89-639: Vanbrugh Castle is a house designed and built by John Vanbrugh around 1719 for his own family. It is located on Maze Hill on the eastern edge of Greenwich Park in London, to the north of Blackheath , with views to the west past the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich down to the Thames reaching as far as the Houses of Parliament . The castle was designed and built after Vanbrugh had been
178-428: A central projecting circular tower enclosing stairs capped by a conical copper roof. An arched corbel table below the moulded parapet is a feature unique to Vanbrugh at this date, also found at Kings Weston House (1710–1725). The building's narrow sash windows echo medieval arrowslits or lancets . A garden on the building's lead roof makes the most of the views over the Thames and London. Aged 55, Vanbrugh married
267-528: A charge of espionage (which Downes concludes was trumped-up) in September 1688, two months before William invaded England. Vanbrugh remained in prison in France for four and a half years, albeit in reasonable comfort. In 1691 he requested to be moved from Calais to Vincennes , at his own expense, where his treatment deteriorated enough to suffice his writing to Louis XIV , leading to his eventual transfer to
356-525: A comprehensive in 1983, when Roan Grammar School for Boys and Roan School for Girls merged with Charlton Boys School. During the first decade of the 21st century, the local council proposed to relocate the school to the Greenwich Peninsula , but, facing growing local opposition, it eventually scrapped the plans. Critics among parents and local residents argued that the current sites were good, and that money should instead be invested to refurbish
445-614: A convivial London "set of wits" but was also linking up with old friends and co-conspirators. A hero of the cause who had done time in French prison for it, could have been confident of a warm welcome. In 1703, Vanbrugh started buying land and signing backers for the construction of a new theatre, the Queen's Theatre , in Haymarket , designed by himself and managed by Vanbrugh along with Thomas Betterton and his associate William Congreve. It
534-465: A crenelated gateway, with a second gatehouse on the Dover road to the south. The house passed through various owners after Vanbrugh's death in 1726. The next owner was Robert Holford (1686–1753) with his wife Sarah (née Vanderput). The novelist Mary Anna Needell , née Lupton, was born there in 1830. Further extensions to the main house were added in the late 19th and early 20th century, but Mince-Pie House
623-506: A delegation to Hanover to confer the Order of the Garter on Prince George , later to become King George II. Vaughan Hart has shown how Vanbrugh's interest in arms and heraldry found expression in, and gave meaning to, his architecture. In 1719, at St Lawrence's Church, York (since rebuilt), Vanbrugh married Henrietta Maria Yarburgh of Heslington Hall , York, aged 26 to his 55. In spite of
712-564: A drama of sententious morality. Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift , with its reformed rake and sentimental reconciliation scene, can be seen as a forerunner of this drama. Although Vanbrugh continued to work for the stage in many ways, he produced no more original plays. With the change in audience taste away from Restoration comedy, he turned his creative energies from original composition to dramatic adaptation/translation, theatre management, and architecture. The precise reasons and motivations behind Vanbrugh's change in career remain unclear, but
801-693: A letter from the University Schools Trust stating that the Regional Schools Commissioner had nominated UST to be the preferred sponsor. Some parents organised protests, seeking to get the Ofsted report withdrawn and to halt the academisation process. Teachers also organised a series of strikes (eight up to 7 November 2018) in protest at the academisation process; over 1,000 people signed a petition and 300 families raised concerns about UST finances and suitability with
890-563: A long-running conflict between pinchpenny management and disgruntled actors came to a head and the actors walked out. A new comedy staged with the makeshift remainder of the company in January 1696, Colley Cibber 's Love's Last Shift , had a final scene that to Vanbrugh's critical mind demanded a sequel, and even though it was his first play he threw himself into the fray by providing it. Cibber's Love's Last Shift Colley Cibber's notorious tear-jerker Love's Last Shift, Or, Virtue Rewarded
