Darnley Mausoleum - Design

Design

The Mausoleum is built of brick faced with Portland stone, is square with projecting chamfered corners, and surmounted by a pyramid. The form is an unusually grand classical temple, using Roman Doric order, fluted columns in antis on the face, prostyle on the angles. The mausoleum is a high point of the neo-classical style in Britain, which was much more concerned to use classical architecture correctly according to ancient Greek and Roman precedent, than the preceding baroque period. However the pyramid shaped roof, the mausoleum's most distinctive feature, is usual in classical architecture and may have been derived by Wyatt from a painting by Nicholas Poussin rather than directly from antique precedents. There is a flying staircase to the piano nobile. There are lunette openings above the cornice filled with amber glass to create an etherial light inside. Tomb chests are above the angle architraves. On the piano nobile, there is a circular chapel with Corinthian order columns painted to imitate rose marble and a coffered dome of stone. The crypt at the lower level has 32 coffin shelves under a shallow stone dome. It is important because of its architect, its situation in parkland at a predominant position on the North Downs, and it demonstrates 'the Age of Enlightenment's preoccupation with a 'classical way of death'.