lifetime his work as an amateur architect and garden designer was known only to his immediate circle of friends and patrons. After his death this side of his work was totally overshadowed by his astronomical publications. It was really only through the work of Eileen Harris, and in particular her publishing an edited version of his Arbours and Grottos in 1979 that the full extent of his contribution is being reassessed.
Wright’s Arbours and Grottos are, apart from some individual engravings, not available on-line. The images come from my photos of the facsimile in the British Library unless otherwise acknowledged
Thomas was born in County Durham in 1711, the son of a carpenter, and at school showed a great interest in mathematics. In his early teens he was apprenticed to a watch-maker, thought about a career at sea, worked with an instrument maker in London, and fell in love unsuccessfully before finally returning aged only 20 to the north-east where he began working on, and writing about astronomical and navigational questions, while earning a living teaching navigation in Sunderland and tutoring the children of country squires around his hometown of Durham.
[There’s a more detailed biography in The Gentleman’s Magazine in January 1793 if you want to know more about his rather unsettled early life.]
This bought him to the attention of Richard Lumley, 2nd Earl of Scarbrough, who gave him a promise of “Patronisation and Recommendation” and introduced him to a wide circle of his elite friends. Lumley’s support meant the Admiralty enthusiastically approved the publication in 1734 of Wright’s Clavis pannautici, which described the pannauticon, a mechanical device designed for navigational and astronomical calculations at sea. As a result he gained further patronage notably from the Earl of Pembroke who invited Wright to stay at Wilton several times, gave him free run of his library and introduced him to yet more influential people.
Thomas’s success spurred him to write more. In addition to numerous pieces for the Royal Society, and articles in the Gentleman’s Magazine, he also wrote a whole series of books: The Universal Vicissitudes of the Seasons in 1737, The Use of Globes in 1740, Clavis Coelestis … a Synopsis of the Universe in 1742, Louthiana in 1748, and most importantly An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe in 1750 about the shape of the galaxy, and the size of stars.
The text is dense, according to the ODNB “sometimes to the point of opacity”. Nevertheless it had an impressive subscribers’ list, including Admiral Lord Anson and the dukes of Beaufort, Bedford, Norfolk, and Portland. [A copy sold at auction in 2017 for over £16000] His books were to lead to an offer, politely turned down, of £300 per annum from the Tsarina Elizabeth to become Chief Professor of Navigation in the Imperial Academy at St Petersburg.
Charles and Elizabeth Somerset, 4th Duke and Duchess of Beaufort & Lord Botetourt
So far at this stage there was no obvious sign of interest in landscape or gardens, but his patrons and their friends often asked him to visit and teach their ladies and children astronomy, mathematics, drawing and even surveying. This meant that throughout the 1730s and 40s he was summoned from one country house to another, which helped him enormously because as his early aristocratic patrons began to die off he was able to attract others. Chief among whom were the 4th Duke and Duchess of Beaufort. They asked him to their Badminton estate and around 1750 he began to design a large number of buildings there including arbours, grottos, castellated barns and lodges. This also led to work with the Duchess’s brother, Norborne Berkeley, Lord Botetourt, who engaged him from about 1749-50 to remodel his Stoke Gifford mansion..
With the support of the Beauforts, in 1753 Wright launched a prospectus for ‘A Volume of Architecture in Three Books. Containing various original Designs of Arbours, Grottos and Alcoves‘ . It was he announced ‘now in the Engravers Hands, And Speedily will be publish’d by Subscription’. The price was “One Guinea down, and Half a guinea more on Receipt of the Work Compleat”. The first book, Of Arbours, was said to be “very near finished and will be published as soon as 200 are subscribed for’.
He failed to get anywhere near 200 which was probably over-optimistic given that there were plenty of cheaper building pattern books, but in 1755 he went ahead anyway with jsut 80 subscribers to Book I, which had six original designs for arbours with engraved vignettes by Darly.
The images were untitled and simply assigned a letter to distinguish them. In designing them Wright wasn’t just being decorative. In his use of rough wood he was reverting to the ideas of Vitruvius who argued that architecture is an imitation of nature, with stone columns copied from tree trunks, so in almost all they were made of “rough hewn wood” and other natural materials, and set in woodland or against rocks, with simple floors of sand or gravel.
