A property of the National Trust since 1960, Saltram Park is a crucial rural space among the urban sprawl of Plymouth. The woods and pastures are hemmed in by the noisy Devon Expressway to the north, and to the south by a former landfill site, where there was once a racecourse. The serene river Plym forms the western boundary while railway lines and a dual carriageway buzz on the opposite bank. This was the seat of the Parker family (Earls of Morley from 1815) for 200 years.
With the former walled gardens and other outbuildings cut off, on the north side of the expressway, marooned in a twentieth-century housing development, Saltram is no longer a unified working estate. The house appears to be a plain, rendered, boxy Georgian building. However, inside there are many surprises, not least interiors by Robert Adam and a collection that includes several works by Joshua Reynolds (born in nearby Plympton), the first President of the Royal Academy, and Angelica Kauffman.
Saltram House is old, large, and has been augmented over centuries to reach its present form. The orderliness of its facades is only skin deep. What may have started as a modest Tudor farmhouse was developed into a mansion, in the seventeenth century, by the Bagge family. An old kitchen survives from this time with fireplaces behind four-centred arches, as does a tower – visible only from an interior service courtyard. After purchase by George Parker (of nearby Boringdon Hall) in 1712, his son and daughter-in-law, John and Catherine, commissioned William Kent, or one of his followers, to prepare designs for a new house at Saltram. By the time John inherited in 1743, this plan was abandoned, and in its stead three Palladio-inspired facades were applied to the existing building, with space for new rooms knocked out behind. The architect for these alterations is unknown but it is thought to have been a cheaper, local builder, or perhaps Catherine Parker herself.
It was John and Catherine’s son, John Parker II, who engaged Robert Adam to design the new Saloon and Library in 1768. Adam’s Saloon is remarkably complete, with his ceiling and matching Axminster carpet surviving, along with gilt furniture attributed to Chippendale. The chimneypiece is not by Adam but a survival from an earlier phase while the two Regency style chandeliers were introduced in the nineteenth century.
Today, Adam’s Library is found to be the dining room. It was converted to this use after a fire in 1778 caused the Kitchen to be moved to a new position at the back of the house. The Plymouth architect John Foulston was brought in to create a new library in 1819 by knocking together the old dining room on the south side of the house with the neighbouring Music Room. The wall was replaced with a screen of ionic scagliola columns, while Empire style chimneypieces and fitted bookcases made the space into the opulent but comfortable, informal sitting room that was common of country house libraries in the early nineteenth century.
As well as several fine portraits by Reynolds, Saltram also houses paintings by Angelica Kauffmann - one of only two female founding members of the Royal Academy. Her works at Saltram include a self-portrait, a portrait of Reynolds, and several large-scale neoclassical history paintings in the staircase hall. One of these, Hector taking leave of Andromache was recently in the exhibition ‘Troy: Myth and Reality’ at the British Museum. Also on the staircase is The Fall of Phaethon (1777) by George Stubbs. This shows the horse painter’s foray into history painting later in his career, in an attempt to distance himself from the low genre of animal painting. The small paintings embedded in Adam’s Saloon and Library ceilings were executed by Antonio Zucchi – whom Kauffmann later married.
The Parker family were hindered from intervening in the architecture of the house or the makeup of the collection by financial troubles in the nineteenth century. Like many country houses, taxation and the high cost of labour led to its seizure by the treasury in 1957. In many respects, the collection, architecture, and interiors of Saltram have survived, unified as a time capsule from the eighteenth century. The superficial neoclassicism in plaster and render, the display of contemporary portraiture alongside copies of Old Masters, and the conspicuous display of Chinese wall coverings and porcelain, speak volumes about the tastes and values of those Georgian aristocratic families who were nether too poor to travel and collect, nor rich enough to commission large new houses.
Adam's Saloon with its Axminster carpet designed to complement the ceiling. This photo was taken in 2019 following extensive conservation and cleaning work, hence, the chandeliers and some of the pictures have yet to be rehung. What follows are photos of details in the ceiling taken from the scaffolding that filled this room in 2017.
A Reynolds portrait of John Parker III as a child with his sister - in the Red Room hanging alongside Old Master copies
Saltram has an impressive collection of eighteenth-century Chinese wall coverings in the bedrooms.
John Foulston's Library of 1819 with its scagliola ionic columns
The 1725 design for a new house at Saltram or Boringdon, by William Kent or one of his circle, for Catherine and John Parker I. The influence of this scheme can be seen in the south façade as built (see photo at the top of this post)
The West and East facades as built in a Palladian idiom
Comments
Post a Comment