979-762: A medieval style of architecture. It has been claimed that the design was based on the Bastille , where Vanbrugh had been imprisoned for over four years in his youth, and the building may have been referred to as Bastille House before it became better known as Vanbrugh Castle. Visitors from Greenwich would pass by other structures in the grounds designed and built by Vanbrugh – the Nunnery, a second smaller single-story house occupied by Vanbrugh's brother Philip ; Mince-pie House or Vanbrugh House, occupied by his brother Charles ; and later added two white towers made from patented white bricks, perhaps for his two sons – before reaching
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#17327977296511068-439: A more medieval , almost gothic , style for his own house. Built on the southwestern corner of the triangular site, it predates the first clearly Gothic Revival house at Strawberry Hill by 30 years. The main structure was finished in 1719, a three-storey square keep with basement built in brick with tall narrow windows, augmented on the south side square by three four-storey towers: two square flanking towers with battlements and
1157-568: A new play comes out on Saturday revives their reputation, they must break". That new play, The Relapse , did turn out a tremendous success that saved the company, not least by virtue of Colley Cibber again bringing down the house with his second impersonation of Lord Foppington. "This play (the Relapse )", writes Cibber in his autobiography forty years later, "from its new and easy Turn of Wit, had great Success". Vanbrugh's second original comedy, The Provoked Wife , followed soon after, performed by
1246-479: A play with a big, flamboyant part for himself: the Frenchified fop Sir Novelty Fashion. Backed up by Cibber's own uninhibited performance, Sir Novelty delighted the audiences. In the serious part of Love's Last Shift , wifely patience is tried by an out-of-control Restoration rake husband, and the perfect wife is celebrated and rewarded in a climactic finale where the cheating husband kneels to her and expresses
1335-438: A practising architect, Vanbrugh designed and worked on numerous buildings. More often than not his work was a rebuild or remodel, such as that of Kimbolton Castle , where Vanbrugh had to follow the instructions of his patron. Consequently these houses, which often claim Vanbrugh as their architect, do not best display his own architectural concepts and ideas. In the summer of 1699 as part of his architectural education Vanbrugh made
1424-667: A tour of northern England, writing to Charles Montagu, 1st Duke of Manchester , (he was still an Earl at the time) on Christmas Day of that year: 'I have seen most of the great houses in the North, as Ld Nottings (sic): Duke of Leeds Chattesworth (sic) &C.' This itinerary likely included many of the great Elizabethan houses, including: Burghley House , Wollaton Hall , Hardwick Hall and Bolsover Castle , whose use of towers, complex skylines, bow widows and other features would be reinterpreted in Vanbrugh's own buildings. Though Vanbrugh
1513-482: A tutor. Architectural historian Kerry Downes is sceptical of earlier historians' claims of a lower middle-class background, and writes that a 19th-century suggestion that Giles Vanbrugh was a sugar-baker has been misunderstood. " Sugar-baker " implies wealth, as the term refers not to a maker of sweets but to the owner of a sugar house, a factory for the refining of raw sugar from Barbados . Sugar refining would normally have been combined with sugar trading, which
1602-557: Is a co-educational secondary school and sixth form located in Greenwich , south-east London , England. The current school was originally two grammar schools. The boys' school was founded in 1677 and the girls' school in 1877 through a charitable endowment by John Roan , Yeoman of Harriers to King Charles I, who left a substantial amount in his Will: The stag's head badge – derived from John Roan's coat-of-arms – has been worn by Roan schoolchildren ever since. The first chairman of
1691-480: Is best known in connection with stately houses, the parlous state of London's 18th-century streets did not escape his attention. It was reported in the London Journal of 16 March 1722–23: "We are informed that Sir John Vanbrugh, in his scheme for new paving the cities of London and Westminster, among other things, proposes a tax on all gentlemen's coaches, to stop all channels in the street, and to carry all
1780-566: Is best known today as an early 18th-century social gathering point for culturally and politically prominent Whigs, including many artists and writers ( William Congreve , Joseph Addison , Godfrey Kneller ) and politicians (the Duke of Marlborough , Charles Seymour , the Earl of Burlington , Thomas Pelham-Holles , Sir Robert Walpole and Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham who gave Vanbrugh several architectural commissions at Stowe ). Politically,
