Identification and description | |||||
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Name | THE ROYAL PAVILION, BRIGHTON | ||||
Location |
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Localisation | Latitude: 50.822719 Longitude: -0.13806552 National Grid Reference: TQ 31244 04227 Map: Download a full scale map (PDF) |
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Overview | Heritage Category: Park and Garden Grade: II List Entry Number: 1000205 Date first listed: 25-Mar-1987 |
Gardens surrounding the Royal Pavilion, re-created during the 1980s and early 1990s,
originally designed for King George IV by John Nash and laid out between about 1816
and 1825 during construction of the Pavilion.
HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT
In 1786, the Prince of Wales took the lease on Thomas Read Kemp's farmhouse on the
site of the present Royal Pavilion. Between 1795 and 1802, while in partnership with
John Nash, Humphry Repton (1752-1818) carried out landscape work in the Pavilion grounds
for which he was paid £264. The nature of the work is not certain. From 1802 until
1816, the Prince acquired the land which forms the present Royal Pavilion estate.
Repton was invited to advise on the site again in November 1805. His Designs for the
Pavillion at Brighton, presented in the form of a Red Book, included illustrated proposals
both for an Indian-style pavilion and gardens, but neither was executed. The Royal
Stables and Riding School (now the Dome and Corn Exchange) were completed by 1808.
John Nash built the Royal Pavilion in its present form between 1815 and 1822, and
laid out the gardens simultaneously.
After King George IV's death in 1830, William IV continued to use the Pavilion as
a royal residence but Queen Victoria was an infrequent visitor and eventually, in
1847(8, had the contents of the Pavilion removed to London or sold. The building survived
a government proposal for its demolition and the whole estate was purchased by the
town in 1850 to be used as public assembly rooms and gardens. Restoration of its Regency
interiors by Brighton Council began formally in October 1950, following the centenary
commemorations of the purchase of the Pavilion.
Virtually nothing of Nash's layout survived to the present day. In 1982, in conjunction
with a complete refurbishment of the Pavilion, the re-creation of Nash's 1826 layout
for the grounds, using documented sources and contemporary plant species, was begun.
Restoration works to the gardens in the western boundary area will be completed around
the year 2000, in conjunction with refurbishment of the Dome, Corn Exchange and Museum.
DESCRIPTION
LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING The Royal Pavilion estate lies adjacent
to the west side of the Steine, Brighton's main, central thoroughfare, and some 300m
inland from the seafront. Its 3.3ha are bounded on the Steine by a composition-stone
balustrade. This was designed by the Superintendent of Parks, Capt B H MacLaren, in
1921 and constructed several metres inside the line of the C18 boundary to allow for
the Steine to be widened. Several of the elm trees formerly growing inside the estate
survive now as street trees in the Steine's pavement. The boundary balustrade replaced
C19 iron railings on top of a bank, which in turn replaced the C18 estate wall and
shrubbery. A section of the railings survive as the estate boundary at the south end
of the Pavilion in Palace Place.
The estate boundary to the south consists of largely C20 office buildings which replaced
William IV's dormitories and Nash's kitchen court with its water tower, both demolished
in the C19. The present estate boundary and its shrubbery, several metres inside that
of the C19 line, was probably established in the early C20.
To the west, the estate is bounded by a low wall and a wide belt of dense shrubbery
which screens the gardens from New Road. Although the plant content has changed, the
shrubbery is a surviving feature of Nash's layout. New Road was constructed and opened
within the first decade of the C19, replacing the length of East Street which ran
immediately past the main entrance front of the Pavilion and which the Prince had
received permission to close.
On the north side, the gardens are enclosed by the Corn Exchange, the Dome and the
Museum, which form part of the estate of the Royal Pavilion.
The eastern lawns are level and lie some 0.5(0.8m below the pavement level of the
Steine. The ground rises across the site towards New Road in a series of gentle undulations.
Even when newly constructed, the setting of the Pavilion and its estate was, as now,
enclosed within the built-up centre of the town.
ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES The main entrances to the gardens are, as they were in the
late C18 and early C19, through the North and South Gates. Subsidiary entrances from
New Road and Princes Place have been developed since the estate came into public ownership.
A pedestrian gate also leads from Palace Place onto the path around the eastern lawns.
The main carriage drive, re-created between 1984 and 1987 to Nash's design, enters
at the North Gate, loops in a westerly direction to a junction with the drive to the
Dome (the Stables) before curving south-eastward to arrive at the grassed turning
ellipse and pass under the Pavilion's porte-cochère. The purchase plan of 1850 shows
the drive already grassed over and the ellipse with a hard surface.
The North Gate (listed grade II) was built by Joseph Good for William IV (probably
after a design by Nash). Nash's 1826 plan shows the north entrance marked by a pair
of lodges further west on Church Street but the construction of the North Gate in
1832 appears to have re-established the route of the former public road (East Street)
as the main approach to the Pavilion. This remained in use until 1992 when the lawns
were re-laid up to the Pavilion frontage. The present South Gate (listed grade II)
is the third gate to have been built in this position, Good having been responsible
for the second in 1831/2. This was replaced in 1921 by Thomas Tyrwhitt's memorial
gate commemorating the Indian soldiers tended in the Pavilion, which served as a hospital
during the First World War.
PRINCIPAL BUILDING The Royal Pavilion (listed grade I) stands centrally within its
gardens, its principal east elevation framed by trees and shrubbery but otherwise
open to full view from the Steine. Its western elevation forms, with the Stables and
Riding School buildings, a strong three-dimensional composition of which Nash's garden
design is an integral part.
In 1787, the architect Henry Holland (1745-1806) created the new Marine Pavilion by
adding a central saloon and a new north wing to balance the original farmhouse, which
was incorporated as the south wing. Holland's practice carried out further major additions
to the Pavilion between 1801 and 1803. John Nash demolished some of Holland's previous
additions to construct the present Pavilion which was virtually complete (externally
at least) by 1822. The architect William Porden (1755-1822) designed and constructed
the Stables and the Riding House (listed grade I) between 1802 and 1808. The Stables
were extended eastwards in the early 1830s by Joseph Good. This wing and the building
on Church Street were re-modelled for a library and museum in 1877 and altered to
their present appearance in 1901. The Dome's porte-cochère, extending into the gardens,
was added at this time.
GARDENS For the Pavilion grounds, Nash designed a picturesque layout of serpentine
walks and drives, sinuous flowery shrubberies and trees dotted casually over open
lawns. It is illustrated in his Views of the Royal Pavilion published in 1826.
With the exception of the remnant of the Quakers' Croft elm avenue inside the western
boundary, a large, hollow elm and possibly a few elms on the southern boundary, nothing
has survived of this layout of the early 1820s. A purchase plan of the estate dated
1850 and the 1st edition OS map of 1875 both confirm the garden's existence, showing
extensive shrubberies, largely in positions which match the location, if not the exact
form, of those shown on Nash's plan. The surviving garden accounts (PRO) confirm the
quantities of materials and plants brought in and the progress of the work. Subsequent
OS editions show the gradual reduction in the number of shrubberies although much
of their tree content survived until the resurgence of Dutch elm disease in the 1970s
and the great storm of 1987. The present layout and planting of the gardens represents
a re-creation of Nash's 1826 plan, modified where site boundary changes have occurred
and incorporating subsequent established features and uses.
The lawns to the east and north-east of the Pavilion are enclosed by a perimeter walk
below the balustrade whose configuration and associated group of three pools opposite
the saloon mirror the ground plan of the Pavilion. The east lawn is the oldest part
of the garden. Part of the Steine was enclosed by the Prince in the late C18 to extend
the lawn, which was laid out in c 1802 with a perimeter carriage drive and boundary
shrubbery by Samuel Lapidge (c 1740-1806). Mixed deciduous and evergreen shrubberies,
replanted between 1984 and 1987, now surround the east lawn and frame the Pavilion
as Nash intended. Several new tree groups dot the open grass.
