The Countess of Pomfret’s Gothic Revival Furniture; The Georgian Group Journal (2014)

Henrietta Louisa Fermor (–), Countess ofPomfret, was particularly interested in medievalarchitecture and commissioned the only GothicRevival town house in mid eighteenth-centuryLondon. The house, No. Arlington Street, otherwisestyled Pomfret Castle, has recently been the subject oftwo articles in The Georgian Group Journal bySarah Freeman () and Will Hawkes ().

While these studies present the known evidenceregarding the architects involved at ArlingtonStreet, the Countess’s Gothic Revival furniture hasreceived less attention. This article examines theCountess’s furniture and suggests that most of itpredates the construction and furnishing of

Arlington Street. It concludes by questioning how farthe Countess’s ‘Gothic passion’ fits within recentscholarship interpreting the mid eighteenth-centuryGothic Revival as a male homosocial taste centredaround Horace Walpole.

‘I am always glad to hear of any remains of the oldEnglish grandeur; and am both amazed and provokedwhen I hear of people destroying those magnificentstructures (made to last for ages) in order to erectsome trifling edifice [. . .] whereas to repair an abbeyor castle in the same way as it was first built is a worthymonument both of the owner’s piety to his ancestors,and care of his posterity.’

Henrietta Louisa Fermor (née Jeffreys), Countessof Pomfret, was a notable supporter of

medieval architecture, as indicated in her letter from July quoted above. She personallysubscribed to Samuel and Nathaniel Bucks’Perspective Views of the Ruins of the Most Noted

T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X X I I

T H E C O U N T E S S O F P O M F R ET ’ S G OT H I C R EV I VA L F U R N I T U R E

P E T E R L I N D F I E L D

Fig. : Thomas Bardwell (painter) and William Hallett(possibly frame maker), ‘Thomas Fermor,

1st Earl of Pomfret and Henrietta Louisa, Countess of Pomfret’, c.. (© Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).

Abbeys and Castles of England (‒), an earlyand important survey of Britain’s medievalarchitecture. Her husband, Thomas Fermor, firstEarl of Pomfret (‒), also subscribed to thefirst eighteenth-century pattern book concerned withGothic Revival architecture: Batty and ThomasLangley’s Ancient Architecture: Restored andImproved (London, ‒).

The most substantial and obvious expression ofthe Lady Pomfret’s ‘Gothic passion’ was the erectionof Pomfret Castle, designed initially from by SirRoger Newdigate (‒) and Sanderson Miller(‒), and taken over by Richard Biggs (–)in . Although the house’s architecture has beensubject to sustained scholarly attention since thes, the Countess’s Gothic Revival furniture is lesscelebrated. Just three pieces of such furniture arecurrently known, and each has traditionally beenlinked with Pomfret Castle. They are the Pomfretcabinet, offered at auction in , a library writingtable, now with Leeds Museums and Galleries atTemple Newsam House, Yorkshire, and the framefor Thomas Bardwell’s painting, ‘Thomas Fermor,

T H E C O U N T E S S O F P O M F R E T ’ S G O T H I C R E V I VA L F U R N I T U R E


st Earl of Pomfret and Henrietta Louisa, Countessof Pomfret’, c., now at the Ashmolean Museum,Oxford (Fig. ).

Despite these long-standing associations, thePomfret cabinet and portrait frame appear to predatework on Pomfret Castle, and are here placed withinthe context of the Countess’s broader commissioningof Gothic Revival objects. As such, they help usinterpret her passion for Gothic Revival objectsbefore the creation and completion of Pomfret Castle.They respond to broader developments in GothicRevival furniture, and therefore help locate theCountess’s patronage within eighteenth-centurydesign.

Fig. : William Hallett Sr (attrib.), The Pomfret Cabinet, c.‒ (shown with original

painted decoration and heraldry). (Image courtesy of Lucy Wood)

Fig. : Anon., One of a Suite of Windsor ChairCommemorating the Marriage of John Percival,

2nd Earl of Egmont, to Catherine Compton, . (© Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

of such decoration is demonstrated by a surviving setof Windsor chairs, presumably from Enmore Castle,Somerset (Fig. ), commemorating the marriageof John Perceval, second Earl of Egmont (‒), toCatherine Compton (‒). Comparing thePomfret cabinet with the Egmont chair illustrates theformer’s exceptional nature and decoration. Butwhereas armorial bearings applied to chairs weretypically modest, the Pomfret cabinet’s polychromeis not. Indeed, the paint emphasises the cabinet’sGothic form and detail through a limited palette oftypically alternating colours. This scheme ultimatelyplaces the cabinet at the forefront of the longtradition of painted Gothic Revival furniture ineighteenth-century Britain. Noteworthy examples,which similarly emphasise the Pomfret cabinet’sbold decoration, include the blue and white‘antiquarian Gothic’ triangular chairs purchased byHorace Walpole in (Fig. ), the furniture at

M I N I A T U R E A R C H I T E C T U R E :T H E P O M F R E T C A B I N E T

The Pomfret cabinet is one of the most spectacularexamples of s Gothic Revival furniture in termsof form, heraldry and contrasting polychrome (Fig.). Sotheby’s appropriately described it in theEaston Neston sale catalogue () as an ‘eccentricand fascinating cabinet designed in the extremeGothick taste of the early s’. Decades earlier,Simon Houfe determined that it was a ‘cupboard, orcabinet with two towers, castellations, niches, ogeearches and the whole antiquarian repertoiretransformed into Disneyland’. It is indeed a mostremarkable cabinet, being a particularly early andbrazen example of painted eighteenth-centuryGothic Revival furniture.

