SAHGB Publications Limited The Villas and Town Houses of Joseph Pickford of Derby (1736-82) Author(s): Edward Saunders Source: Architectural History, Vol. 27, Design and Practice in British Architecture: Studies in Architectural History Presented to Howard Colvin (1984), pp. 308-319 Published by: SAHGB Publications Limited Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1568473 . Accessed: 12/06/2014 14:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . SAHGB Publications Limited is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Architectural History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.44.78.143 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 14:42:11 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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SAHGB Publications Limited
The Villas and Town Houses of Joseph Pickford of Derby (1736-82)Author(s): Edward SaundersSource: Architectural History, Vol. 27, Design and Practice in British Architecture: Studies inArchitectural History Presented to Howard Colvin (1984), pp. 308-319Published by: SAHGB Publications LimitedStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1568473 .
Accessed: 12/06/2014 14:42
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
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The villas and town houses of Joseph Pickford of Derby (i736-82) by EDWARD SAUNDERS
Joseph Pickford was probably the first London-trained architect to establish a practice in the East Midlands. He moved up to Derby about 1760, when he is first recorded working on the building of Foremark Hall, as an agent for the architect, David Hiorne of Warwick.1 He quickly established himself in the area and two years later married Mary, the daughter of Thomas Wilkins, the principal agent of Wenman Coke of Longford Hall.2 It was probably his marriage as much as anything that persuaded him to set up a business in Derbyshire, as he now had local connections and in-laws who could introduce him to potential clients. Henceforward he ran a business both in Derby and in London, but as the years passed his contracts in the Midlands became the major part of his work and, though he inherited property in London, he finally made Derby his home.
Pickford was not a Londoner by birth. His father, William Pickford, was a Warwickshire mason who acted as an agent for Francis Smith and moved about the country as the work dictated. In consequence there is no record ofJoseph's baptism in the Warwick parish registers, but we do know from other sources that he was born in 1736. By 1748 William Pickford was dead,3 and so it was that Joseph passed into the care of his uncle Joseph Pickford, a mason contractor with a yard near Hyde Park Corner. Joseph Pickford senior ran a very successful business and tendered to the leading architects of the day, as well as working on his own account as a monumental mason.4 For many years he had worked at Holkham Hall under William Kent, and after Kent's death he continued to work for his pupil Stephen Wright. Indeed, his relationship with Wright was such that he named him as executor of his will.5 Pickford lived and worked with his uncle for about ten years, training first as a mason and later as an architect. As his uncle worked for the great Palladian architects, so their influence formed the style of the nephew. One building which he must have seen rise stone by stone was the University Library at Cambridge, by the architect Stephen Wright. Joseph Pickford senior as the contractor worked there from 1754 to 1758, when Joseph was at his most impressionable age.
Another architect to have a great influence on Pickford was Sir William Chambers. Not only did Pickford work directly for him, but he later established a personal relationship with two of his pupils, a friendship which was to stand him in good stead
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THE VILLAS AND TOWN HOUSES OFJOSEPH PICKFORD OF DERBY 309
later on. Pickford's relationship with Sir William Chambers seems to have been purely contractual. John Harris tells us that Joseph Pickford worked for Chambers on Lord Clive's house, Berkeley Square, in 1763-67. Another of Chambers's London designs, the Lutheran Chapel in the Savoy, 1766-67, seems to have made a great impression on Pickford as a few years later he reproduced a near copy of the main elevation for the Moot Hall at Wirksworth, Derbyshire. James Pickford, probably one of Joseph's cousins, was the mason for the Lutheran Chapel.6 James Gandon (1743-1823) and Edward Stevens (c. 1744-75) probably first met Pickford at Chambers's office in the early 1760s and were linked with another mutual friend, the painter Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-97).7 Thomas Mozley, who knew (and heartily detested) Joseph Pick- ford's eldest son, the Reverend Joseph Pickford,8 said of the father that he had been the intimate friend of Joseph Wright and John Whitehurst, the Derby clockmaker and amateur geologist. John Whitehurst we know introduced Pickford to Josiah Wedg- wood, a meeting that led to the building of Etruria Hall. The only known connection between Pickford and Wright is the portrait Wright painted of Pickford's children, but there is no reason to doubt Mozley's claim. Gandon included Pickford's designs for Sandon Hall in the second volume of the continuation of Vitruvius Britannicus which he published in 1771, and further proof of their association came when Pickford acted as contractor for the building of the Nottingham County Hall to Gandon's designs in 1770. Edward Stevens knew both Pickford andJoseph Wright. His principal commis- sion was Doveridge Hall, Derbyshire, designed for Sir Henry Cavendish about I769.9 In October 1770 Thomas Mottershaw of Derby promised to carry a message to Pickford from Josiah Wedgwood, but stated he was unable 'to call at Doveridge and have not had an opportunity of seeing Mr. Pickford before to-day'. 10 This seems to indicate that Pickford was the contractor for Doveridge Hall. In 1774 Stevens went to Italy to study, but was taken ill almost immediately and died in Rome in June 1775. Wright himself went to Italy in 1775 and Stevens it would appear was to have assisted him to settle in, as Wright mentions 'poor Stevens' in a letter of 24July, 1775 written to Ozias Humphry from Parma.11
Joseph Pickford was neither a great architect, nor a leader of fashion. His contribu- tion to architecture was to raise the level of provincial design and to show what could be achieved with modest means. His main commissions were the villas and town houses discussed here, though he did design at least one church, St Mary's Birmingham, and one public building, the Moot Hall, Wirksworth. Both have now gone, but fortunately the architect's drawings for the Moot Hall have survived, and show it to have been an excellent small-scale civic building, as well proportioned and detailed as any in London.
