Category Archives: All Posts

Highgrove’s Berninian Fabrique

Posted on September 20, 2014 by Montacute Pavilion

A new book on Highgrove arrived today, by Bunny Guinness. I was interested to see if one feature was illustrated there—the Oak Pavilion—as it does not appear in any other book and they don’t let you take photos. Indeed, it … Continue reading →

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Neo-baroque Hobbits: Wooden Architecture and Subterranean Art Deco

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Montacute Pavilion

I finally caught up with the second instalment of the Hobbit movie on Virgin flights to and from Sydney (half going and half returning). It was that or a choice of 6 Planet of the Apes movies. While I found … Continue reading →

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On Garden Sculpture: Giant Milk Crates

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Montacute Pavilion

Gardens are the acid test of sculptural genres. One popular genre is the overscaled object, such as the giant milk crate currently proposed as a public sculpture in Sydney. The Sydney Morning Herald tracked down the designer of the original … Continue reading →

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Fabriques: principles of design

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Montacute Pavilion

A fabrique is a small garden structure that has no functional purpose, but exists only to make a visual and cultural statement. (This does not preclude it having a function, but if its form is dictated by its function it … Continue reading →

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On Fabriques and Monstrous Future Ruins

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Montacute Pavilion

‘Someone, he [Austerlitz] added, ought to draw up a catalogue of types of buildings listed in order of size, and it would be immediately obvious that domestic buildings of less than normal size—the little cottage in the fields, the hermitage, … Continue reading →

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Notes on Rodmarton Manor: The Circle

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Montacute Pavilion

Kelmscott Manor is a Museum that feels like a private house, but Rodmarton Manor, curiously enough, is a private house that feels like a museum. The interiors feel oddly unlived in, even though the sofas (a sure sign of inhabited … Continue reading →

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Tim Richardson’s The New English Garden and the Personal Intellectual Garden

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Montacute Pavilion

I have just acquired Tim Richardson’s The New English Garden. One of his bugbears is that the art world won’t take gardens seriously as art, a theme he develops in the introduction. I was reminded of my own Gardens and … Continue reading →

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The Autonomous Garden

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Montacute Pavilion

The literature on gardens always comes back to the relationship with the house. The garden associated with the house forms part of living; it is a ‘lifestyle’ thing. You get up in the morning and there it is. You may … Continue reading →

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A Curious Impost Block at Iford Manor

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Montacute Pavilion

At Harold Peto’s Iford Manor by there is a neo-Romanesque pavilion called the Casita on the upper terrace. Its wonderfully weathered architrave is supported on double stone columns with fused capitals (apparently pink Verona marble dating from c. 1200) with … Continue reading →

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The Impossibility of Australian Architectural Connoisseurship

Posted on April 21, 2010 by Montacute Pavilion

‘An Australian, however well-informed, simply cannot distinguish between a piece of Trust House timbering and a genuine Tudor building; an Englishman however uncultured knows at once …’. [Evelyn Waugh to John Betjeman, cited in A.N. Wilson’s Biography of Betjeman, 2007, … Continue reading →

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