Easton Neston - Exterior

Exterior

The statues (originally part of the Arundel collection of marbles) were removed and sold in the distress sale of George Fermor, the 2nd Earl of Pomfret (1722-1785) at which they were bought by his mother and donated to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 1755.

The house Hawksmoor built at Easton Neston can be best described as a miniature palace that owes the colossal order of pilasters and crowning balustrade to Michelangelo's palazzi on the Campidoglio at Rome and may in turn have influenced through engravings in Vitruvius Britannicus Gabriel's design of the Petit Trianon at Versailles, which was not to be built for another 50 years. Both main facades are of simple design devoid of ostentation. The rectangular house is on three principal floors. The first is a rusticated basement, with the two floors above appearing to have equal value—nine bays divided by Composite pilasters, each bay containing a tall, slim sash window of the same height on each floor. The central bay contains the entrance, flanked by two Composite full columns. These two columns support a small, round-headed pediment displaying the Fermor arms and motto. Above the door at second floor height is a massive Venetian window. The roof-line is hidden by a balustrade and decorated at the ten intervals, above the pilasters below, by covered stone urns. The design and fenestration of the entrance facade is repeated at the rear on the garden facade (illustration, above), except that the roof balustrade here is undecorated by urns and pediment. The house is built of Helmdon stone, a cream stone of exceptional quality, which has ensured that the carving is as crisp today as it was on completion of the house in 1702.

The two side elevations of the house tell the story of life in a country house before the age of the servants' bell. Until the invention of the distant bell, which could be jangled by a rope from far away, it was necessary to have servants within calling distance. In older houses such as Montacute House servants slept on the floor of the hall or outside the door of their employer's bedchamber; by 17th century this arrangement was becoming undesirable. Houses now began to have corridors, and employers, rather than stepping over sleeping servants, began to tidy them away in small rooms, sometimes shared with their employer's close-stool. However, these small rooms still had to be within calling distance. In a brand-new, luxurious house such as Easton Neston, this was achieved by inserting two very low mezzanine staff floors between each of the two upper floors. Hence at Easton Neston, while the two principal facades (West and East) are of three floors, fenestration of the two less important sides of the house betrays the secret that there are in fact five floors: the windows of the two mezzanines, as befits the humble rooms they light, are a mere half the size of those of the grander rooms above and below them. This makes the fenestration of the side facades a complex but interesting sight.

Some years after completion of the mansion in 1702, Hawksmoor drew some further plans for a huge entrance court. These designs, never fully executed but published in Vitruvius Britannicus, would have flanked the existing rectangular house with two wings, one containing stables and the other service rooms. The fourth side of the courtyard was to have been an elaborate colonnade and etera. Apart from the house no part of this scheme was built and the two pre-existing red-brick wings (themselves perhaps owing something to Christopher Wren) remained, although the western (stable) wing was later demolished after the new stables were built. Many architectural commentators feel that Hawksmoor's mansion would, in fact, have been spoilt by this scheme, which owed more to Sir John Vanbrugh's architectural concepts than Hawksmoor's. The whole design was depicted in Colen Campbell's Vitruvius Britannicus vol. i (1715, pls 98 - 100) as though it existed. Two large and decayed Ozymandian entrance piers, marooned in the park, are all that remain of this design.