1869-579: Is hard to gauge, in April 1691 he was transferred to Château de Vincennes in the months he spent as a prisoner there he would have got to know the architect Louis Le Vau 's grand classical work (1656–61) in the château well. On his release from prison (he was at the Bastille by then) on 22 November 1692 he spent a short time in Paris, there he would have seen much recent architecture including Les Invalides ,
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#17327977296511958-530: Is not surprising, given the social expectations of his day, that by descent his credentials for his offices there were sound. His forebears, both Flemish/Dutch and English, were armigerous , and their coats of arms can be traced in three out of four cases, revealing that Vanbrugh was of gentle descent (Jacobson, of Antwerp and London [the family of his paternal grandmother Maria daughter of Peter brother to Philip Jacobson, jeweller and financier to successive English kings, James I , and Charles I , and monied backer of
2047-529: The Bastille in February 1692. This raised the profile of his case once more, finally prompting his release in November of the same year, in an exchange of political prisoners. His life is sharply bisected by this prison experience, which he entered at age 24 and emerged from at 29, after having spent, as Downes puts it, half his adult life in captivity. It seems to have left him with a lasting distaste for
2136-540: The Collège des Quatre-Nations and the east wing of the Louvre Palace . His inexperience was compensated for by his unerring eye for perspective and detail and his close working relationship with Nicholas Hawksmoor . Hawksmoor, a former clerk of Sir Christopher Wren , was to be Vanbrugh's collaborator in many of his most ambitious projects, including Castle Howard and Blenheim. During his almost thirty years as
2225-561: The Dictionary of National Biography ). In 1681 records name a 'John Vanbrugg' working for William Matthews, Giles Vanbrugh's cousin. It was not unusual for a merchant's son to follow in his father's trade and seek similar work in business, making use of family ties and connections. However, Robert Williams proved in an article in the Times Literary Supplement ("Vanbrugh's Lost Years", 3 September 1999) that Vanbrugh
2314-646: The Second Virginia Company and the East India Company ]; Carleton of Imber Court ; Croft of Croft Castle ). After growing up in a large household in Chester (12 children of his mother's second marriage survived infancy), the question of how Vanbrugh spent the years from age 18 to 22 (after he left school) was long unanswered, with the baseless suggestion sometimes made that he had been studying architecture in France (stated as fact in
2403-582: The 26-year-old Henrietta Maria Yarborough in York in January 1719, and he soon added a wing to the east side of the house in a similar style, creating a lopsided, asymmetric construction – said to be the first asymmetric house built in Europe since the Renaissance. It has the "castle air" adopted in Vanbrugh's remodelling of Kimbolton Castle (1708–1719), and also used at Shirburn Castle , both early revivals of
2492-739: The Club promoted the Whig objectives of a strong Parliament , a limited monarchy, resistance to France, and primarily the Protestant succession to the throne. Yet the Kit-Cats always presented their club as more a matter of dining and conviviality, and this reputation has been successfully relayed to posterity. Downes suggests, however, that the Club's origins go back to before the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and that its political importance
2581-521: The College, however. The pageantry of state occasions appealed to his theatrical sense, his duties were not difficult, and he appears to have performed them well. In the opinion of a modern herald and historian, although the appointment was "incongruous", he was "possibly the most distinguished man who has ever worn a herald's tabard ." In May 1706 Lord Halifax and Vanbrugh – representing the octogenarian Garter King of Arms , Sir Henry St George – led
2670-452: The French political system but also with a taste for the comic dramatists and the architecture of France. The often-repeated claim that Vanbrugh wrote part of his comedy The Provoked Wife in the Bastille is based on allusions in a couple of much later memoirs and is regarded with some doubt by modern scholars (see McCormick). After being released from the Bastille, he had to spend three months in Paris, free to move around but unable to leave
