Gerrick Wittenberg
Website Essay
Burlington House
AAD202
Spring 2008
Originally framed in approximately 1665/6 for Sir John Denham, who was forced
to sell the skeleton structure and land in part due to personal difficulties associated with
his wife’s passing and also to settle outstanding debts, the house was one of three
mansions raised at roughly the same period. The building was sold to the 1st Earl of
Burlington for 3300 pounds. Relatively austere when viewed against neighboring houses
the house remained in the family mostly unchanged from completion in the 1670s until
the beginning of the 18th century.
Though the house remained in the family, the 2nd Earl died young and bequeathed
the home in trust to his only son on his twenty first birthday, in April of 1715. It is
presumed remodeling work began sometime earlier, probably between 1709 and 1713
with the hiring of Venetian painters. Major interior renovations were completed under
the direction of James Gibbs who was noted to have “made substantial alterations to the
house and forecourt, by summer of 1715.” Though the exact nature and timeline of
Gibbs contributions to Burlington house are murky, it is assumed that Gibbs can be
credited with creating the much admired colonnade and stables. Campbell later goes on
to state in the third volume of Vitruvius Britannicus 'the Stables were built by another
Architect before I had the Honour of being called to his Lordship's Service, which
obliged me to make the Offices opposite, conformable to them: The Front of the House,
the Conjunction from thence to the Offices, the great Gate and Street-Wall, were all
designed and executed by me'.
From 1717-19 it seems that financial difficulties delayed work on Campbell’s
Palladian design for Burlington house inspired heavily by his un-built “New Design for
the Earl of Isay”. Lord Burlington is traveling Italy in 1719 to survey Palladian works
firsthand and to convince William Kent to return with him to England, during this time
work begins and continues till approximately 1722, garnering significant accolades from
guests and visitors after completion.
The property was a largely symmetrical composition, using ‘free stone’ to hide
the original red brick construction. Though the exterior of the home achieved a high
level symmetry the interior was not as highly ordered due to pre-existing structure. The
columns were primarily Doric variations first used by Gibbs to create the colonnade and
later by Campbell. Campbell goes on to create his ‘great gate’ in the image of the
Triumphal arch featuring various iconographies from the Burlington lineage.
Active in politics, Lord Burlington lobbied heavily to push the Palladian style in
England. He succeeded in getting Richard Arundell appointed to the Office of the Works
as Comptroller and William Kent to the office of Master Carpenter. “By the end of 1726
the entire board of works was in the hands of men either actively in favor of Palladianism
or at least sympathetic to it.”
479 Words