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September 2010
 
The Georgian Group
 
 
 

Most of these events are open only to members of the Georgian Group. Join the Georgian Group to receive a booking form. Asterisked events are open to all. If you are not a member and wish to attend one of these events, please book online or alternatively e-mail us to check availability and then send a cheque for the required amount to The Georgian Group, 6 Fitzroy Square, London W1T 5DX.
2nd-6th September 2010
Country Weekend / Jersey


from £550

Join us for an exclusive late-summer tour of Jersey, taking in the best of the island’s varied architecture, from grand Seigneurial manors and Regency county houses through the best town and vernacular buildings, all the way down to La Caumine, the exquisite whitewashed Georgian guardhouse that commands St Ouen’s Bay.   

Among the highlights will be privileged visits to private houses such as Seafield, by Nash’s contemporary Robert Lugar; La Maison de la Fontaine, with its magnificent library inspired by Thomas Hope; Rozel Manor, with its wonderful maritime gardens and chapel with Millais stained glass; and the great houses of Trinity and St Ouen, where the Senior Seigneur, Philip Malet de Carteret, will host us.

And courtesy of the National Trust for Jersey, we shall have a private view of recent restoration projects, including a preview of the just-finished work on a fine Georgian townhouse in St Helier.

Please book early to secure your place on this trip to a truly exotic part of the British Isles that combines natural beauty with fascinating architecture.         

For further information and full booking details contact Michael Bidnell, 020 7529 8928.

9th September 2010
Yorkshire Country Visit / Wentworth Woodhouse and Wentworth Castle



‘Inaccessible as Lhasa’, wrote John Martin Robinson of Wentworth Woodhouse in his recent autobiography Grass Seed in June. The owner has been exceptionally kind in allowing us a return visit, following our highly successful trip in 2007, thus giving us another opportunity to see one of the finest pairs of Georgian country houses in the country - palatial Wentworth Woodhouse and its neighbour, Wentworth Castle, the latter built almost in a fit of pique by Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, after he was thwarted in his desire to inherit the family estate at Wentworth Woodhouse.  His extraordinary creation – part Baroque, part Palladian – sets off a stunning designed landscape with no fewer than twenty-six listed buildings. Patrick Eyres, one of the masterminds of the recent restoration, will be our guide. Wentworth Woodhouse, designed by Flitcroft for the first Marquess of Rockingham, has (at 600ft) the longest domestic façade in the country and riches including a fine Carr of York stable block. The house passed to the 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, who embellished the building, creating one of the finest Georgian interiors in England centring on a magnificent great hall. Its surrounding park was also a gem until devastated by open-cast coal mining in the late 1940s. After an uncertain period in the late twentieth century, it is now back in private hands and undergoing a carefully-planned renaissance.  

15th September 2010
Buckinghamshire Country Visit / Fawley Court and Temple Island



Fawley Court, set in grounds running down to the Thames at Henley, is about to become a private home again after years in institutional use. The new owner has kindly allowed us a preview of a fascinating house, with a complex history, that is currently undergoing expert analysis prior to restoration. Fawley was completely rebuilt in 1684 and there is a tentative attribution to Wren. What is certain is the involvement of James Wyatt, who worked on decorations in new rooms in the house (1770–71). He also designed a folly and fishing lodge on Temple Island, which we shall visit courtesy of its owners, Henley Royal Regatta.

21st September 2010
Lecture / Designing by measure: Sir Christopher Wren and St Paul's Cathedral*

6 Fitzroy Square W1
6.30pm, £10

book now

Sir Christopher Wren’s resolve in 1675 'to make no more Models, or publickly expose his Drawings' just before the start of work on St Paul’s Cathedral has left a confused legacy. As there are no dated designs until Wren brought a set of drawings to the Rebuilding Commission in 1700 and had them engraved, there is no obvious chronology for the changes he made to the so-called Warrant Design approved by Charles II.  When did he add the two-storey western body and the screen walls, and how did he develop the remarkable sloping inner drum of the dome?  It used to be thought that Wren finalised the whole design up to the peristyle of the dome before the start of work, but recent research on the drawings from Wren’s office has shown that he proceeded by stages, delaying decisions about the west end and dome until work was about to begin. In this lecture, Gordon Higgott will explain how Wren’s design methods at St Paul’s were tailored to his system of payment for masonry construction ‘by measure’.

23rd September 2010
Rutland Country Visit / Burley on the Hill and Exton Park



A rare opportunity to visit Burley on the Hill, built for the 2nd Earl of Nottingham in the 1690s, possibly with Wren’s involvement; with its impressive scale, characteristic H plan and cour d’honneur, it is one of the most ambitious aristocratic ensembles of the late seventeenth century.  In the afternoon we visit nearby Exton, seat of the Earl of Gainsborough.  Though largely Victorian, the house has fine eighteenth century contents and a delightful 1788 Gothick fishing lodge, Fort Henry. Also included on the itinerary are the churches at Burley and Exton, the latter containing first-rank monuments by Gibbons and Nollekins. Pub lunch included.

28th September 2010
Evening Concert / Indomitable, inconsolate*

6 Fitzroy Square W1
7.30pm, £20

book now

An evening of extraordinary passions in the company of Handel's mad women. Acclaimed for his `risk-taking performances' and `captivating expressivity', Christopher Suckling launches his new ensemble 'Abbandonata' in the company of the `vivid and moving' Sarah Gabriel and `penetrating and ethereal' Oliver Gerrish. The fury of Armida, Lucrezia and Orlando will be tempered by the Apollonian muse of Corelli and a complimentary glass of prosecco.

29th September 2010
London Visit / St Paul’s Cathedral – behind the scenes



A tour of the entire cathedral guided by Gordon Higgott, an expert on Wren and for many years English Heritage historic buildings inspector for the City of London, as well as a member of the London Diocesan Advisory Committee for the conservation of churches.  After looking at the evidence for the pre-Fire cathedral restored by Inigo Jones, we will follow the route taken by eighteenth-century tourists, climbing the Geometrical Staircase to view the west triforium, the Library, Wren’s Great Model and First Model in the Trophy Room, and ascending the dome via the Whispering Gallery while pausing to consider Wren’s structural solutions at several levels. After lunch (self-service, not inc) in the Norman crypt at St Mary-le-Bow we return to see the Cathedral’s crypt, the choir, the crossing and the western chapels.

 
 
   
   
     

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