West Wycombe Park is a country house built between 1740 and 1800 near the village of West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England. It was conceived as a pleasure palace for the 18th-century libertine and dilettante Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Baronet. The house is a long rectangle with four façades that are columned and pedimented, three theatrically so. The house encapsulates the entire progression of British 18th-century architecture from early idiosyncratic Palladian to the Neoclassical, although anomalies in its design make it architecturally unique. The mansion is set within an 18th-century landscaped park containing many small temples and follies, which act as satellites to the greater temple, the house.
The house, a Grade I listed building, was given to the National Trust in 1943 by Sir John Dashwood, 10th Baronet (1896–1966), an action strongly resented by his heir.Knox p 62. Dashwood retained ownership of the surrounding estate and the contents of the house, most of which he sold; after his death, the house was restored at the expense of his son, the 11th Baronet. Today, while the structure is owned by the National Trust, the house is still the home of the Dashwood family. The house is open to the public during the summer months and is a venue for civil weddings and corporate entertainment, which help to fund its maintenance and upkeep.
Architecture
Ethos
West Wycombe Park, architecturally inspired by the villas of the Veneto constructed during the late-Renaissance period, is not one of the largest, grandest or best-known of England's many country houses. Compared to its Palladian contemporaries, such as Holkham Hall, Woburn Abbey and Ragley Hall, it is quite small, yet it is architecturally important as it encapsulates a period of 18th-century English social history, when young men, known as dilettanti, returning from the Grand Tour with newly purchased acquisitions of art, often built a country house to accommodate their collections and display in stone the learning and culture they had acquired on their travels.Girouard p 177.
The West Wycombe estate was acquired by Sir Francis Dashwood, 1st Baronet, and his brother Samuel in 1698. Dashwood demolished the existing manor house and built a modern mansion on higher ground nearby. This mansion forms the core of the present house. Images of the house on early estate plans show a red-brick house with stone dressings and a hipped roof in the contemporary Queen Anne style.National Trust p. 7. In 1724, Dashwood bequeathed this square conventional house to his 16-year-old son, the 2nd Baronet, also Francis, who later inherited the title Baron le Despencer through his mother and is perhaps best known for establishing the Hellfire Club close to the mansion, in the West Wycombe Caves. Between 1726 and 1741, Dashwood embarked on a series of Grand Tours: the ideas and manners he learned during this period influenced him throughout his life and were pivotal in the rebuilding of his father's simple house, transforming it into the classical edifice that exists today.
West Wycombe has been described as "one of the most theatrical and Italianate mid-18th century buildings in England".All about Britain.com Of all the 18th-century country houses, its façades replicate in undiluted form not only the classical villas of Italy on which Palladianism was founded, but also the temples of antiquity on which Neoclassicism was based. The Greek Doric of the house's west portico is the earliest example of the Greek revival in Britain.
The late 18th century was a period of change in the interior design of English country houses. The Baroque concept of the principal floor, or piano nobile, with a large bedroom suite known as the state apartments, was gradually abandoned in favour of smaller, more private bedrooms on the upper floors.Girouard p 230. The principal floor became a series of reception rooms, each with a designated purpose, creating separate withdrawing, dining, music, and ballrooms. In the late-18th century, it became common to arrange reception and public rooms on a lower floor, with bedrooms and more private rooms above.Girouard pp 220, 230.
Exterior
The builder of West Wycombe, Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Baronet, employed at least three architects and two landscape architects in the design of the house and its grounds. He had an input himself: having made the Grand Tour and seen the villas of the Italian Renaissance first hand, he wished to emulate them.Dashwood pp 18, 192, 194.
Work began in about 1735 and continued until Dashwood's death in 1781, when the older house had been transformed inside and out.Greeves p 334; National Trust p 4. The long building time partly explains the flaws and variations in design: when building commenced, Palladianism was the height of fashion, but by the time of its completion, Palladianism had been succeeded by Neoclassicism; thus, the house is a marriage of both styles. While the marriage is not completely unhappy, the Palladian features are marred by the lack of Palladio's proportions: the east portico is asymmetrical with the axis of the house, and trees were planted either side to draw the eye away from the flaw.National Trust pp 12–13.
The finest architects of the day submitted plans to transform the older family house into a modern architectural extravaganza. Among them Robert Adam, who submitted a plan for the west portico, but his idea was dropped.National Trust p 10.Pevsner p 286 attributes the adjoining, but now semi-demolished, service block and stables to Robert Adam. This attribution is not repeated in other reference books. The architect Nicholas Revett was consulted and created the west portico.Dashwood p 194. Today, the first sight of the house as approached from the drive is this west end of the house, which appears as a Grecian temple. The eight-columned portico, inspired by the Temple of Bacchus in Teos was completed by 1770, and is considered to be the earliest example of Greek Revival architecture in Britain.Knox p 7. The opposite (east) end of the house, designed by Roger Morris and completed c. 1755, appears equally temple-like, but this time the muse was the Villa Rotunda in Vicenza. Thus the two opposing porticos, east and west, illustrate two architectural styles of the late-18th century: the earlier Roman inspired Palladian architecture and the more Greek inspired Neoclassicism.National Trust pp 10, 12.
