John Vanbrugh in Chester
On-the-ground research
With the Vanbrugh 300 celebrations just announced, I’m busy with a group biography which looks at John Vanbrugh’s theatre in London’s Haymarket. However, I’ve been fortunate to visit Chester a couple of times recently, which has given me the chance to do some on-the-ground research - my favourite part of being a biographer!
Although Vanbrugh was christened at St Nicholas Acons, London, in January 1664, his parents left the capital soon afterwards - either due to the plague or the Great Fire of London - and relocated to Chester. Truth be told, we know virtually nothing about his upbringing in this city. Nevertheless, there is clearly a relationship between Vanbrugh’s buildings and Chester’s medieval structures; in 1987, Frank McCormick thought that Chester’s influence could be seen in the walls and bastions surrounding Castle Howard, as well as the battlemented rooflines at Kimbolton Castle and the Belvedere in the grounds of the Duke of Newcastle’s estate, Claremont.1
I particularly like Laurence Whistler’s romantic description of Vanbrugh’s childhood:
I believe that his love of the picturesque and the medieval in architecture began in a city of towers with a river at its foot, ringed in a pink wall of Roman origin, and backed by the blue wall of Wales.2
I was a student in Chester and often looked at those blue hills as I trundled along the Roman wall with my shopping. However, I thought I’d begin my own investigations with a piece of factual information, namely, that Vanbrugh thought of Chester when he designed his own residence, Vanbrugh Castle in Greenwich. We know this because he told Lord Carlisle that the round tower with a conical cap (see below) was inspired by one he remembered from the walls of Chester.3
My first mission was clear: to walk a circuit of Chester’s city walls looking for the tower he mentioned. Of course, while the walls themselves are well preserved, many of the towers are either seriously worn or gone completely, so this was a somewhat vain hope. Nevertheless, I started with the Phoenix Tower (also called King Charles’s Tower) which is perhaps the best-known one today. I was not convinced that it bore much resemblance to Vanbrugh’s tower because its crenellations are broken by a plaque with the phoenix inside it. However, the information boards were useful beacause they contained artists’ impressions of the original towers (there’s also this intersting painting of the The Water Tower and Bonewaldesthorne's Tower by Francis Nicholson).
After the walls, my next stop was Chester Castle: a building which Vanbrugh would certainly have known - yet there’s not much left of the original structure today. The complex was extended with neoclassical buildings between 1788 and 1813, so I again looked to the information boards to get a sense of how it would have appeared during Vanbrugh’s lifetime. With its crenellated walls and turrets, this structure does look like an important inspiration for Vanbrugh’s medievalising architecture - especially in the 1747 engraving below.
A few weeks later, when I was back in Chester visiting family, I had time to see some other places associated with the architect. As anyone familiar with Vanbrugh’s life will know, his education is ascribed - by tradition - to the King’s School in Chester. It was founded in 1541 by King Henry VIII following the dissolution of St Werburgh’s Abbey (which became Chester Cathedral), and it was housed in the former Monastic Refectory until 1869. Visitors to the Cathedral can still pop into the refectory (now Cafe 1092) and see where Vanbrugh may have studied.
Prior to 1780, a relative - the Rev. Robert Vanbrugh - was Headmaster of the King’s School and a minor canon of the cathedral.
The other location I wanted to visit was Holy Trinity Church in Watergate Street: the place where Vanbrugh’s siblings were baptised. Here I fondly imagined some family memorials on the walls, but the church has experienced a lot of change - the original 12th-century structure was rebuilt several times, most recently between 1865 and 1869 to a gothic design by James Harrison. It closed in 1960, when it became known as the Guildhall - my father-in-law remembered it during this period and told me that it had some good things in it. However, in 2019 it was turned into a bar - we can only assume that the original church monuments are hidden behind the wall panelling.4
Frank McCormick, ‘John Vanbrugh’s Architecure: Some Sources of his Style’, Journal of the Society of Archietctural Historians (Jun 1987), vol. 46, no. 2, p. 139.
Laurence Whistler, Sir John Vanbrugh Architect & Dramatist 1664-1726, p. 21.
Kerry Downes, Sir John Vanbrugh: A Biography, p. 382.
The Vanbrugh family vault is located in St Stephen Walbrook, London, so there may be nothing of relevance here, but it’s still important to check!