Modern painted furniture was not unknown inGeorgian Britain; hall chairs featuring paintedheraldry emerged in the s, and the proliferation



Fig. : Two Welch Chairs in the Star Chamber. Folio Copy . (Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, Connecticut)

sources, however, indicate that these similarities arecoincidental, that the house did not influence thecabinet’s design, and that it was not made forPomfret Castle.

The cabinet’s date of production is particularlyimportant for this point. No extant bill is known, butSotheby’s suggest the cabinet was produced fiveyears after the Countess ‘went to Mr Wright theBanker’s, then to Mr Hallet the Cabinet-Maker’s [

April ]’. Its original heraldic and lettereddecoration, seen in Fig. but later covered by layersof paint and revised heraldry (Fig. ), was discoveredafter the cabinet’s sale in , and only makes sensebefore the death of the Countess’s husband in .As observed in the report on Export of Objects ofCultural Interest (‒), the lettered quatrefoilsfeaturing H and P, presumably signifying Henriettaand Pomfret, correlate with the Earl’s arms, Fermor,

Shobdon Church, Herefordshire, of c. (Fig. ),and the library bookcases from Thomas Barrett’shouse, Lee Priory, Kent, of c. (Fig. ).

The Pomfret cabinet was conceived, andconstructed as, a piece of miniature architecture.This is emphasised by the visual similaritiesconnecting the cabinet and Pomfret Castle’scourtyard façade, as recorded in an anonymousdrawing from October (Fig. ). Both thehouse and cabinet feature flanking octagonal towers,the impression of a central gable, and the boldinsertion of quatrefoils. The latter especiallyresonates with the pencilled-in additions to the right-hand tower on Biggs’ ‘Sketch of a Gothic BuildingFebruary ’ (Fig. ). The parallels are so strongthat commentators have generally assumed theCountess commissioned the cabinet for PomfretCastle. Further analysis of the cabinet and archival



Fig. : William Kent (possibly designer), Celebrant’sThrone, Shobdon Church, Herefordshire, c..

(Author’s photograph)

Fig. : James Wyatt (designer), Painted Library Bookcasefrom Lee Priory, Kent, . (© Victoria and Albert

Museum, London)

years, and was most likely produced for EastonNeston, the Earl of Pomfret’s country seat, as part ofa group of highly-decorated Gothic Revival objectscommissioned by the Countess to reflect her interestin medieval design.

Other survivors from this ‘Gothic collection’include the ornate frame for Thomas Bardwell’sportrait of the Countess and her husband, the firstEarl, c. (Fig. ). Scholars have suggested thatthe frame, like the cabinet, was specifically designedfor Pomfret Castle. But the portrait was painted

on the left shield, and the Countess’s arms, Jeffreys,on the right. These coats of arms, consequently,match her quarterings () illustrated by Houfe in.

Upon the death of the first Earl in , theFermor arms passed to Henrietta’s son, George,(‒) who became the second Earl of Pomfret.

As pointed out in the Export of Objects of CulturalInterest report, the widowed Countess is unlikely tohave used the Fermor arms in this undifferentiatedform after this point. The cabinet, therefore,should probably be dated between the Countess’svisiting William Hallett Sr (c.‒) in andthe first Earl’s death . If this is correct, then thecabinet predates Pomfret Castle by eight or nine



Fig. : Anon., Pomfret Castle, Arlington Street, Built byLady Pomfret, Ao. , . Gough Maps f. v.

(Image Courtesy of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford)

Fig. : Richard Biggs, Elevation of Pomfret Castle’sCourtyard Façade, . Drawer Set : .

(Image Courtesy of the Sir John Soane’s Museum, London)

University along with the painting, rather than itbeing a later addition when it was displayed in theBodleian Library. Biggs supplied designs forArlington Street in , and Sir Roger Newdigateobserved in : ‘ March – Walk’d over LadyPomfret’s house – half fitted up’. The cabinet andframe, therefore, should be located within LadyPomfret’s broader interest in the medieval period,the subscription to books on Gothic architecture,and the commissioning of Gothic Revival objects.

One of the most striking and securely datedexamples of those commissions, which can be used

c. – the current hypothesis being it celebratedthe Earl’s and Countess’s thirtieth weddinganniversary () – and the illegible parchment inthe Earl’s hand is the marriage settlement. Thus,the painting would surely have been commissionedbefore Lord Pomfret’s death in . The Countessdonated the portrait to the University of Oxford in, but unfortunately the donation records forthis year do not survive, and the Bodleian Library’sinventory of paintings does not mention the frame.

We can reasonably conclude for practical reasons,however, that the frame was donated to the



Fig.: William Hallett Sr (attrib.), The Pomfret Cabinet, c.–

(shown here with later overpainting). (Image © Sotheby’s, London)

Edward I sitting on a medieval-style throne looselybased upon ancient examples, and under a mock-Gothic canopy. Dating the cabinet and pictureframe to between and therefore establishesa group of exceptional and extravagant GothicRevival objects commissioned by the Countessbefore the erection of her house in Arlington Street.

Such a date also locates the Pomfret cabinet andpicture frame at the centre of a ‘craze’ for Gothicfurniture, as satirised by an article in The World from :

‘FROM a thousand instances of our imitativeinclinations I shall select one or two, which have been,and still are notorious and general. A few years agoeverything was Gothic; our houses, our beds, ourbook-cases, and our couches, were all copied fromsome parts or other of our old cathedrals. The Grecianarchitecture [. . .] which was taught by nature and polished by the graces, was totally neglected.’

to place this furniture in its context, is her genealogyof . The bound manuscript lavishly depicts herdescent from King Edward I over twenty-onefolios. Horace Walpole learned of this manuscript,and on September wrote to Sir Horace Mann(‒) praising it:

‘I suppose you have heard all the exorbitant demandsof the heralds for your pedigree! I have seen one (apedigree) infinitely richer and better done, it is for myLady Pomfret — She and My Lord both descend fromKing Edward I by his two queens. The Pedigree ispainted in a book: instead of a vulgar genealogical tree,she has devised a pineapple plant, sprouting out of abasket, on which is King Edward’s head; on the leavesare all the intermediate arms.’