The floorpan of design A
The first [A] is made entirely of wood, and finished outside “with the rough Knots, and Pertubrances of Oak, closely connected together, so as to appear all of one Piece, and as formed by the Hand of Nature. The walls and ceiling were to be covered with “Ivy Thrums” [Thrums is an archaic term used to describe woody stems of ivy fastened to form a decorative/protective covering] … nailed upon or mixed with Moss”. The building should be “well back’d with wood of hardy forest growth, the more retired the better.”
The floor-plan of d design B
The second arbour [B] has the same construction and finishing as the first “but to this may be added as a natural and proper Ornament on the Outside some Honey-suckles and Ivy.” As we saw last week some huts or arbours could be more than just a hut or arbour. Wright picks up on the Georgian fascination with hermits – or at least the idea of hermits – to suggest that if this arbour was “meant as the Abode of an antient Philosophical Druid, or otherwise that of a more modern Ancorite, it may be glaz’d and secured with a Door.” The mention of Druids makes me wonder whether Wright or the Beauforts knew William Stukeley who invented the Druidic cult. Does anyone know?
This design was used the following year, 1756, by Sir Charles Kemeys-Tynte as the basis for his Druid’s Hut at Halswell Park in Somerset. He was both a friend of the Beaufort’s and a subscriber. Much more information about that can be found on the Halswell website.
The third [C] has echoes of a recent post about Varro’s aviary because it was planned to be a “Sylvan Ornithon” which should stand in woodland. [Ornithon is Greek for aviary] “The Aviary fronting the Door is for Birds of Beauty, and the Receptacles on each Side are for Birds of Song, all these three Cages must be well secur’d on the Top with a strong well painted Canvas Roll, for a temporary covering in Cafe of Wet.”
The floor-plan of C
Inside he recommends the same kind of wall coverings but suggests “the Pavement may be enriched with some Mosaic Figure, in Horse’s Teeth or Pebbles, the Windows with painted Glass, and the Cages with Foliages of Lead to represent Ivy or Oak Leaves at the Builder’s Discretion.” Sadly, unlike Varro’s with roof covered, the windows glazed and the foliage made of lead there was to be no real planting for the poor birds.
The floor-plan of D
“Rugged Trunks of Oak, the more fantastical and robust the better” should be used for the next bizarre looking structure [D]. “The Architare or Eve-band is of the fame unhewn Material, and supports a like rude Cornice, in some Degree reduced to Order and Design, with large and prominent regular Nobs instead of Modillions.”
However eclecticism rules because “the Roof is thatched, and of a Roman Pitch, with a Palladian Projection.” Rusticity rules inside too with walls “finished with Ivy-Flakes and Moss, or otherwise with the roughest Bark of Oak, variegated and comparted with Knots, yet so as to appear all of one Mass growing together by the Consent of Nature.” 
The floor-plan of design E
He may have been running out of obvious ideas by the time he got to Design E which was “but slightly built and all of Wood” and “must in all Respects be fitted up and finished within, like the Arbour B, and managed without like the Arbour C, with a Roof, like that of D.” It had seats and a balustraded viewing platform on the roof so “must be near the Sea, or in the Neighbourhood of Rocks and Mountains, the wildest Face of Nature being the properest Accompanyment.”
Wright claim that design F “in some Measure approaches to regular Architecture, and is designed for the Center of a Rosery or Plantation of Shrubs, verged round with an ever-green Screen. It is supported upon eight Poles, or may rest upon Lattice Frames cover’d with Jessamin as high as the Cornice, which has a Palladian Projection.” The roof is “Canvas well oiled and painted” but pitched “to carry off the Wet”. Its ornamentation is bizarre to say the least: “The Head on the Apex is a four faced Janus, representing the Year, and the Busto’s on the Impost are designed to represent the Months, the Apertures in the Frize, and the Corona on the Roof may be decorated with artificial Ivy, Honey-suckles, Pine-Apples, Green and Grey Mos, &c. to the Builder’s Fancy.”
The floor-plan of F
Wright concludes the book by warning none of the arbours should “appear in Sight of another or of any regular Piece of Architecture” so “they may be naturally supposed the only Productions of the Age, before Building became a Science.”
It was another three years before the second volume on grottos was published this time with engravings by Paul Sandby . By then the number of subscribers had risen to 104. including I noticed Mrs Delany.