2759-602: The King granted Vanbrugh permission to build on the ruins of Whitehall at his own expense. Brick and stone from the ruins of the Palace of Whitehall were used and the house was sited on what was the Vice-Chamberlain's lodgings. The small, two storied house was unique in design, though its size and proportions led to it being called, unflatteringly, a 'goose-pie' by Swift. The John Roan School The John Roan School
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2848-458: The King's Works had initially been the architect of choice, charging more than the Lord had thought reasonable. Vanbrugh's charm, and Talman's lack thereof, may have been enough to convince the patron to change his architect. However, it remains unknown how Vanbrugh, totally untrained and inexperienced, persuaded Earl Carlisle to grant the responsibility of architect to him. The design process began in
2937-521: The London stage. Vanbrugh's London career was diverse and varied, comprising playwriting, architectural design, and attempts to combine these two overarching interests. His overlapping achievements and business ventures were sometimes confusing even to Vanbrugh himself. A committed Whig, Vanbrugh was a member of the Kit-Cat Club – and particularly popular for "his colossal geniality, his great good humour, his easy-going temperament". The Club
3026-422: The abused wife was especially famous as a tragic actress, and for her power of "moving the passions", i.e., moving an audience to pity and tears. Barry and the younger Bracegirdle had often worked together as a tragic/comic heroine pair to bring audiences the typically tragic/comic rollercoaster experience of Restoration plays. Vanbrugh takes advantage of this schema and these actresses to deepen audience sympathy for
3115-412: The active force behind the Glorious Revolution itself. Secret groups tend to be poorly documented, and this sketch of the pre-history of the Club cannot be proved. But as we have seen, young Vanbrugh was indeed in 1688 part of a secret network working for William's invasion. If the roots of the Club go back that far, it is tempting to speculate that Vanbrugh in joining the club was not merely becoming one of
3204-399: The actors' company, making himself sole owner. He was now bound to pay salaries to the actors and, as it turned out, to manage the theatre, a notorious tightrope act for which he had no experience. The often repeated rumour that the acoustics of the building Vanbrugh had designed were bad is exaggerated (see Milhous ), but the more practical Congreve had become anxious to extricate himself from
3293-406: The age difference, this was by all accounts a happy marriage, which produced two sons. Unlike that of the rake heroes and fops of his plays, Vanbrugh's personal life was without scandal. Vanbrugh died "of an asthma " on 26 March 1726, in the modest town house designed by him in 1703 out of the ruins of Whitehall Palace and satirised by Swift as "the goose pie ". His married life, however,
3382-415: The age, and Vanbrugh tailored The Provoked Wife to their specialities. While The Relapse had been robustly phrased to be suitable for amateurs and minor acting talents, he could count on versatile professionals like Thomas Betterton, Elizabeth Barry, and the rising young star Anne Bracegirdle to do justice to characters of depth and nuance. The Provoked Wife is a comedy, but Elizabeth Barry who played
3471-577: The architect of the baroque houses at Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace , and shortly after Vanbrugh succeeded his architectural mentor Christopher Wren as Surveyor to the Royal Naval Hospital in 1716. Vanbrugh took a lease of a 12-acre triangular site of the Westcombe estate from Sir Michael Biddulph, 2nd Baronet in 1718, now known as Vanbrugh Fields. In contrast to the baroque style used for his professional commissions, he chose
3560-449: The business in 1708 to Owen Swiny ., though without ever collecting much of the putative price. He had put a lot of money, his own and borrowed, into the theatre company, which he was never to recover. It was noted as remarkable by contemporaries that he continued to pay the actors' salaries fully and promptly while they were working for him, just as he always paid the workmen he had hired for construction work; shirking such responsibilities
3649-532: The country, and with every opportunity to see an architecture "unparalleled in England for scale, ostentation, richness, taste and sophistication". He was allowed to return to England in April 1693; once he returned to England he joined the Navy and took part in an unsuccessful naval attack against the French at Brest . At some point in the mid-1690s, it is not known exactly when, he exchanged army life for London and
