On a height overlooking Nottingham, Wollaton Hall stands like a stage set: a compact, fantastic mass, bristling with pinnacles and turrets, crowned with a glazed high hall that seems to float above the rest. It is the most daring work of the architect Robert Smythson, built for the rich and proud Sir Francis Willoughby.
The pride of a coal man
Sir Francis Willoughby, whose fortune rested on the coal mines of Nottinghamshire, wanted, at the end of the sixteenth century, a house that would crush all others. He entrusted the project to Robert Smythson, who had already learned his craft at Longleat and who would later sign Hardwick Hall. Between 1580 and 1588 Smythson designed a house without equal: a compact, symmetrical plan, with no inner court — a radical break with tradition — dominated by an immense 'High Hall' rising above the whole building like a glazed keep. Willoughby spent without counting, blending into his house motifs borrowed from the Italian and Flemish architectural treatises of the day, notably those of Serlio and Vredeman de Vries. The stone was in part bartered for coal, the commodity in which he was rich.
A manifesto of architecture
Wollaton is less a house than a demonstration: Smythson piles up classical pilasters, pediments, caryatids, obelisks, busts and giant windows, in an exuberance verging on excess. The house asserts that the English architect can now compose as learnedly as those of the Continent — and Smythson, a rare thing for a man of his station, was recognised in his own lifetime as an 'architector', not a mere mason. Inside, the High Hall, lit by tall clerestory windows high up, formed the theatrical heart of the house, with its carved stone screen. But pride had its price: ruinous spending and family quarrels darkened Willoughby's end. Smythson, at his death, was buried in the neighbouring parish church of Wollaton, where his epitaph salutes him as 'architector and surveyor' — an early recognition of a profession then being born. Wollaton remains the most spectacular — and most extravagant — of the masterpieces of the English Renaissance.
What to see
- The theatrical silhouette, bristling with pinnacles, overlooking Nottingham.
- The central High Hall, raised and glazed, the heart of the composition.
- Smythson's exuberant Renaissance decoration (pilasters, pediments, caryatids, busts).
- The deer park surrounding the house.
Seeing it differently
Walk right around the building: unlike the courtyard houses, Wollaton gives itself to be seen from every angle, like a sculpture set on the hill — that was Smythson's very intention. Look, at the top, for the High Hall that caps the house: it was reached by concealed stairs, and it dominated the landscape like a lantern of stone. Study the façade at last: behind the accumulation of ornament, pick out the geometric rigour of the plan, a perfect square punctuated by corner towers. Wollaton is a challenge thrown at the eye: a building that means at once to dazzle by its excess and to prove its learned mastery.
Did you know?
The building of Wollaton nearly ruined its builder: Sir Francis Willoughby sank into it a huge part of his mining fortune, and the quarrels with his wife and daughters poisoned his last years. He died deep in debt, leaving a sublime house and a torn family — proof that, in Elizabethan England, the race for the finest prodigy house could cost as dear as a reign.
Notes
Wollaton Hall lies at Nottingham, in the centre of England; the house today holds a municipal natural history museum and is surrounded by a vast deer park.
Quiz
- Which architect designed Wollaton Hall?
- Robert Smythson
- Inigo Jones
- Christopher Wren
- On what wealth did Sir Francis Willoughby's fortune rest?
- The coal mines
- The wool trade
- Banking
- What crowns the silhouette of Wollaton?
- A glazed high hall (High Hall)
- A Gothic bell tower
- A gilded dome