page_title: Kings Weston House
section_title: Current buildings
hierarchical_section_title: Kings Weston House / Current buildings
caption_attribution_description: English: Kings Weston House, Bristol. The Garden Front seen from the south west. Sir John Vanbrugh, 1712
context_page_description: Kings Weston House is a historic building in Kings Weston Lane, Kingsweston, Bristol, England.
context_section_description: On 29 April Edward Southwell wrote in his journal at Kings Weston "Upwards of 60 men preparing stones and digging the foundation of the new house" and on 16 June 1712 work formally began on building the new house by John Vanbrugh. His client, Edward Southwell, did not desire a house on a monumental scale. The result was one of Vanbrugh's smaller houses. It is also his severest in style, obtaining high architectural drama by the well judged disposition of elements that are few in number, and simple in their nature. The exterior of the house would have been at the point of completion in 1717, the date on the contract for one of the parapet vases. The interior would have been virtually complete by 1719, when the design for inlay on the stair landings was drawn up. Two of the facades have since been remodelled, by Robert Mylne, who remodelled the interior in the 1760s. The stone, which was quarried on the site, was originally ochre in colour but has weathered to an orange-pink.
  The arcade formed by linking the chimneys, which rises above the roof, is a notable external feature of the building, reminiscent of the belvederes of Blenheim Palace and producing a 'castle air'. It is square in shape and open on the northeast. The current structure is the result of a rebuilding in 1968, using Bath Stone.
  The entrance front, on the southwest, has a centre containing six Corinthian pilasters, with those at each side paired to produce three bays, each of which contains a round arched window. The pediment has a central lunette, and each side consists of two bays in which the windows have wide flat surrounds. There are four parapet vases. The steps originally had low flank walls perpendicular to the facade, which were removed in the later remodelling.
  On the southeast facade, the centre has a Doric temple front with open pediment, which surrounds the doorway. The centre has an attic as its upper storey, topped by a blocking course with scrolled supports at each end. A design with a pediment was prepared for this front, but is thought never to have been built. Though the only decoration is the rustication on the Doric temple's pilasters, a remarkably rich effect is achieved.
  The northeast and northwest facades of Vanbrugh's original design were entirely undecorated, and a consequent lack of popular appeal may be the reason why they were largely destroyed in later remodelling.
  Vanbrugh's northwest facade consisted of a single flat surface, in which a Venetian window on each floor filled the central space between two shallow projections. Perhaps to improve the view down to Avonmouth, the centre was remodelled by Mylne with a canted bay window, at odds with the tautness of Vanbrugh's overall design of the house, in which all planes were parallel or perpendicular to the walls. On the northeast the wall was moved forward during nineteenth-century remodelling, destroying an aesthetically significant alignment between wall projections and the break in the roof arcade, which had been present in Vanbrugh's design.
  Visitors to the house as it stood after the completion of Vanbrugh's design would have first encountered a huge entrance saloon, two stories high. Beyond this was a stair hall of three storeys in height, with arched openings to the entrance saloon at first-floor height, so that the upper part of the entrance saloon could be seen from within it. These arches were filled in as part of Mylne's remodelling, which though it increased the comfort and charm, reduced the spatial drama. The additional wall space in the entrance saloon was designed to display Southwell's recently inherited collection of ancestral portraits, and Thomas Stocking was employed to execute a scheme of plaster framing for these to Mylne's design. A black and white chequered marble floor and a chimneypiece by John Devall were also added to the entrance saloon at this time.
caption: The south east or 'Garden' front
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