The principal façade is the great south front, a two-storey colonnade of Corinthian columns superimposed on Tuscan, the whole surmounted by a central pediment. The columns are not stone, but wood coated in stucco. It is possible this facade was inspired by work done in Paris on the church of S. Sulpice by Giovanni Niccolo Servandoni who was working in England from 1747 to 1751; some drawings made for Sir Francis Dashwood in emulation of his uncle's patronage of Palladian style, survive by him in the collection at West Wycombe. The executant architect for this elevation and for much of the work on the house appears to have been the minor architectural view painter John Donowell, who worked between 1761 and 1763 (although he had to wait until 1775 for paymentWallace p 12.).
The façade, which has similarities to the main façade of Palladio's Palazzo Chiericati of 1550, was originally the entrance front. The front door is still in the centre of the ground floor leading into the main entry hall.National Trust p 13. This is a substantial deviation from the classical form of English Palladianism in which the main entrance and principal rooms would be on the first floor reached by an outer staircase, giving the main reception rooms elevated views, with the ground floor given over to service rooms. Such a radical re-arrangement was not possible here since the house was a partial rebuild rather than a wholly new structure.Girouard p 160.
The more severe north front is of eleven bays, with the end bays given significance by rustication at ground floor level. The centre of the façade has Ionic columns supporting a pediment and originally had the Dashwood coat of arms. This façade is thought to date from around 1750–51, although its segmented windows suggest it was one of the first of the 2nd Baronet's improvements to the original house to be completed, as the curved or segmented window heads are symbolic of the earlier part of the 18th century; the design has been given to Isaac Ware.Pevsner p 283.
Interior
The principal reception rooms are on the ground floor with large sash windows opening immediately into the porticos and the colonnades, and therefore onto the gardens, a situation unheard of in the grand villas and palaces of Renaissance Italy. The mansion contains a series of 18th century salons decorated and furnished in the style of that period, with polychrome marble floors, and painted ceilings depicting classical scenes of Greek and Roman mythology. Of particular note is the entrance hall, which resembles a Roman atrium with marbled columns and a painted ceiling copied from Robert Wood's Ruins of Palmyra.Dashwood p 196.
Many of the reception rooms have painted ceilings copied from Italian palazzi, most notably from the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. The largest room in the house is the Music Room, which opens onto the east portico. The ceiling fresco in this room depicts the "Banquet of the Gods" and was copied from the Villa Farnesina.Dashwood p 216. The Saloon, which occupies the centre of the north front, contains many marbles, including statuettes of the four seasons. The ceiling depicting "The Council of the Gods and the Admission of Psyche" is also a copy from Villa Farnesina.Dashwood pp 207–208.
The Dining Room walls are painted faux jasper and hold paintings of the house's patron—Sir Francis Dashwood—and his fellow members of the Divan Club (a society for those who had visited the Ottoman Empire). The room also has a painted ceiling from Wood's Palmyra.Dashwood pp 203–204.
The Blue Drawing Room is dominated by the elaborate painted ceiling depicting "The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne" (illustrated left). This room houses a plaster statuette of the Venus de' Medici and marks the 2nd Baronet's risqué devotion to that goddess of love. The room has walls of blue flock, applied in the 1850s and later renewed, bearing paintings from various Italian schools of the 17th century.Dashwood p 213. The Red Drawing Room is lined in crimson silk and is furnished with marquetry commodes.National Trust p 20.
The relatively small study contains plans for the house and potential impressions for various elevations. One is reputed to have been drawn by Sir Francis Dashwood himself,Dashwood p 212; National Trust p 21. while the Tapestry Room, once ante-room to the adjoining former principal bedroom, is hung with Brussels tapestries depicting peasant scenes by Teniers. Dashwood inherited them in 1763 from his uncle Lord Westmorland, who is said to have been given them by the 1st Duke of Marlborough to celebrate their victories in the Low Countries.National Trust p 17.
Gardens and park
The gardens at West Wycombe Park are among the finest and most idiosyncratic 18th century gardens surviving in England.Knox, p 30. The park is unique in its consistent use of Classical architecture from both Greece and Italy. The principal architect of the gardens was Nicholas Revett, who designed many of the ornamental buildings in the park. The landscape architect Thomas Cook began to execute the plans for the park, with a nine-acre man-made lake created from the nearby River Wye in the form of a swan. The lake originally had a snow (a sailing vessel) for the amusement of Dashwood's guests, complete with a resident captain on board.Knox p 4.Dashwood p 226. Water leaves the lake down a cascade and into a canal pond.Dashwood p 224.