The genealogy is on vellum and indeed very rich, giltand illuminated. Its frontispiece (Fig. ) illustrates



Fig. : Anon., Pedigree Showing Descent of Lord andLady Pomfret from King Edward I, c..

Quarto P Ms f. . (Courtesy of the Lewis WalpoleLibrary, Farmington, Connecticut)

Fig. : William Hallett Sr(maker), One of a Suite ofEight Gothic Chairs, .(Courtesy of the LewisWalpole Library,Farmington, Connecticut)

one of a range of London cabinet-makers known forproducing quality bespoke furniture, for example atHolkham Hall, Norfolk, and Chevening, Kent, and thePomfret cabinet is sufficiently sophisticated and well-made as to not discount him.

If Walpole’s furniture could not have influencedthe design of the Countess’s cabinet or pictureframe, what are their sources? The frame isconceived of as an ornamented Gothic window,whose head accords with the early Gothic Revival’spenchant for ogee arches. Batty Langley’s AncientArchitecture (‒) provided numerous examplesof this type in the form of frontispieces and Gothickwindows (Fig. ); although intended for

The cabinet and frame also predate Hallett’srenowned set of quasi-antiquarian Gothic Revivalfurniture supplied for Horace Walpole’s Gothic villa,Strawberry Hill, Twickenham. In Walpole paidHallett for a suite of eight Great Parlour chairs(Fig. ), a lantern and a pair of pier glasses. Hallettdid not design these pieces; they were made accordingto ideas developed by Walpole and Richard Bentley(‒), one of the group of men Walpole consultedfor the design and development of Strawberry Hill.

So if Hallett was chosen by the Countess to make thecabinet, of which there is no firm evidence beyond theCountess’s diary entry, it was not because of hisinvolvement at Strawberry Hill. Instead, Hallett was



Fig. : Batty Langley, Fifth Frontispiece, pl. XXI fromAncient Architecture: Restored and Improved (London:

‒). (Image courtesy of the Bodleian Libraries,University of Oxford)

Fig. : Batty Langley, Chimney Piece, pl. XLIII fromAncient Architecture: Restored and Improved (London:


Although Langley’s Ancient Architecture seemsto have influenced aspects of the Pomfret cabinet aswell, the designer or maker apparently took greaterinspiration from the work of William Kent. Wholeelements found in Kent’s Gothic Revival furnitureappear to have been directly cribbed andrecomposed to create the cabinet’s surfacedecoration. Kent’s designs were circulated in JohnVardy’s Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr.Wm. Kent (), and therefore would have beenaccessible to the cabinet-maker – probably HallettSr, given the Countess’s diary entry from . Inparticular, the cabinet’s ogee arch cresting, as well asflanking pinnacles, are strongly reminiscent of the

architectural enrichment, they could easily serve asmodels for pieces of architectural furniture, such asthe picture frame. The distinctive floriatedquatrefoils decorating its surface mimic a subtlecharacteristic of Langley’s Gothic, and can be seen inthe following plates from Ancient Architecture:Gothick entablatures (plates III, VI, IX, XII, andXVI), as well as Chimney Piece (plate XLIII) (Fig.). It is plausible that this correlation of ornamentresulted from a close examination of Langley’sdesigns, and almost certainly reflected the Earl ofPomfret’s subscription to Ancient Architecture.



Fig. : Batty Langley, Third Gothic Order, pl. VII fromAncient Architecture: Restored and Improved (London:


Fig. : William Kent, A Pulpit in the Cathedral at York,from John Vardy, Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr.

William Kent, (London: ), pl. .

window, described by Freeman as ‘outlandishtadpole-shaped squiggles’, are examples of this.

Their source, almost certainly, is the York Minsterpulpit: they can be found on the backboard and inthe spandrels directly above the blind panelling.Whilst appearing outlandish, Kent sourced theirform from medieval cusped reticulations, assuggested in his proposals for stalls at YorkMinster. Finally, clustered columns running alongthe cabinet’s centre line were probably derived fromthe four-shaft clustered columns popularised byBatty Langley in Ancient Architecture (‒), suchas his third Gothick Order (pl. VII) (Fig. ).

The almost direct quotation and repurposing ofdecorative elements found on Kent’s York Minsterpulpit, and the use of Langley-esque Gothic orders,suggests that the cabinet’s designer was relativelyinexperienced in developing Gothic Revivalfurniture. The cabinet’s decoration deviates in placesfrom Kent’s pulpit, as in the six red ogee quatrefoils

crowning of Kent’s pulpit for York Minster (Fig. ).

Moreover, the blue-painted niches on the octagonalbuttresses directly respond to Kent’s idiosyncraticand very distinctive blind panelling on the pulpit,where the head features a quatrefoil set between twoogee arches and the foot is finished with a cuspcrowned by a comparatively heavy finial.

The Pomfret cabinet also features a particularlydistinctive combination of medieval tracery in thecentre window, which is typical of Kent’s Gothic.

It combines curvilinear and ogee-dominated bartracery (Decorated) from the late thirteenth century,with earlier and less sophisticated thirteenth-centuryplate tracery in the arch head. Kent used thiscombination of styles at Hampton Court Palace,Surrey (), and Esher Place, Twickenham(c.). Even the apparently incongruous motifsdecorating the cabinet are part of Kent’s Gothicrepertoire. The particularly unusual blue ‘cloud-like’cusped shapes in the spandrels above the central



Fig. : William Hallett (possibly maker), The Pomfret Castle Library Writing Table, c.‒. (Image courtesy of Christopher Gilbert)

frequent visits in her diary, as on April : ‘TheBishop of Gloucester & Mr Kent came here I wentafter Dinner to see my Ly Granville’. The cabinet’srelationship to Kent’s Gothic Revival furniturereflects, at least in part, their association and theCountess’s admiration of his work.

