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Holywell House, St Albans: an early work by William Talman?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2016

Frances Harris
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Extract

‘The house is a sad thing, & stands as ill as ‘tis possible’, was the Duchess of Marlborough’s unpromising verdict on Holywell in the 1720s; although she did add that ‘if one went thro some green fields to it, I could live very contentedly in such a place if I had no better’. The property lay on the southern outskirts of St Albans, below the Abbey slope: a modest-sized house with extensive gardens, bounded on the west by the road which is now Holywell Hill, and on the south by the river Ver. By the 1720s, as the Duchess’s comment suggests, it had been hopelessly outclassed as a country house by Windsor Lodge and Blenheim Palace. But for many years before this happened it had been her family home, and evidence concerning its building suggests that William Talman’s name can now be added to the number of distinguished architects whom she employed, not always to her satisfaction, in the course of a long and combative life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 28 , 1985 , pp. 32 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1985

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References

Notes

1 Devon Record Office, Seymour of Berry Pomeroy MSS: to the Duke of Somerset, 7 June [1723-25].

2 Herts Genealogist and Antiquary, 11 (1897), 184.

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5 Child & Co., Williams and Glyn’s Bank, London: Ledger for 1681–87, fol. 205.

6 The one other place in which they could have employed an architect on this scale was their Cockpit lodgings at Whitehall; but these were comparatively new, and the Churchills receipt-book for January 1685 shows that renovation, including mason’s work, carpentry, plastering and painting, at a cost of about £100, had already been carried out there at the time they moved in, in the winter of 1684–85 (British Library Add. MS 61346, fols 105–09).

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13 Letters of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough … at Madresfield Court (London, 1875), p. 114: to Robert Jennens, 23 August 1714.

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17 BL Add. MS 61442, fol. 148: Lady Sunderland to Sarah, 15 August 1699.

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