Design
Who was the architect behind the Bellmount Tower and how was it built?
Tyrconnel would have known Sir John Vanbrugh, who had redesigned Grimsthorpe Castle in 1715 for Tyrconnel’s cousin and sister-in-law, Jane Brownlow, Duchess of Ancaster and her husband, Peregrine Bertie, later the 2nd Duke of Ancaster. Vanbrugh was a signatory on the Berties' 1711 marriage settlement. Tyrconnel was the Duke's executor.
From 1728 to 1733, Tyrconnel rented Bastille House (now Vanbrugh Castle), Maze Hill, Greenwich. Tyrconnel’s wife Eleanor was in a wheelchair from c 1725 and died in September 1729. They may have moved to the town of Greenwich, one of the genteelest and pleasantest in England for her health.
Architect Sir John Vanbrugh built the castle in 1718, modelled after the Bastille prison in Paris. There, he had been imprisoned 30 years earlier. He spent two years in its confines after an accusation of espionage. Vanbugh's widow rented the house out after his death in 1726 and would visit Tyrconnel and his first wife Eleanor. Eleanor died there on Tuesday, 15th September 1730 (Kentish Weekly Post or Canterbury Journal 16 September 1730).
Bellmount Tower with some similarity to Tyrconnel's Vanbrugh Castle, note the Venetian windows. Tyrconnel had visited Venice in 1710. Seen today left and c1738 when tenanted by the Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond (National Maritime Museum). Vanbrugh was built with a roof of lead flats to be walked on to admire the vistas from on high - as is Bellmount and Belton House.
Tyrconnel so loved the view that he bought a panoramic view of Greenwich, painted from One Tree Hill by Robert Griffier in 1729, above.
Left, a similar view today with Vanburgh Castle in the foreground and the Queen's House and Royal Naval College in the mid-ground.
The Draughtsman’s Contract?
Draughtsman Samuel Chearnley specialised in garden architecture. He collaborated with John and Henry Cheere, sculptors, when in 1747, they erected in Birr, County Offaly, a lead statue of Cumberland. The statue was beheaded in 1915, in revenge by Scottish soldiers! The Cheere brothers manufactured Belton’s own Cumberland bust. Henry carved Tyrconnel’s monument in St Peter & St Paul Church as well as that of Tyrconnel’s nephew, William Cust, in St Wulframs.
Chearnley sketched Lincolnshire monuments, and so likely visited the county. His triumphal arches and temples resemble Bellmount with hallmark balustrades and cupolas. Plausible then that Tyrconnel knew all three men. Could they have conceived Belton’s arch as an homage to Cumberland? Alas we have no firm evidence.
Two of Chearnley’s arches, the left has a spiral staircase in one pier like Bellmount. From his Miscelanea Structura Curiosa.