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3738-529: The current sites. The proposed site was also near to an old gasometer , which would need to be dismantled at considerable cost for safety reasons, and alongside the busy A102 Blackwall Tunnel southern approach road. With relocation ruled out, the Westcombe Park buildings were demolished in the summer of 2012 prior to construction of replacement buildings (completed in 2014), and the Maze Hill site
3827-400: The decidedly Protestant and sometimes radical milieu out of which Vanbrugh's own political opinions came. They also gave him a very wide social network that would play a role in all sections of his career: architectural, ceremonial, dramatic, military, political, and social. Taken in this context, though he has sometimes been viewed as an odd or unqualified appointee to the College of Arms, it
3916-511: The decision was sudden enough even to be remarked upon by commentators of his time: Jonathan Swift , in this quote, suggests that Vanbrugh had no previous training in, nor studied architecture, but applied himself to the discipline whole-heartedly. As an architect (or surveyor, as the term then was) Vanbrugh is thought to have had no formal training (see " Early life " above). To what extent Vanbrugh's exposure to contemporary French architecture during years of imprisonment in France affected him
4005-424: The depth of his repentance. Love's Last Shift has not been staged again since the early 18th century and is read only by the most dedicated scholars, who sometimes express distaste for its businesslike combination of four explicit acts of sex and rakishness with one of sententious reform (see Hume ). If Cibber indeed was deliberately attempting to appeal simultaneously to rakish and respectable Londoners, it worked:
4094-458: The fact that Vanbrugh in January 1686 took up an officer's commission in his distant relative the Earl of Huntingdon's foot regiment. Since commissions were in the gift of the commanding officer, Vanbrugh's entry as an officer shows that he did have the kind of family network that was then essential to a young man starting out in life. Even so in August 1686 he left this position when the regiment
4183-552: The family and connexions of each of his four grandparents: Vanbrugh, Jacobs or Jacobson, Carleton, and Croft, summing up the characteristics of each line and concluding that, far from being of lower middle class origins, Vanbrugh was descended from Anglo-Flemish or Netherlandish Protestant merchants who settled in London in the 16th and 17th centuries, minor courtiers, and country gentry. The complex web of kinship Downes' research shows that Vanbrugh had ties to many of England's leading mercantile, gentry, and noble families. These ties reveal
4272-415: The fifth act. Vanbrugh laughed at these charges and published a joking reply, where he accused the clergyman Collier of being more sensitive to unflattering portrayals of the clergy than to real irreligion. However, rising public opinion was already on Collier's side. The intellectual and sexually explicit Restoration comedy style was becoming less and less acceptable to audiences and was soon to be replaced by
4361-533: The flat characters from Love's Last Shift a dimension that at least some critics are willing to consider psychological (see Hume ). In a trickster subplot, Vanbrugh provides the more traditional Restoration attraction of an overly well-dressed and exquisite fop, Lord Foppington, a brilliant re-creation of Cibber's Sir Novelty Fashion in Love's Last Shift (Sir Novelty has simply in The Relapse bought himself
4450-621: The front circular driveway of Vanbrugh Castle. 51°28′49″N 0°00′17″E / 51.4803°N 0.0048°E / 51.4803; 0.0048 John Vanbrugh Sir John Vanbrugh ( / ˈ v æ n b r ə / ; 24 January 1664 (baptised) – 26 March 1726) was an English architect, dramatist and herald , perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard . He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies , The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy. He
4539-738: The governors of the school was Dr Thomas Plume , the vicar of Greenwich. For much of the 18th century, the school was in the charge of the Herringham family who provided four successive headmasters from 1702 to 1785. The first headmaster of the boys' school from 1877, when it opened in Eastney Street, was Mr C.M. Ridger who held the post for 33 years. He was succeeded by Mr T.R.N. Crofts (1911–1919), Mr A.H. Hope (1919–1930), Mr W.J. Potter (1931–1938), Mr H.W. Gilbert (1938–1958), Mr W.L. Garstang (1959–1974) and Dr A J Taylor (1974 to turning comprehensive) all of whom made significant contributions to
