In a lifespan of 83 years (September 1760 to May 1844) William
Beckford had built up one of the world's largest collections of
paintings, books, furniture and objets d'art and had
housed it all in a country mansion the size of a cathedral.
Beckford was immensely gifted, brilliantly educated and widely
learned, a talented writer of fiction and travel books, a not
insignificant landscape designer and composer of music (and
incidentally a lively singer), a man of absolute integrity and
perfect good taste, and, of course, the richest man in England.
His wealth, his extravagance, his hatred of cant and mediocrity,
and his scandalous reputation made him a legend in his own
lifetime.
In many ways both the legend and the reality rest upon society's
vicious ostracism of him for being a homosexual. In 1784 the news
broke that Beckford was having an affair with the young William
Courtenay of Powderham. Beckford braved out the storm of abuse
in the newspapers, but then fled to the continent. Upon his
eventual return to England, Beckford secluded himself behind the
eight-mile-long wall surrounding 519 acres of his estate at
Fonthill Gifford. The Barrier, as it was called, was probably
meant primarily to keep our hunters, for Beckford hated cruelty
to animals. He then hired England's foremost architect, James
Wyatt, to build a medieval abbey for him to live in. Fonthill
Abbey was almost grotesquely vast: the tower of the
Great Octagon soared upwards for 300 feet, and was so
fantastically perpendicular that it collapsed several times, the
final time in 1825 due to improper foundations.
Not content with this architectural wonder, Beckford began to
fill it full of civilization's greatest treasures: 20,000 books
in his own binding; paintings by Titian, Bronzino, Raphael
Velasquez, Rembrandt, Rubens and Canaletto — twenty
of the paintings he once owned now hang in the National Gallery,
London — as well as the major contemporary artists; a table
from the Borghese Palace whose centre consisted of the largest
onyx in the world (now in Charlecote Park, Avon); Jacobean
coffers; Venetian glass; the largest collection of Japanese
lacquer in the world (the superb "Van Dieman" black lacquer box
once belonging to Madame de Pompadour, then to Beckford, is now
in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, along with other of
his treasures); and thousands of objects of porcelain, bronze,
jewellery, silver, gold and agate.
Beckford had virtually no contact with the outside world, though
he occasionally visited the homosexual subcultures of Europe and
London. As discussed at another page, he assembled a virtual
harem of boys at Fonthill, while someone else looked after his
two daughters, by Lady Margaret Gordon who died after three years
of their marriage. He hired a dwarf to open the 38-foot-high
front doors so as to startle the infrequent visitor by increasing
the illusion of their height. A true medieval cathedral cannot
be built in less than a century, so the architect met the
rigorous timetable by cheating on materials and methods. As a
result, the tower collapsed six times, each time being rebuilt
with even more fantastic awkwardness. Beckford's only real grief
was that he was never at the scene to witness the awesome
spectacle of each tumble.
Needless to say, I have been fascinated by Beckford for a number
of years, though I have neither the means of a collector nor the
taste of a connoisseur, and in September 1977 I spent a weekend
in Bath, from which I set out to discover the remains of Fonthill
Abbey and Beckford's later residences in Lansdown Crescent.
On a Sunday morning I rose at 7 o'clock and drove off across the
Wiltshire Downs, with a six-inch ordnance survey map to guide me.
The route from Bath to Hindon is most picturesque, and eventually
I was making my way across the magnificent plateau known as The
Terrace, where the road runs alongside the crumbling remains of
The Barrier. At last I reached the Barrier Gate, entered, and
drove down the elegant mile-long Great Western Avenue, very
broad, and flanked by stately rows of trees. At its end the Great
Western Hall of Fonthill Abbey would have risen up to astound the
visitor; today the site is marked by a large D-shaped mound which
probably conceals rubble from its fall. I recalled the words of
a visitor in 1823: "Would to God it was more substantially built!
But as it is, its ruins will tell a tale of wonder!"
The ground floor was essentially a basement with offices. On the
first floor, beginning at the extreme north, is the Oratory,
formed of five sides of an octagon; in each wall is a lancet
window of stained glass (gold fleur de lys on a purple ground);
in each of the five angles inside rose a slender gilt column,
fanning out into reticulation of burnished gold on a field of
crimson, against walls of crimson damask.