T H E P O M F R E T L I B R A R Y W R I T I N G

T A B L E

The library writing table (Fig. ), unlike thecabinet and the picture frame, can still be reasonablyconnected with Pomfret Castle. A plaque on thetable top records that is was it in the possession ofWilliam Gerard ‘Single Speech’ Hamilton (‒),and he is known to have lived at Arlington Streetin . Writing of Pomfret Castle to AnneFitzpatrick (/‒), Countess of Ossory,Walpole recorded that ‘one of the stone Gothic

running at the base of the cresting. They, however,could easily have been based upon the widerinterpretation of Gothic architecture in mideighteenth-century Britain, or Kent’s other printeddesigns included in Vardy’s Some Designs: Pl. –the Court of King’s Bench, Westminster Hall – andPl. – the screen at Gloucester Cathedral.

It is perhaps more than a coincidence that Kent’sGothic should have directly influenced the PomfretCabinet’s design. Not only was Vardy’s Some Designsthe only suitable pattern book for solid pieces ofGothic Revival furniture in early s Britain, butthe Countess was also personally acquainted withKent and his work. As Houfe explained, she was asupporter of Kent and praised his architecture.

Indeed, he supplied a chimneypiece to EastonNeston’s great hall in the s, and on January the Countess recorded: ‘A Great Glass after adesign by Mr Kent’s for my Drawing Room CameHome’. Between and she noted Kent’s



Fig. : Thomas Chippendale, Design for a Library Table, MMA .., f. . Plate LVIIIin The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director (). (© www.metmuseum.org)

and Ince and Mayhew’s The Universal System ofHousehold Furniture (). Particularly usefulcomparisons can be made between the writing tableand Chippendale’s Gothick Chairs, plate XXI (),and Gothick Cloths Chest, plate CXXVII (). Likethe library writing table, neither the chairs nor theclothes chest have Gothic structures; the Gothictincture, instead, is expressed though blind andpierced surface decoration. This approach was notspecific to the Gothic Revival, but shared with othercontemporary fashionable styles, including Rococoand Chinoiserie, as can be seen in Chippendale’sChina Case, plate CXXXII (). Here, the typicallyplain structure is enlivened with the contemporaryrepertoire of Chinese ornament, instead of Gothic.

The stylistic shift between the Pomfret cabinetand the library writing table therefore reflectsbroader changes in Gothic Revival furniture, fromWilliam Kent’s early, robust and architectural Gothicof the s to the lighter surface decoration typicalof the s and s. The adoption of mainstreamGothic may have resulted from the Countess usinganother cabinet-maker, though there is nodocumentary evidence to support this. Alternatively,and more probably, the library writing table wascommissioned specifically in the up-to-date Gothicmode to reflect developments in the revival. TheCountess’s Gothic Revival furniture consequentlyevolved, much like the interior of Pomfret Castle,which responded to the revival’s increasingly soberand architecturally-informed pretensions. Thischange in style does not exclude William Hallett asthe writing table’s maker, as he was capable ofworking in the modern taste, as with the lanternstand () for Chevening, Kent.

The Pomfret library writing table loosely relatesto Chippendale’s ‘Library Table’, plate LVIII fromThe Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director ()(Fig. ). This is not surprising, given the relativelylimited structural variations offered by this furnituretype. Their main similarity is the use of Langley-likeclustered columns with shaft rings on the pedestals’

towers at Lady Pomfret’s house (now Single-SpeechHamilton’s) in my street fell through the roof ’.

After Hamilton, the writing table is known to havepassed to John Wordsworth (‒), Dean andlater Bishop of Salisbury, as recorded by theBishop’s biographer:

‘the large central writing-table, an heirloom fromBishop Wordsworth’s days, having been a present tohim from his uncle, ‘Single Speech Hamilton’ wascovered with methodically arranged papers [. . .] otherinteresting souvenirs [in the Bishop’s study] were old-fashioned chairs which had belonged to Dr. Pusey andBishop Moberly’.

The table was clearly treated as an heirloom andappropriate for the romantically-furnished study, assuggested by the ‘old-fashioned chairs’ acting as‘interesting souvenirs’.

That Hamilton presumably acquired the librarywriting table when he bought Lady Pomfret’s townhouse does not prove it was commissioned by theCountess for that building. We do, however, knowthat the house was complete and fitted up inNovember . It is probable, therefore, that thetable was part of its furnishing programme,particularly because it would have been anappropriate centrepiece to the sizeable garden-facinglibrary. It is not too speculative, then, to suggest thatit was already at Pomfret Castle when Hamiltonmoved in.

This substantial table is essentially executed in amainstream form of cabinet-makers’ Gothic, incontrast with the idiosyncratic architect-derivedfurniture discussed above. Whilst the structure,outline and surface decoration of the cabinet andframe are Gothic, the writing table’s Gothiccharacter is solely achieved through surfacedecoration. This approach reflected mainstreamfashionable taste in mid eighteenth-century Britain,and is well represented by Gothic Revival patternsincluded in Thomas Chippendale’s The Gentlemanand Cabinet Maker’s Director (, and )



whilst unusual in the history of the Gothic Revival, wasappropriate to her gender. Whereas an interest inGothic could be disruptive for a man’s identity, such asBateman’s, this was not the case for the Countess.Gothic’s association with femininity came from the factthat it, like the Rococo and Chinoiserie, lacked theuniformity, rules and proportion of classical (orPalladian) design, which was the accepted architecturalstyle in eighteenth-century Britain. As AmandaVickery stated, such ‘diversions from uniformity andproportion [were perceived of as] as feminine andundisciplined or effeminate and corrupt’.