A study of Pickford's houses shows that the details he used were in no way original. The Venetian and Diocletian windows set in blank arches or arranged in groups under pediments were the common stock in trade of all the leading Palladian architects. Pickford's contribution though not dramatic, was important in the context in which he worked. First, by controlling the manufacture of the stone surrounds, pediments and balustrades he was able to raise the level of appreciation of detail among his provincial masons. Venetian windows were common enough in Derbyshire before Pickford came, but after Pickford the coarseness of the detail in what had gone before was plain
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310o ARCHITECTURE AND ITS ORGANIZATION IN THE PROVINCES
for all to see. Secondly, Pickford had the innate sense of proportion that all good architects must possess. He brought to the design of small houses an ingenuity in the spacing of the windows and the relationship between the solid wall and the void which those who preceded him had failed to understand. After Pickford the rule of thumb methods adopted by the country builders were no longer good enough. The country gentry were quick to realize that good proportions and refinement of detail added dignity to their houses without of necessity adding to the expense of building. In short, he helped to bring about a new awareness which raised the general level of architectural appreciation among potential clients and the building tradesmen of the East Midlands.
The earliest of Pickford's surviving houses would seem to be 61 Church Street, Ashbourne. There are in Ashbourne three houses that can reasonably be attributed to Joseph Pickford; 61 Church Street, built for Brian Hodgson, the Beresford town house in the Compton, now Lloyd's bank, and alterations to the Mansion of DrJohn Taylor. It is also possible that he worked on Ashbourne Hall for Brooke Boothby, but the house was demolished before the war and such photographs as we have are inconclu- sive.
No building accounts have survived for any of the three houses, but we do know that Pickford was working at Longford, not five miles from Ashbourne, when he married in 1762,12 and it is reasonable to suppose that his father-in-law, Thomas Wilkins, as agent to Wenman Coke, would have introduced him to potential clients in the area. Indeed, an item in Pickford's account book for the Derby Assembly Rooms seems to bear this out: 'March 19th 1763. Pd. John Harris's expences going to the quarry and comeing to Ashborn for me.... '13
Of the three houses in Ashbourne it would seem most likely that Pickford was working at 61 Church Street in 1763. The Beresford town house is identical in design to 44 Friar Gate, Derby, which we know was not built till after 1768. The Beresford House may have preceded the house in Friar Gate, but a reasonable date for both would be about 1770.
The Mansion we do know a little more about because of Dr Taylor's close friendship with Dr Samuel Johnson.14 We know Taylor's second wife ran away in 1763 and in May 1764 Johnson wrote to congratulate him 'upon the happy end of so vexatious an affair', and suggested he might divert himself with the 'improvement of your estate or little schemes of building'. In July 1765 Johnson wrote again to his friend referring in the letter 'to all your building and feasting'. Arthur Oswald, who has discussed the history of the house in some detail (Country Life, 28 March 1968), concluded that the two facades facing each other in Church Street were clearly by the same architect. Oswald assumed that the Mansion House was the earlier, but in the light of the new evidence it would seem to be the other way round.