The Sanctuary, one step lower, had walls of crimson damask, a
frieze of gilt flowers, a blue carpet woven with a Latimer Cross
design, and a curious oak ceiling with lozenge mouldings from
whose centres hung cul-de-lamps. The Vaulted Corridor, the last
of the surviving rooms on the first floor, one more step down,
was arched throughout, with a frieze of 38 emblazoned shields.
No windows were visible from the interior: instead, on each side
were three bronze latticed doors opening into mysterious recesses
resembling medieval confessionals. The window now on the south
side replaces the door that would have been there before the
disappearance of the rest of the Abbey.
At the very top of this structure is the Upper Lancaster Room
(reached via the Turret), which was essentially a picture gallery
and billiard room. On the second floor is the Lancaster State
Bedchamber, once a square lofty room with crimson walls and oak
wainscoting, and furnished entirely by chairs and cabinets made
of ebony studded with ivory. The ebony state bedstead can today
be seen at Brodick Castle, Isle of Arran, seat of the Duke of
Hamilton (Beckford's mother's family).
To the south of the remains, one can still detect Beckford's
expert landscaping amidst a rich profusion of mauve rhododendron
and dark green fir. Winding paths bordered by magnolias, azaleas,
laurel and trees of all sorts lead to Bitham Lake, artificially
constructed by Beckford. Further south, beyond the American
Gardens (named thus because the plants were imported from
America), are the ruins of a late nineteenth-century mansion
(actually, its stables), and its terrace gardens with decapitated
allegorical statues, all incredibly overgrown.
To be fair, the remains of Fonthill Abbey may be somewhat
disappointing except to the most devoted Beckfordite. For those
who are not already familiar with its extraordinary builder, a
trip to Lansdown Tower (where I went on the Saturday) may be more
interesting and informative.
Around the wall at the back of the drive one can glimpse the top
of Beckford's oriental summer house, and further down the road
is the Embattled Gateway with its iron-studded doors. One can
trace one's way along the paths extending for more than a mile
up the hill, once Beckford's back garden, and find another grotto
tunnel. At the summit is Lansdown Tower, built for Beckford by
the young Bath architect Henry Goodridge; its exterior is
virtually unchanged, "a quarter Italian, a quarter Byzantine,
half Greek and wholly Picturesque," as James Lees-Milne describes
it. It is now called Beckford's Tower, and is regularly open to
the public.
At the base of the Tower is a single storey annex which contained
a kitchen, offices and bedroom, and a two-storey building which
contained a Vaulted Passage, the Scarlet Drawing Room, the
Crimson Drawing Room (Beckford's taste in colours was not wide),
the Etruscan Library and the Sanctuary, where a state of St
Anthony, set against a slap of red porphyry, was subtly lit from
above by glass domes. The chaff having been separated from the
wheat by the great sale of Fonthill, Lansdown Tower effectively
became the display cabinet of Beckford's greatest treasures. It
contained, for example, Giovanni Bellini's magnificent painting
of Doge Loredan, which Beckford sold to the National Gallery
shortly before his death.
The Scarlet and Crimson Drawing Rooms were knocked together to
form a funerary chapel, and, what with a disastrous fire in 1931,
little remains of the original interior. However, extensive
restoration began in 1972 by Dr and Mrs L. T. Hilliard was
completed, and in January 1977 they transferred the Tower to the
Beckford Tower Trust, who will preserve and maintain it for the
public benefit. The Beckford Museum in its apartments contains
some truly fascinating objects: for example, signs and etched
glasses advertising "Beckford Blend Scotch Whisky" and the skull
and femur of a horse, believed to be Beckford's — not to
mention numerous engravings, chromolithographs of its original
interior, and a great deal of information about Beckford.
