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Enmore Castle, its origins and its architect
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
The one constant in the history of Enmore Castle from its construction, 1751–57, to the present day has been its obscurity. In architectural history its impact has been so slight as to make a very real point about aesthetics and motivation in the early years of the medieval revival. Enmore was a very large moated castle, highly innovatory for its building period, and the creation of a prominent politician, an Irish peer who was a member of the English House of Commons. In spite of this it never captured the imagination of its times nor the interest of later historians of the Revival, only the dismissive mockery of Horace Walpole, reproduction in a few prints and some brief mention in country histories and tours of England.
1 Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, ed. by W. S. Lewis, 36 vols (Oxford, 1973), 20, p. 32.
2 Walpole, Horace, Memoirs of the Reign of King-George III, 4 vols (London, 1845), 1, pp. 387–88.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., p. 387.
4 Shaw, Revd S., A Tour of England (London, 1787), pp. 331–32.Google Scholar
5 Quoted by Connell, Brian, Portrait of a Whig Peer (London, 1957), p. 171.Google Scholar
6 Collinson, John, The History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset, 3 vols (Bath, 1791), 1, p. 94.Google Scholar
7 Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England: South and West Somerset (London, 1958), p. 167.Google Scholar
8 Rowan, A.J., ‘The castle style in British domestic architecture in the 18th and early 19th centuries’ (Cambridge, Ph.D., 1964–1965).Google Scholar
9 British Library, Egmont Papers: Add. MS 47011.
10 A Genealogical History of the House of Yvery in its different branches of Yvery, Luvel, Perceval and Gournay, 2 vols (London, 1742), 2, p. 215.
11 Walpole’s Correspondence, 20, p. 31.
12 A Genealogical History of the House of Yvery, 2, p. 464.
13 Ibid., 1, p. 360.
14 Ibid., 2, p. 5.
15 Ibid., 2, p. 24.
16 Ibid., 2, p. 420.
17 BL, Add. MS 47012D.
18 BL, Add. MS 47010, fol. 133.
19 For Inveraray see Lindsay, I. G. and Cosh, M., Inveraray and the Dukes of Argyll (Edinburgh, 1973)Google Scholar. This work illustrates (p. 44) rejected designs for Inveraray within large contemporary defensive earthworks. These were prepared for the third Duke by a military engineer, Dugal Campbell; they are undated.
20 BL, Add. MS 47011, fol. 44
21 Ibid., fol. 205.
22 Ibid., fol. 50.
23 Ibid., fol. 120.
24 Ibid., fol. 90.
25 Ibid., fol. 128.
26 Ibid., fol. 52.
27 Ibid., fol. 58.
28 Ibid., fol. 88.
29 Ibid., fol. 79.
30 Ibid., fol. 94. For Robert Parsons see Earnshaw, T. Mowland B., John Wood: Architect of Obsession (Bath, 1988), p. 132.Google Scholar
31 BL, Add. MS 47011, fols 99–100.
32 Ibid., fol. 126.
33 Ibid., fol. 130.
34 Ibid., fol. 128.
35 Quoted in A. J. Rowan, ‘The castle style’, p. 132.
36 BL, Add. MS 47011, fol. 139.
37 The illustration is in the Somerset Local History Library in Taunton Castle. Its caption notes ‘The castle was built by John the last Earl of Egmont, who himself designed and planned the whole’.
38 Somerset Local History Library, Taunton.
39 Somerset Record Office: ‘The Catalogue of Furniture and Effects’ includes a chair of George II given to the first Earl of Egmont by Queen Caroline.
40 For Shirburn see Mowl, Tim and Earnshaw, Brian, ‘The Origins of 18th-Century Neo-Medievalism in a Georgian Norman Castle’ in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. XL, no. 4 (December 1981).Google Scholar
41 For Hugh May’s Windsor and its influence on early eighteenth-century medievalism see Tim Mowl, ‘Early Mediaevalism: “To have built in heaven high towers” — the castle as a theme in English architecture before the Gothic Revival’ in The Georgian Group’s Gothick Symposium (21 May 1983).
42 For Vanbrugh’s bastion gardens see Downes, Kerry, Vanbrugh (London, 1977), p. 107 Google Scholar. A drawing for the fosse that Vanbrugh projected for Kings Weston is illustrated by Downes, Kerry in ‘The Kings Weston Book of Drawings’ in Architectural History, vol. 10 (1967), fig. 17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
43 Shaw, A Tour of England, p. 333.
44 Ibid., p. 332.
45 Ibid., p. 332.
46 Ibid., p. 333.