Floor plan of G
The first grotto [G], “must be executed in the plainest Manner possible, and the most agreeable Accompanyment without will be Oak, Elm, Beech, &c. mix’d with Holly, Ivy, Mountain-Ash, Chesnut, and Thorn”. It can easily be extended but the separate cells should be separated by iron railings. It could also be used simply as an alcove seat and reached by “an Arch of Rock-Work.” As usual a sand or gravel floor “at the Builder’s Discretion.”
Floor-plan of H
Design H looks rather like an extended version of the previous one but “is supposed to be form’d out of the solid Rock, and may with the greatest Propriety be ornamented with Ore, Fossils, Coralines and Moss.” It should be built low down by the side of water where ” it will best appear at a proper Distance within the Powers of Reflection from the Water” and be surrounded by trees and shrubbery.
Floor-plan of I
But half the fun of grottoes is in the decoration, and in design I Wright picks up on the growing interest in geology and minerals. It should be constructed with “natural Rustics or large Rock Stones, and, if possible those of the Sea, or some very romantic River; these join’d with Judgment will form the Front or Face, and curious ores and fossils will be the most proper to decorate it within.” The grotto could also be used as a bath so the central section “may be transparent, part of baster [alabaster] , and part of Crystal, which with concealed Lights within, will be sufficient to illumine all the Space.”
Floor-plan of K
Design K shows he’s not afraid of using classical architectural orders as in the “Frontispiece of this Building… [but] the Inside may be reduced to some Order, at least to a Moresk.” It could also be “adapted for a Repository or Museum of Shells & may be rendered very ornamental and elegant. The Decoration without will admit of a Mixture of every delicate Shrub.” For once there was no sand or gravel flooring instead the “Pavement may be Marble.” The whole “should be inclosed with a Glass and double Door, and lighted from above.”
Floor-plan of L
By the time we reach design L Wright is once again running a bit low on new ideas. Although it looks similar to some earlier ones “it should have… an elevated position [to] render it free from Damps and noxious Vapours, and consequently may be made very dry and habitable, so that it may be fit for any of the Purposes of Recreation, and if properly dress’d with Shells, Fossils, and Ores, with a tesselated Pavement of Mosaic Work, it will have a very good Chance of pleasing, and drawing the Attention of the Curious.”
The final grotto [M] is made “with jointed Rockwork, so as to look all of a Piece, but in the Gothic Stile of Building; and within, it may be finish’d in the Grotesque Manner” [Had William Wrighte seen this?] It should “be lighted from above through the Roof or Rock-work, and may be either fitted up plain, or with tesselated Marbles, with a Mosaic Pavement.” Wright concludes that it “will look well terminating the View of a Lawn, provided it is well bordered with Woods, and backt with rocky and hilly Ground… and If Water can be brought to it, it will easily be form’d into a magnificent Cold Bath”
Floor-plan for M
Wright declared that the proposed “Third or Last Book, vis. of Alcoves, will be put to the Press as soon as the Second Payments are all come in.” Sadly they never did and Alcoves never saw the light of day. Eileen Harris in her introduction to the reprint suggests that the failure of the publication was entirely Wright’s fault. “He was not particularly worldly or interested in financial matters and made no effort to profit by the execution of his designs, whether in stone or in print. Had he done so it’s likely Arbours and Grottoes would have been as successful as William Wrighte’s Grotesque Architecture.”
In 1762 Wright eventually retired to his former family home at Byers Green near Durham to finish building work and “Prosicute Studies” as well pursue “an affair of the heart” which resulted in the birth of a natural daughter.
After his death in 1786 his papers included a list of “Works to Dispose of at Biers Green'”. This included ‘5 Alcove drawings and 1 finished plate’ valued at fifteen guineas.” Also listed is ‘Grottos 100 copies’ reduced to just 5 shillings each and the copper plates of for the engravings Arbours and Grottos. Sadly they have never been seen since. Bought by his friend George Allan they were acquired by the Newcastle Literary & Philosophical Society but are thought to have lost in a fire in 1898.
For more information: One day I’ll write about his garden designs and buildings but until then you’ll have to make do with the links above or go to see his manuscripts in Newcastle Library the drawings in the Avery Architectural Library in New York or his journal in the British Library.
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