All that remains of Fonthill Abbey today is half of its north
wing. This structure is in a fine state of preservation, and a
perfect example of Perpendicular Gothic architecture: very little
exterior decoration, massive buttresses at the corners, deeply
carved pointed-arch windows, and castellated tops. The main
structure is 60 feet long and 16 feet wide, and consists of the
Lancaster rooms and Turret (76 feet high), the Sanctuary, and the
Oratory. To the east, running off the Sanctuary, is the 80-foot-
long one-storey Kitchen Court with arches facing south. What
remains is being used as a warehouse for farm equipment and odds
and ends, and nothing survives of Beckford's interior decoration
except for a frayed crimson bell-rope with which he called his
servants. It is all private property, though visits are
occasionally arranged for small groups to visit the grounds.
At the height of Fonthill's glory, the rooms of the north wing
must have been absolutely splendid. Always with an eye to
striking architectural effects, Beckford had designed the north-
south transept so as to create an uninterrupted interior vista
of 300 feet, culminating in the Oratory which terminates the
north wing. At night time, when the intervening galleries were
lit by a mere 24 candles, one's eye must have been irresistibly
drawn to the blaze of light from the Oratory, where an alabaster
statue of St Anthony stood upon an altar, beneath a silver-gilt
lamp and flanked by 36 lighted tapers in silver-gilt candelabras.
This was the focal point of the entire Abbey, since St Anthony
was Beckford's patron saint and naturally occupied the place of
honour in this domestic cathedral.
This is a cross-section of all that remains
today.
The main entrance to Fonthill estate is beneath a most charming
Entrance Lodge (still occupied), once the gateway to Beckford's
father's mansion Fonthill Splendens. A narrow lane beside it
leads down to a bridge on Fonthill Lake, where there is a unique
boat house with 12 stone pillars and arches, tumbling into ruins
like a watery basilica. further along the lake there are two
nearly inaccessible grottoes, inside the largest of which is a
bas-relief of some antique figure. The mouth of a nearby tunnel
has fallen in, but can be entered by climbing the hill and
crossing the road. This tunnel — The Dark Walk, which
enabled Beckford to get to the lake without crossing the publish
highway — is about 100 feet long and 20 feet high: very
deep, damp, slippery, cold and pitch-black. At the end of the
tunnel is a small cavity out of which a bat flew, causing me to
shudder with horror and delight, and satisfying my taste for the
Gothic.
align="left">In 1823 Beckford sold the Abbey for £300,000 and moved to
Bath. There he bought No. 20 Lansdown Crescent and No. 1 Lansdown
Place West, and joined them with a one-storey arch thrown across
a driveway. In 1836 he also bought No. 18 and No. 19 Lansdown
Crescent (leaving No. 18 empty to ensure peace and quiet).
Lansdown Crescent today is even more charming than the Royal
Crescent, for even its original windows survive, and every other
residence is fronted by graceful wrought iron gates surmounted
by lanterns. They are all private residences, though some of
Beckford's original interiors remain essentially unchanged.
The Tower is 154 feet high, and completely open for most of its
height. Spiralling up the wall are 154 stone steps (gone is the
crimson carpet that once covered them), with a heavy iron Regency
balustrade, leading to the Belvedere, from whose 12 plate glass
windows you have a panoramic view of the countryside. Beckford
accurately described it as "the finest prospect in Europe!"
Higher yet, 53 wooden steps — not accessible to the general
public — wind up through an octagonal gallery to underneath
the gilded cast iron cupola.
After Beckford's death, the Tower was sold to a local publican,
who turned it into a beer garden. Eventually it was bought back
by the Duchess of Hamilton, Beckford's daughter, and given to
Walcot parish for use as a cemetery. This enabled Beckford to be
re-buried near the Tower that he so loved. His tomb — a
massive sarcophagus of pink polished granite with bronze armorial
plaques, all designed by himself — stands upon a hillock in
the center of an oval ditch, rumoured to be an unconsecrated
spot. Goodridge designed a Byzantine entrance gateway to the
cemetery, flanked by the bronze railings which had surrounded
Beckford's original grave in Lyncombe Vale.
CITATION: If you cite this Web page, please use the following form of citation:
Rictor Norton, "A Visit to Fonthill", The Great Queens of History, updated 30 June 2000 <http://www.rictornorton.co.uk/beckfor3.htm>.
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