Stourhead’s Temple Makeover

Some time ago, I wrote about the use of Stourhead Gardens in the 2005 Pride & Prejudice. The Wiltshire garden’s Temple of Apollo, made famous by the rainy encounter between Elizabeth and Darcy, will soon be remodeled in an effort to restore it to it’s original 1765 appearance. The £290,000 project, funded by the National Trust and the Wolfson Foundation, will also repair some leaks and damages.

The temple was built in 1765 by Henry Hoare as his finishing touch to the famous landscape garden.

It was designed by Henry Flitcroft and influenced by an engraving of a circular temple at Baalbec, an ancient Syrian city now part of the Lebanon, and the Temple of the Sun at Kew Gardens, which was destroyed in 1916. . .

But over the last 10 years the roof has deteriorated and now the zinc covering leaks, the wooden timbers are rotting, internal plasterwork is covered with green algae and there is extensive water damage to the stonework at the top of the temple.

Since no drawings survive of the original edifice, designers will use plans from Kew Garden’s Temple of the Sun, which influenced the look of Hoare’s Temple, as well as an 1801 description of the Temple by the Rector of Stourton:

Rev Warner’s letter states: “The roof of the Temple spreads into a dome and has a double ceiling; in the lower is the aperture, and in the coving of the other, a splendid gilt representation of the Solar Rays, which, receiving the real light of this orb by an artful construction, throws into the Temple below a most splendid reflection when the sun is in its strength.”

The work is expected to be done by February 2010, so I doubt there is any chance now to see the Temple as it appeared in the movie.

You can read the rest of Guardian article here.

~ by Lady Ashley on July 5, 2009.