The Countess’s Gothic Revival architecture,furniture and associated objects certainly contrastwith the revival’s Walpole- and male-centric reading.But her interest in medieval art and architecture wasnot unprecedented: Lady Anne Clifford (‒)embraced medieval architectural forms to allude toher medieval ancestors, and Henrietta, dowagerCountess of Oxford and Mortimer (‒),modified Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire, in theGothic and Jacobean styles between and .

Rather than gender being the overriding influence,Gothic in these cases, as with the Countess ofPomfret, was chosen because it reflected theinterests, intentions and social status of each lady.Even so, the commissioning of eighteenth-centuryGothic Revival architecture, objects, furniture andinteriors by women is in need of furtherexamination, especially in relation to the morerecognised male context.

Walpole’s almost total silence concerning theCountess’s Gothic passion, apart from mentioningher ‘pedigree’ to Mann in , is rather puzzling.This is especially the case given that they wereneighbours in Arlington Street, that Walpole was aprolific letter-writer, that he visited numeroushouses, and that he was very interested in theGothic: surely the Gothic house in Arlington Streetwould have caught his eye and attention. But,except for recording damage to the house, Walpole’sonly substantial comment upon Pomfret Castle is

orthogonals. Unlike those on Chippendale’s design,however, they extend the full height of the pedestals,and thereby unify each face. Because clusteredcolumns were a particularly common motif in mideighteenth-century Gothic Revival furniture, theCountess’s table may not have been based uponChippendale’s design at all. Indeed, in contrast withChippendale’s design, the Gothic motifs areexecuted in a wrought and clearly definedarchitectural manner. This applies particularly to therose window motif on each pedestal face, looselycorresponding with the great parlour bosses atPomfret Castle. Thus, whilst the writing table lacksthe rigid Perpendicular detailing found on the insideof Pomfret Castle, it generally corresponds with theCastle’s blind tracery.

T H E C O U N T E S S O F P O M F R E T, T H E

G O T H I C R E V I V A L , A N D G E N D E R

The Countess’s interest in medieval design and, ashas been shown here, sustained commissioning ofGothic Revival objects and architecture, raises abroader question. There has been a tendency inrecent scholarship on the eighteenth-century GothicRevival to locate it within male homosocial groups –identified as a third sex of effeminised man,especially centred around Horace Walpole.

The Countess of Pomfret’s interest in andharnessing of medieval architecture and design appearsto challenge this interpretation. However, as MatthewReeve has recently shown, the Gothic Revival in mideighteenth-century Britain was perceived of as afeminine taste. Richard (Dickie) Bateman (‒)and the Gothicisation of his house at Old Windsor, forexample, were considered ‘fribbish’. As Reeveobserves, ‘Fribbles and men of the third sex[homosexual] were characterized as intersexualhybrids, and were frequently called ‘hermaphrodites’,articulating the third sex as composite of ‘male’ and‘female’’. Thus the Countess’s interest in Gothic,



design was physically manifested before the erectionof her London town house. Indeed, dating theportrait frame and the Pomfret cabinet – one of theearliest and most spectacular examples ofeighteenth-century Gothic Revival furniture – to theearly s demonstrates a confident and particularlyearly adoption of the style. A transition to the morefashionable ‘cabinet-maker’s Gothic’ for the librarywriting table indicates a certain flexibility in herpatronage to reflect the fundamental shift in GothicRevival furniture. The Countess therefore emergesas an innovative and important patroness of GothicRevival furniture. Additional pieces of GothicRevival furniture from Pomfret Castle surely exist,and perhaps also from Easton Neston. Theirdiscovery would add further to our understanding ofthe Countess, and her ‘Gothic passion’.

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

I am particularly grateful to Lucy Wood for hersuggestions and insightful comments, and perpetualencouragement whilst this article was underpreparation. Dr Geoffrey Tyack and the anonymousreviewer have been tremendously helpful, and Ithank them for their comments. The curators at theAshmolean’s Prints and Drawings Study Room whoprovided repeated access to the Bardwell portraitdeserve thanks, as do the curatorial staff at TempleNewsam House for permitting me access to examinethe Pomfret library writing table. Finally, this articleis indebted to the opportunities made available to meas the inaugural (2013) Dunscombe Colt researchfellow of eighteenth-century architecture at theBodleian Libraries, University of Oxford: afellowship generously supported by the GeorgianGroup and the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

limited to the statement: ‘the Gothic house of theCountess of Pomfret in Arlington Street, wasdesigned by Mr Miller of Radway’. This almostcomplete silence suggests that he was dismissive ofthe Countess’s Gothic passion, particularly as hewould have very much been aware of herarchitectural efforts in the mode. Perhaps he felt thatStrawberry Hill was threatened by her Gothic townhouse? On the other hand, Walpole’s silence reflectshis dismissive attitude towards the Countess, whichRichard Quaintance deemed to be ‘constant scorn(even after her burial) for Pomfret’s humourlessintellectual pretensions’. Indeed, commentingupon her benefaction of marbles to the University ofOxford, Walpole clearly considered the Countesspersona non grata:

‘Our old diversion the Countess [of Pomfret] hasexhibited herself lately to the public exactly in a styleyou would guess. Having purchased and given herLord’s collection of statues to the University ofOxford, she has been there at the public act to receiveadoration. A box was built for her near the Vice-Chancellor, where she sat three days together for fourhours at a time to hear verses and speeches, to hear hercalled Minerva, nay the public orator had prepared anencomium on her beauty, but being struck with herappearance, had enough presence of mind to whisk hiscomplements to the beauties of her mind. Do butfigure her; her dress had all the tawdry poverty andfrippery, with which you remember her, and I dareswear her tympany, scarce covered with ticking,produced itself through the slit of her scoured damaskrobe. ’Tis amazing that she did not mash a few wordsof Latin, as she used to fricassee French and Italian! orthat she did not torture some learned smile, like hercomparing the tour of Sicily, the surrounding thetriangle, to squaring the circle; or as when she said itwas as difficult to get into an Italian coach as for Cæsarto take Attica, which she meant for Utica.’