The Hodgson house is one of a number Pickford designed with the same combina- tion of windows in the central bay, the most notable being Ogston Hall, Derbyshire, for which his designs of 1767 still exist, 15s though the house itself was refronted in 1864. The arrangement consists of a pedimented front door with lights either side, a Venetian window to the first floor and a Diocletian window to the second all grouped together under a pediment. The idea seems to have been taken from Stivichall Hall, Warwick- shire, a house built by Henry Flitcroft in 1755 but now demolished. The design of the
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THE VILLAS AND TOWN HOUSES OFJOSEPH PICKFORD OF DERBY 3I
Hodgson house is greatly improved by the two-storey canted bays flanking the front door. As far as I know this is the only occasion on which Pickford used this form, though he had proposed to use similar canted bays at Keele Hall, Staffordshire, in 1762,16 where his designs were not accepted. Inside, there are other features suggesting the work of Pickford. The plan form is similar to his own house in Derby, consisting of a square entrance hall with reception rooms right and left and the staircase in a compartment at the rear opening off the entrance hall. The coffered ceiling in the drawing room is similar in form to the ceiling in the library at St Helen's House, Derby, though the ornamental plasterwork is greatly inferior. Although among the earliest of Pickford's executed designs the Hodgson house is one of his most successful street faCades. The grey stone perfectly matches the Elizabethan grammar school next to it, each complementing the other and showing how buildings of different centuries can stand together in harmony.
Directly opposite to the Hodgson house stands the Mansion, formerly the home of Dr John Taylor. It was, until Taylor set about remodelling it, a typical seventeenth-century house with gables front and back, 'U' shaped on plan, with the open end of the 'U' facing the garden. Taylor did the work in two or three phases; first he refronted the street facade, next he added an octagon room facing the garden, and finally he remodelled the entrance hall and staircase. It has been suggested that Dr Taylor was put out of countenance by the Hodgson house and determined to better his neighbour. If so Brian Hodgson had the last laugh. The Mansion's street facade, although similar in form to the Hodgson house has none of its neighbour's style. The sombre red brick does not compare with the stonework opposite. Perhaps Dr Taylor regretted it himself, because when he came to build the octagon room he chose the same stone that Brian Hodgson had used. The dating of the octagon room is uncertain, but it was in place when Dr Johnson visited his friend in September 1777. Boswell himself was present on that occasion and records a proposal to celebrate Johnson's birthday by lighting the chandelier in the octagon room. However, the doctor had a 'horror' of such occasions and 'would not have the lustre lit' on his account. 17 The room itself is an elegant solution to a difficult problem. The form chosen fits perfectly into the projecting wings of the old house, the part of the octagon seen from the garden being in the form of a canted bay with a pedimented door in the centre and steps down to the ground level. The general detailing and the palladian rococo plasterwork in the segments of the dome suggest a date of about the same time or slightly later than the front. The alterations to the entrance hall can be dated with certainty as the work was in progress duringJohnson's last visit to Ashbourne in 1784.1is By then Pickford had been dead for two years so the rather weak neo-classical design cannot be credited to him. The most likely candidate for the architect would be Pickford's former assistant, Thomas Gardner, who by this time had set up on his own in Uttoxeter, a market town some ten miles distant from Ashbourne.
Without doubt Pickford's best surviving building is St Helen's House in Derby, which he built for Thomas Gisborne about 1765. The final confirmation that Pickford was the architect came from a very curious source, the diary of Giannantonio Selva, a Venetian architect who visited England in 1781. We are not told how Selva obtained an introduction to Pickford, but we do know that he called upon him on his journey south
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312 ARCHITECTURE AND ITS ORGANIZATION IN THE PROVINCES
from Manchester. Clearly Selva was impressed by the Derby architect who took him to see St Helen's House. Selva makes no mention of Pickford's own house in Friar Gate, so we must assume that Pickford too thought St Helen's House his best work, or at least the work in Derby which he was proudest to acknowledge. Selva noted in his diary that Pickford had never been to Italy as if he was surprised to find an English provincial builder who was capable of designing a facade that would not have been out of place in the streets of Vicenza, for such was the case. 19
Pickford's connection with another design almost identical to St Helen's House comes from the letters ofJosiah Wedgwood. In September 1768 Wedgwood suggested to his partner, Thomas Bentley, that he might contact Pickford at the 'Hams near Coleshill'. Colvin tells us that according to Burke's Visitation of Steats, Hams Hall was built for C. B. Adderley in 1764 though another authority gives the date as 1760. Whichever, Pickford certainly knew it before he began work on St Helen's House, because the two designs are almost identical. Both houses are stone fronted, seven bays wide with a 2-3-2 rhythm. In each case the three central bays are grouped under a pediment supported on Ionic pilasters carried through the two upper storeys. The ground storeys are different: at St Helen's House the windows are set in semi-circular headed recesses, at Hams Hall the wall is plain; and in several other minor details St Helen's House is the richer version.