The perimeter walk skirts the northern boundary, meeting the pedestrian and vehicle
entrances at the North Gate. The north-east lawn was the last to be purchased, in
1816. The walk strikes a serpentine route south towards the Pavilion, through shrubberies
with mixed herbaceous planting which reveal and conceal the Pavilion. All the walks
and drives are lit with C19 lamp standards and lanterns (listed grade II) and are
surfaced with a rolled gravel dressing to restore an early C19 appearance. Lawn and
bed edges are protected by low, hooped iron rails, a feature introduced to the site
probably in the late C19.
Most of the land to the west of the Pavilion was acquired by the Prince between 1802
and 1806. He purchased the 'Dairy Field' (which he had leased in 1795 to prevent building
on the Pavilion's west entrance front), properties on the north side on Church Street
and Marlborough Row, the Brighthelmstone Promenade Grove (in the middle of the estate)
and Quakers' Croft burial ground (parallel to New Road) with its avenue of elm trees.
The shrubbery belt enclosing the western boundary provides privacy from the public
road and a setting for the present cafe, established in c 1955. Quakers' Croft elm
avenue terminates the lawns to the west. It consists of elms at present, all probably
replantings of the C18 avenue.
The central western lawn, defined by the carriage drive, forms the setting for the
King's private apartments. Four extensive, sinuous shrubberies, with a high proportion
of seasonal, herbaceous perennials, annuals and bulbs border the lawn, framing views
both to and from the loggia. The shrubberies are planted to accord with Regency principles
as advised by Henry Phillips, a local early C19 horticultural writer and landscape
gardener. Grass is allowed to grow to c 150mm to imitate natural, woodland-edge scenery.
A further walk from the Pavilion, past re-created shrubberies and C19 elm and oak
trees, leads along the southern boundary to the exit to New Road. The estate's icehouse
was located in this extreme south-west corner, its underground chambers shown on a
site plan dated 1849.
REFERENCES
J Nash, Views of the Royal Pavilion (1826) Victoria History of the County of Sussex
VII, (1940), pp 249-51 D Stroud, Humphry Repton (1962), pp 105, 138, 145 Country Life,
175 (26 April 1964), pp 1152-4 I Nairn and N Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Sussex
(1965), pp 438-43 C Musgrave, Life in Brighton (1970), pp 93-7, 123-43, 157-71 J Morley,
The Making of the Royal Pavilion (1984), pp 31-40, 49-65, 67-76 M Batey, Regency Gardens
(1985), pp 59-71 The Royal Pavilion, guidebook, (Brighton Borough Council 1995) Garden
History 24, no 1 (1996), pp 45-53
Maps Anon, Brighton in 1779 (Brighton Reference Library)
[The following items are all held in the Royal Pavilion Archive.] J Nash, Plan of
the Royal Pavilion Estate, (from Views of the Royal Pavilion,1826) J Marchant, Brighton
from an Actual Survey, 1808 Royal Pavilion, Brighton, and Grounds Belonging Thereto,
1849 Pike & Imvey, Brighton from the Latest Survey, 1867 Borough Surveyor, Plan of
the Pavilion Estate, 1937 Plan of the estate from Nash's Views, annotated to show
land purchase dates, nd
OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1880 2nd edition published 1899 3rd edition
published 1912 4th edition published 1932 5th edition published 1938 OS 25" to 1 mile:
1st edition surveyed 1875 2nd edition published 1898 OS 1:500: published 1876
Illustrations J & J Ford, Images of Brighton (1981), Gallery of Prints, nos 381(91
and 503(54
Archival items An Abstract of the Expenses of the Royal Gardens from 1809 (LS11/1/XC000480),
(PRO)
Description written: July 1998 Register Inspector: VCH Edited: March 2000
This garden or other land is registered under the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act 1953 within the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens by Historic England for its special historic interest.