The three pieces of Gothic Revival furnitureconsidered here provide further evidence of theCountess of Pomfret’s Gothic passion, especiallyoutside the context of Pomfret Castle. They stronglysuggest that her interest in medieval architecture and



Press, ), pp. –, and R. White, ‘TheInfluence of Batty Langley’ in J. Mordaunt Crooke(ed.), A Gothick Symposium at the Victoria andAlbert Museum. (London: The Victoria and AlbertMuseum and the Georgian Group, ), n.p.

See Hawkes, ‘Walpole Right or Wrong?’, pp.–. Biggs’s drawings are in Sir John Soane’sMuseum, London, Drawer Set : , –.

Examples of this are Houfe, ‘Gothick II’, pp. –,and Freeman, ‘An Englishwoman’s Home’, pp.–.

Sotheby’s, Easton Neston, Northamptonshire: –May (London, ), pp. –; C. Gilbert,Furniture at Temple Newsam House and LothertonHall, II. (London, ), pp. –; H. Colvin,‘The Pomfret Portrait’, in The Ashmolean, (), pp. –.

Sotheby’s, Easton Neston, p. , lot . Houfe, ‘Gothick II’, p. –.

Victoria and Albert Museum, W.–. Fordetails on the Enmore chair see D. Taylor, ‘ThePerceval Compton Windsor Chair’, RegionalFurniture, (), pp. –. Perceval’s interestin medieval architecture is assessed in T. Mowl,‘Against the Time in Which the Fabric and Use ofGunpowder Shall Be Forgotten’: Enmore Castle, itsOrigins and its Architect’, Architectural History, (), pp. –.

Walpole purchased the blue and white chairs (of anancient triangular form, referred to by Walpole asWelch) from the sale at Dicky Bateman’s house, thePriory, Old Windsor: H. Walpole, Description of theVilla of Mr. Horace Walpole. (Strawberry Hill,), p. . They are unusual, however, for thischair type is typically unpainted, such as thosedepicted by John Carter in his watercolour of theGreat Cloister at Strawberry Hill c.: LewisWalpole Library, Farmington, CT, copy Folio, f. . The right-hand chair in Fig. is evenmore unusual for it bears the arms of DickyBateman, and consequently reflects the tradition ofpainted hall chairs. Walpole placed these chairs inthe Star Chamber at Strawberry Hill, en route fromthe staircase to the gallery: Walpole, Description, p.. For Bateman’s position in the Gothic Revival,and his connection with Horace Walpole, see M.Reeve, ‘Dickie Bateman and the Gothicization ofOld Windsor: Gothic Architecture and Sexuality inthe Circle of Horace Walpole’, ArchitecturalHistory, (), pp. –.

N O T E S

S. Freeman, ‘An Englishwoman’s Home is HerCastle: Lady Pomfret’s House at ArlingtonStreet’, The Georgian Group Journal, (),pp. –, and W. Hawkes, ‘Walpole Right orWrong? More on No. Arlington Street’, TheGeorgian Group Journal, (), pp. –.Additional material is presented in J. Cornforth, ‘ACountess’s London Castle’, Country Life Annual(), pp. –, S. Houfe, ‘A Taste for theGothick: Diaries of the Countess of Pomfret I’,Country Life, March , pp. –, S. Houfe,‘Antiquarian Inclinations: Diaries of the Countessof Pomfret II’, Country Life, March , pp.–, M. McCarthy, The Origins of the GothicRevival. (London, ), pp. –, and J. Harris,‘Lady Pomfret’s House: The Case for RichardBiggs’, The Georgian Group Journal, (), pp.–.

T. Gillet (ed.), Correspondence between Frances,Countess of Hartford, (Afterwards Duchess ofSomerset,) and Henrietta Louisa, Countess ofPomfret Between the Years and , I.(London, ), pp. – (Countess of Pomfretto Countess of Hartford, July ).

The Bucks concentrated on ruinous abbeys andmonasteries. The role Perspective Views had inshaping the knowledge of medieval architecture inearly eighteenth-century Britain was recognised byRobert Sayer, when he republished the plates as S.Buck and N. Buck, Buck’s Antiquities; or VenerableRemains of above Four Hundred Castles,Monasteries, Palaces, &c. &c. in England andWales. With Near One Hundred Views of Cities andChief Towns. (London, ). In the introduction,he praised the original publication: ‘TheUndertaking was itself noble, and in the Executionmeritorious; as it preserves to our view whatotherwise would have been buried in oblivion’.Ibid, p. v.

