Hawksmoor's Mausoleum
And the Pesky Neo-Palladians
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During our visit to Castle Howard recently, we admired the view of the Mausoleum by Nicholas Hawksmoor - a private burial place for the Howard family which is nearly one mile from the house and not accessible to the public (unless on a pre-booked tour). It was built at the suggestion of John Vanbrugh, who knew all about the overcrowding of London’s cemeteries and regarded burying people in churches as an ‘inhuman custom’. If a person had money - he argued - the thing to do was to erect a freestanding mausoleum in an area of open ground.
The 3rd Earl of Carlisle heartily agreed, writing in his will:
I do design to build a burial place near my seat of Castle Howard, where I desire to be lay’d … placed upon Lody Hill over against ye Hill where ye two high Beaches stand whereby it may be an ornament to ye Seat.1
However, this splendid plan was not without problems, the chief of which was Vanbrugh’s death in 1726 - in the end, Hawskmoor produced the design instead. He drew inspiration from classical examples, such as the Tomb of Caecilia Metella outside Rome (known as the Capo di Bove), and the results so impressed Horace Walpole that he thought it was the kind of building which ‘would tempt one to be buried alive’.
Sadly, not everybody shared Walpole’s enthusiasm. Those Pesky Neo-Palladians - Sir Thomas Robinson and the Earl of Burlington - were prominent complainers, with Burlington pedantic enough to point out that there was no antique precedent for the intercolumnation proposed by Hawksmoor.2 Robinson soon chimed in with ‘helpful’ advice, and then, in November 1732, cracks started to appear in the structure. Hawksmoor - now around 71 and suffering from gout - was distressed by this development, which was magnified by further meddling from Robinson and Burlington. Hawksmoor’s poor state of health prevented him from travelling to Yorkshire and he had to rely on reports from the supervisor of the project, William Etty, who then compounded matters by dying.
Happily, before his death, Etty did manage to correct the errors in the workmanship which had caused the cracks and things were looking more positive for the Mausoleum. But time had run out for the ‘learned and ingenious’ Hawksmoor, who died on March 27th 1736, leaving the field wide open for Robinson to weigh-in with Lord Carlisle and suggest alterations to Hawksmoor’s design. By August, Robinson was in the thick of meddlesome interventions which resulted in the free-stranding structure being marred by steps (modelled on some at Burlington’s villa at Chiswick). It’s a shame that Hawskmoor’s work was altered - but this is hardly surprising, given that Robinson was also responsible for building the classical wing on the side of Castle Howard which (IN MY OPINION) spoils the symmetry of Vanbrugh’s building.
With Castle Howard’s Mausoleum largely inaccessible, you might be wondering how you can get a closer look at Hawksmoor’s design. Well, you could either get some binoculars or you could visit the Rievaulx Terrace in Helmsley, North Yorkshire, where there are two temples - one of which is a smaller, squatter version of Hawskmoor’s Mausoleum. As well as roaming about to your heart’s content, you can visit a splendid Ionic temple at the other end of the terrace with Baroque frescoes inside by the Italian painter and architect, Giuseppe Mattia Borgnis. (There are also some very rare gilded sofas by William Kent on display.)
However, with Castle’s Howard’s impressive and worthwhile 21st-century Renaissance project now open to the public, the best option would be to time your visit to coincide with a formal tour of the Mausoleum (assuming that there are some planned). According to an episode of the Country House podcast I heard recently, the indefatigable Howards have the Mausoleum in their sights as the next major restoration project - we will undoubtedly be hearing more about this monument in the future.
Quoted in Charles Saumarez Smith, The Building of Castle Howard (London: 1997), p. 168.
Ibid., p. 179.