From March 1763 till the end of May 1764 Pickford's movements are closely recorded in the account book for the Derby Assembly Rooms. At no time does he appear to have been away in Warwickshire, though journeys to Hull and elsewhere are recorded. If work on Hams Hall started at about the time the Assembly Rooms were completed it would certainly have overlapped with the building of St Helen's House, which judging from the similarity of the designs seems very likely. The probability is that Pickford was responsible for designing both Hams Hall and St Helen's House, but it is doubtful if the documentary evidence will now ever come to light.
It was in the summer of 1767 that Josiah Wedgwood first discussed his building projects with his friend John Whitehurst.20 It was Wedgwood's intention to build a new pottery works, and houses for himself, his partner Thomas Bentley and his workers on a bleak Staffordshire moor, later to be called Etruria by another mutual friend, Dr Erasmus Darwin. The following November Wedgwood came over to Derby and stayed withJohn Gisbourne, whose new house, as he said 'pleased him, but not entirely',21 and it was during this visit that Whitehurst introduced him to Joseph Pickford. At first they got on well together, so much so that in December Wedgwood wrote to his partner, 'I think to agree with Mr. Pickford to do all my building as I like the Man, and that method will save me a deal of trouble'.22
In 1767 Pickford was still relatively young and inexperienced, and was about to make a bad bargain that would take him four years to get out of. The trouble started as early asJanuary 1768 when Pickford, anxious to secure the work, assured his client, 'this will be built as cheaply as the other not withstanding the stonework and the elegance of the elevation'.23 By March Wedgwood had begun to tighten the screw. 'Mr. Pickford', he told his partner, 'had not made your estimate when he was here, but said ?400 was the least your house would cost. I told him to reduce the expence, without altering the dimensions, to ?350'.24 Wedgwood was perhaps the most astute businessman in
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THE VILLAS AND TOWN HOUSES OF JOSEPH PICKFORD OF DERBY 313
Fig. i. Etruria Hall, Staffordshire, reconstruction ofrear elevation
England and against him Pickford was at a great disadvantage. Nevertheless Pickford was clearly guilty of overoptimism when preparing his estimates. Throughout their relationship Wedgwood was always in a position to call the tune and Pickford became ever more peevish as his losses mounted. Wedgwood's description on 28 April 1772 of their final parting makes sad reading. 25
Etruria Hall, the house Pickford built for Wedgwood, was a compact five-bay dwelling built in red brick with stone dressings. A few years later Wedgwood added two wings to accommodate his growing family. In the nineteenth century the family sold the house and it eventually passed into the ownership of the Shelton Iron Company who used it as offices. It still stands today, though with haphazard additions clapped on around the outside it is a mockery of its former self. Pickford's design, by his own standards, was not inspired, but it was good of its kind, being well proportioned, all of one piece and clearly the product of an ordered mind. Many of Wedgwood's friends spoke well of the building and though the great potter had many derogatory things to say about the architect he seems to have been pleased enough with the house when it was finished. Today only the front elevation is more or less intact. This is the usual Palladian villa design in five bays with a 1-3-1 rhythm. The three central bays are grouped under a projecting pediment. The rear elevation was more interesting though very little of it has survived. This again is in five bays only this time with a 2-1-2 rhythm. The central bay is recessed like Ogston Hall, though the windows are much plainer. Inside the house no decoration has survived, only the servants' staircase which has a simple balustrade in the Chinese style. All Pickford's other buildings at Etruria have now gone. Bank House, where Thomas Bentley lived, was taken down at an early date and no detailed illustrations of it have yet been discovered.
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314 ARCHITECTURE AND ITS ORGANIZATION IN THE PROVINCES
Contemporary with the works at Etruria, Pickford designed and built Sandon Hall, Staffordshire, for Lord Archibald Hamilton, 1769-71.26 Although the house was destroyed by fire in 1858, its form is well known. Pickford's drawings still survive as well as the engraved plates in Vitruvius Britannicus, v. How Pickford came by the commission is not known, but it is of interest that Sir William Chambers also prepared designs for a new house and those by the Derby architect were preferred.27 The house, a five-bay three-storey villa with linked pavilions either side, was for Pickford probably his most ambitious design. But even here the modest stone surrounds to the link doorways were omitted in execution, and plain windows substituted, making the finished building look more like a workhouse than a residence for a gentleman. Perhaps Hamilton realized his mistake because a few years later he built on verandahs masking the doorways. It is a pity that Chambers's designs for the house have not survived, but Pickford's solution, in form at least, was very like Stevens's design for Doveridge Hall made about the same time.