B. Langley and T. Langley, Ancient Architecture:Restored, and Improved, by a Great Variety ofGrand and Useful Designs, Entirely New in theGothick Mode for the Ornamenting of Buildings andGardens Exceeding every Thing thats Extant.(London, –), Encouragers. For the influenceof Ancient Architecture see A. Rowan, ‘BattyLangley’s Gothic’, in G. Robertson and G.Henderson (eds), Studies in Memory of DavidTalbot Rice. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University



Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, WA.. A. Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture: the Work of

Thomas Chippendale and his Contemporaries in theRococo Taste: Vile, Cobb, Langlois, Channon,Hallett, Ince and Mayhew, Lock, Johnson andOthers, circa –. (London, ), p. .Christopher Gilbert, Keeper at Temple NewsamHouse, Leeds, tentatively adopted Coleridge’stheory in his correspondence with the Ashmoleanin : ‘So far as I am aware, the only other piece offurniture known to have been made for PomfretCastle is the magnificent Gothic picture framesurrounding a double portrait of the Earl andCountess of Pomfret in your collection [. . .] and Ishould be interested to know whether you havediscovered any evidence that the architect,Sanderson Miller, also designed some of themovables. Could you please let me have a note ofthe later ancestry of this piece and also of theexistence of any documentation — such as theevidence that it was designed for the drawing room’:Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Object FileWA., Gilbert, April . Howard Colvinalso cautiously reiterated Coleridge’s point in :‘it was, presumably, in this or a similar room [of Arlington Street] that the portrait of Lord and LadyPomfret was designed to hang in its elaborateGothic frame’. Colvin, ‘Portrait’, p. .

Thomas Bardwell (‒): Thomas Fermor, 1stEarl of Pomfret and Henrietta Louisa, Countess ofPomfret’, Ashmolean (University of Oxford, ),http://www.ashmolean.org/ash/objects/paintings/WA..php, accessed //.

Bodleian Library Archives, University of Oxford,d., f. r. The painting first appears in ACatalogue of the Several Pictures, Statues, andBusto’s, in the Picture Gallery, Adjoining to theBodleian Library. (Oxford, ), p. .

In the portrait is known to have been displayedwith the Pomfret Marbles, which the Countessdonated to the university in : Bodleian LibraryArchives, d., letter , December .

It is unlikely that the picture was donated without aframe.

Warwickshire County Record Office, Warwick,WRO CR /A , March .

Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, CT, Quarto P Ms.

H. Walpole, in W.S. Lewis, W. Hunting Smith andG.L. Lam (eds), The Yale Edition of Horace

Bodleian Library, Oxford, Gough Maps , f. v. Sir John Soane’s Museum, Drawer Set : . Sotheby’s observed that it was ‘undoubtedly

commissioned by Henrietta Louisa, st Countess ofPomfret for her new house which she had built at Arlington Street, Green Park between and’: Sotheby’s, Easton Neston, p. . Freemanreiterated this theory by stating the cabinet was‘commissioned by Lady Pomfret for Pomfret Castle,c.’: Freeman, ‘An Englishwoman’s Home’, p..

These similarities, instead, suggest that a singularbuilding, or ‘type’, was the genesis of each. Notableexamples of gabled Gothic façades flanked bytowers crested by onion domes are James Gibbs’sGothic Temple at Stowe, Buckinghamshire (),and medieval buildings such as St George’s Chapel,Windsor Castle, and King’s College Chapel,Cambridge.

Sotheby’s, Easton Neston, p. , and LeicestershireCounty Record Office, Leicester, Finch MSS DGD (IV), f. .

‘George II Gothic Painted Cabinet’, in Export ofObjects of Cultural Interest –, Report to theSecretary of State, (London, ), p. . TheJeffreys arms were overpainted, presumably after theCountess’s death in , with those of Draycott torepresent the second Earl of Pomfret’s wife, AnnaMaria Draycott (–). In addition, Henrietta’sH was replaced with an A, for Anna. For moreinformation and analysis, see Ibid.

Houfe, ‘Gothick I’, pl. . George, second Earl of Pomfret, inherited the estate

and house of Easton Neston, Northamptonshire,and almost certainly the cabinet. This explains whythe Draycott arms, representing the second Earl’swife, replaced the first Countess’s. Upon inheritingthe title, George put paintings and sculpturesup for sale by auction in , though no furniturewas listed, and the cabinet was perhaps retainedspecifically: J. Prestage, A Catalogue of the Noble andCurious Collection of Pictures, of the RightHonourable Thomas Earl of Pomfret, Deceased,Brought from His Lordship’s Manor at EastonNeston in Northamptonshire. (London, ), and‘George II Gothic Painted Cabinet’, p. .

Ibid. Indeed, the cabinet was photographed there by

Country Life and reproduced in an article from: Houfe, ‘Gothick II’, p. .



upon-Tyne, ), pp. –. Further interpretationof Kent’s influence and potential involvement atShobdon are in preparation as a co-authored articlewith Matthew Reeve.

Freeman, ‘An Englishwoman’s Home’, p. . York Minster Library, York, YM/F, YM/F,

YM/F/–. These drawings are addressed in T.Friedman, ‘The Transformation of York Minster,–’, Architectural History, (), pp. –.

The first pattern book for s Rococo-Gothicfurniture in s Britain was M. Darly, A New Bookof Chinese, Gothic and Modern Chairs, with theManner of Putting Them in Perspective According toBrook Taylor. (London, ). The designs were ofan entirely different character from the Pomfretcabinet’s Gothic, and would have provided littleguidance for Gothicising its structure. Kent alsoappears to have influenced Hallett’s chairs of c.for Holkham Hall, Norfolk. This is explored inWood: Upholstered Furniture, II, pp. –.

Houfe, ‘Gothick I’, p. . ‘The entrance hall, bow converted into a dining

room, is a noble room; the centre rises the height oftwo stories, and the sides of only one, formingvestibules or recesses, one of which is still used as ahall. [. . .] The chimney piece of Egyptian marbledesigned by Kent is massive and elegant’: G. Baker,The History and Antiquities of the County ofNorthamptonshire, II. (London: –), p. .Houfe, ‘Gothick I’, p. .

Leicestershire Record Office, Leicester, Finch MSSDG/D (I), April . For details on Kent’swork at Easton Neston, see D. Watkin, ‘TownHouses’, in S. Weber (ed.), William Kent:Designing Georgian Britain (London, ), pp.–.

A full catalogue description of the library writingtable can be found in Gilbert, Furniture at TempleNewsam, II, pp. –.

Ibid., p. . Following the Countess’s death in, successive people occupied Pomfret Castle.Lady Sophia Carteret (–), the Countess’sgranddaughter, was first, though she certainlymoved out upon getting married in .

Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, XXXIII,(London, ), p. . Walpole to Lady Ossory, January .

E.W. Watson, Life of Bishop John Wordsworth(London, ), p. . Christopher Gilbert recordsthat on the underside of one of the table’s pedestals

Walpole’s Correspondence, XX. (London, ), pp.–, September .

Examples of this chair type are illustrated inmanuscripts. See, for example, Bodleian Library,University of Oxford, MS Douce , f. . See alsoP. Eames, Furniture in England, France and theNetherlands from the Twelfth to the FifteenthCentury. (London: ), pp. –.

H.S., ‘It is a Great Abuse of Language’, in TheWorld, XII (), p. .

M. Snodin, ‘Going to Strawberry Hill’, in M.Snodin (ed.), Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill,(London, ), pp. –, and K. Rogers,‘Walpole’s Gothic: Creating a Fictive History’, in M.Snodin (ed.), Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill,(London, ), pp. –.

P.J. Toynbee (ed.), Strawberry Hill Accounts: A Recordof Expenditure in Building, Furnishing, &c., Kept byMr Horace Walpole, from to , Now FirstPrinted from the Original Ms. (Oxford, ), p. .

The Parlour chairs were jointly designed byHorace Walpole and Richard Bentley, HoraceWalpole’s Correspondence, XXXV. (London, ),pp. –, the lantern by Bentley (ibid., pp.–), and the pier glasses by Walpole: Walpole,Description, p. .

L. Wood, The Upholstered Furniture in the LadyLever Art Gallery, II. (London, ), pp. –,and L. Wood, ‘William Hallett’s Lantern Stand forChevening’, in Furniture History, (), pp.–. For a broader analysis of Hallett’s status as aLondon cabinet maker, see G. Beard, ‘William Vileagain’, Furniture History, (), p. , and G.Beard, ‘The Quest for William Hallett’, FurnitureHistory, (), pp. –.

Kent’s Gothic has recently been examined in R.White, ‘Kent and the Gothic Revival’, in S. Weber(ed.), William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain.(London, ), pp. –.

J. Vardy, Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr.Wm. Kent. (London, ), pl. .

P.N. Lindfield, ‘Furnishing Britain: Gothic as aNational Aesthetic, –’, I (PhD Dissertation,University of St Andrews, ), p. ); White,‘Kent’, p. .

P.N. Lindfield, ‘Georgian Gothic Fabrications in theAntiquarian Style: William Kent, Batty Langley andHorace Walpole’, in A. Lepine and L. Cleaver (eds),Gothic Legacies: Four Centuries of Tradition andInnovation in Art and Architecture. (Newcastle-



A. Vickery, Behind Closed Doors: At Home inGeorgian England (London, ), p. . SeeReeve, ‘Gothic Architecture’, p. . Gothic could,however, possess masculine associations, and isaddressed by the author in a forthcoming chapteron Gothic Revival design and chivalry.

E.V. Chew, ‘A Mockery of the Surveyor’s Style?:Alternatives to Inigo Jones in Seventeenth-CenturyElite British Architecture’ in B. Arciszewska and E.McKellar (eds.), Articulating British Cassicism:New Approaches to Eighteenth-Century Architecture(Aldershot, ), pp. –; P. Smith, ‘LadyOxford’s Alterations at Welbeck Abbey, –’,Georgian Group Journal (), pp. –; L.Worsley, ‘Female Architectural Patronage in theEighteenth Century and the Case of HenriettaCavendish Holles Harley’, Architectural History (), pp. –.

An edited collection of Walpole’s comments onvisits to country Seats can be found in P. Toynbee(ed.), The Walpole Society XVI ().

Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, , Vol. ,f. .

R. Quaintance, ‘Fermor, Henrietta Louisa, Countessof Pomfret (–)’, Oxford Dictionary ofNational Biography, Oxford University Press, ,http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/,accessed //.

Horace Walpole’s Correspondence XX, (London,), p. .

is a Victorian label stating ‘The D[ean of ]Sa[lisbu]ry’: Gilbert, Furniture at Temple Newsam,II, p. .

For an assessment of the romantic interior, see C.Wainwright, The Romantic Interior: the BritishCollector at Home, – (London, ).

Warwickshire County Record Office, CR /A , November ; Hawkes, ‘Walpole Right orWrong’, p. .

The table’s mainstream cabinet-maker’s design wasprobably one of the reasons why it was copied inthe early nineteenth century. See Gilbert, Furnitureat Temple Newsam, III, pp. .

Hawkes, ‘Walpole Right or Wrong?’, pp. –. Wood, ‘Chevening’, pp. –. Attribution of the

library writing table to Hallett Sr, however, remainsconjectural.

This design was reissued as plate LXXXV in the edition of the Director. Reissuing it in the thirdedition demonstrates the design’s longevity,especially given plates ( per cent) in the Director were new.

M. Reeve, ‘Gothic Architecture, Sexuality andLicense at Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill’, ArtBulletin (Sept ), pp. –, and M. Reeve,‘Dickie Bateman and the Gothicization of OldWindsor: Architecture and Sexuality in the Circleof Horace Walpole’, Architectural History (),pp. –.

Reeve, ‘Dickie Bateman’, p. . Ibid., pp. –.



The Countess of Pomfret’s Gothic Revival Furniture; The Georgian Group Journal (2014)

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