In 1768 the Derby Corporation sold off part of Nun's Green for building plots. Pickford was one of the first purchasers and must have begun on his own house, now 41 Friar Gate, before 1770. Thomas Mozley describes the house of his 'chef d'ceuvre' and proof of title comes from the street directories, which show Pickford's son still living there in the 1i83os. The street facade, a variant of Sandon Hall, incorporates many features seen in previous houses; in particular the pediment with the brick voussoirs in the tympanum is identical to the Mansion at Ashbourne. The stone door casing with side lights is a more refined version of the front door of the same house without the canopy. The final flourish in Friar Gate, without which no architect's home would be complete, is the drawing instruments carved on the frieze.
Three doors up the street is another Pickford design, No. 44 Friar Gate. This is of special interest because the street facade is repeated exactly on the Beresford Town House in Ashbourne, now Llody's Bank, but whereas the Ashbourne front is in stone its Derby counterpart is in red brick. With all these houses Pickford's thought process is clear. The progression from the Diocletian window to a blank arch with a square window set in, to a series of blank arches at the Beresford house is easy to follow. The inspiration probably came from the garden front at Kedleston.
After 1772, although he lived for another ten years, Pickford seems to have built only two more houses in the Derby area that can be readily recognized today. The Hall at Long Eaton, now the council offices, dating from the mid 1770s is a typical Pickford villa design in red brick with stone dressings. In the principal room there is a fine white marble fireplace inlaid with BlueJohn identical to the fireplace formerly at Eggington Hall, Derbyshire. This is known to be by the Derby carver, George Moneypenny,28 who did excellent work at Kedleston Hall. His connection with Pickford is established as he was responsible for selling the contents of his yard after his death.29
Darley Abbey, two miles north of Derby, fell a victim to the Corporation in 1962, so that now only the park remains. The house was built in the early eighteenth century but Pickford added an elegant wing for Robert Holden in 1776.a30 It certainly caught the eye of Nikolaus Pevsner, who at the time he wrote his Derbyshire volume of The Buildings of England (I1953) had never heard of Pickford. He described the facade facing the park as 'simply Late Georgian, uncommonly well proportioned, with widely spaced
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THE VILLAS AND TOWN HOUSES OF JOSEPH PICKFORD OF DERBY 315
windows', which is as good a recommendation for the Derby architect as I have seen. NOTES
I Berkshire County Record Office, Burdett papers, Accts. AI/i. 2 Parish Register, Joint Records Office Lichfield. 3 See the will of Thomas Pickford, dated i8July 1748. Worcester CRO. 4 Rupert Gunnis, Dictionary ofBritish Sculptors, 166o-1851 (i953), p. 303. 5 PRO Prob II. October 1782. 6 John Harris, Sir William Chambers (1970), p. 229. 7 Benedict Nicolson, Joseph Wright ofDerby (1968), p. II5. 8 Thomas Mozley, Reminiscences (1882), chapter 9. 9 Colvin, Dictionary. io T. Mottershaw toJ. Wedgwood, I October 1770, Keele University MSS. II Nicolson, Joseph Wright ofDerby, p. I12. 12 Letter to Ralph Sneyd of Keele Hall, Staffs., Keele University MSS. 13 Derby Assembly Rooms Account Book. Derbyshire Records Office. 14 Boswell's Life ofjohnson (Everyman edition), II, 102ff.
15 Turbutt, Accounts and drawings, Derbyshire Records Office. 16 Specification for proposed extension to Keele Hall, for Ralph Sneyd, Keele University. 17 Boswell's Life ofjohnson, II, I I16. i8 Ibid., II, 582.
19 P. Du P rey, 'Giannantonio Selva in England', Architectural History, 25 (1982), 27-28 and pl. 20a. 20 Wedgwood to Bentley, July 1767, formerly at the Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent. 21 Ibid., December 1767. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 23 January 1768. 24 Ibid., 3 March 1768. 25 Ibid., 28 April 1772. 26 Drawings at Sandon Hall in the possession of the Earl of Harrowby. 27 Harris, Sir William Chambers, p. 245. 28 Every Accounts in the possession of SirJohn Every. 29 Derby Mercury. 30 Drawings in the Derbyshire Records Office.
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