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#17327977296514628-535: The grammar school. The Hope Memorial Camp at Braithwaite , near Keswick, Cumbria was established in Mr Hope's memory shortly after he died in 1930. The first headmistress of the Roan Girls' School was Miss M.M. Blackmore (until 1895) followed by Miss M.S. Walker (1895–1919), Miss M.K. Higgs (1919–1944), Miss M.E. Barnsdale (1944–1962), Miss M.S. Chamberlain (1962–1968) and Mrs M.J. Barber (1968–1980). It became
4717-436: The greater part of Castle Howard was inhabited and completed by 1709, the finishing touches were to continue for much of Vanbrugh's lifetime. The west wing was finally completed after Vanbrugh's death, to an altered design. The acclaim of the work at Castle Howard led to Vanbrugh's most famous commission, architect for Blenheim Palace. Regarding the commission, William Talman, an already established architect and Comptroller of
4806-746: The house (and Rooks Hill House in Sevenoaks) to the RAF Benevolent Fund in 1920 to be used as a school for the children of RAF personnel killed in service. Surprisingly, perhaps, the RAF school provided the choir for the Royal Naval College chapel, on the further side of Greenwich park. The boys were initially taught by Captain Slimming, in the only school room, before moving up to the nearby The John Roan School . The Wakefield Wing
4895-432: The large cast required by The Relapse . Members of that cast had to be kept from defecting to the rival actors' cooperative, had to be "seduced" (as the legal term was) back when they did defect, and had to be blandished into attending rehearsals which dragged out into ten months and brought the company to the threshold of bankruptcy. "They have no company at all", reported a contemporary letter on 19 November 1696 "and unless
4984-538: The main entrance block to the flanking wings, its centre crowned by a great domed tower complete with cupola , is very much in the school of classic European baroque. It combined aspects of design that had only appeared occasionally, if at all, in English architecture: John Webb's Greenwich Palace, Wren's unexecuted design for Greenwich, which like Castle Howard was dominated by a domed centre block, and of course Talman's Chatsworth. A possible inspiration for Castle Howard
5073-472: The major outbreak of the plague in London in 1665, or the Great Fire of 1666. It is possible that he attended The King's School in Chester, though no records of his being a scholar there survive. Another candidate would have been the school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch , founded by Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon . It was also not uncommon for boys to be sent to study at school away from home, or with
5162-424: The next, providing a natural progression of thoughts and style. Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle , a fellow member of the Kit-Cat Club , commissioned Vanbrugh in 1699 to design his mansion , often described as England's first truly baroque building. The baroque style at Castle Howard is the most European that Vanbrugh ever used. Castle Howard, with its immense corridors in segmental colonnades leading from
5251-568: The play was a great box-office hit. Sequel: The Relapse Vanbrugh's witty sequel The Relapse, Or, Virtue in Danger , offered to the United Company six weeks later, questions the justice of women's position in marriage at this time. He sends new sexual temptations in the way of not only the reformed husband but also the patient wife, and allows them to react in more credible and less predictable ways than in their original context, lending
5340-573: The plot, that a wife trapped in an abusive marriage might consider either leaving it or taking a lover, outraged some sections of Restoration society. In 1698, Vanbrugh's argumentative and sexually frank plays were singled out for special attention by Jeremy Collier in his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage , particularly for their failure to impose exemplary morality by appropriate rewards and punishments in
5429-612: The project, and Vanbrugh was left spreading himself extremely thin, running a theatre and simultaneously overseeing the building of Blenheim, a project which after June 1705 often took him out of town. Unsurprisingly under these circumstances, Vanbrugh's management of the Queen's Theatre in Haymarket showed "numerous signs of confusion, inefficiency, missed opportunities, and bad judgment". Having burned his fingers on theatre management, Vanbrugh too extricated himself, expensively, by selling
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#17327977296515518-424: The rebel actors' company. This play is different in tone from the largely farcical The Relapse , and adapted to the greater acting skills of the rebels. Vanbrugh had good reason to offer his second play to the new company, which had got off to a brilliant start by premièring Congreve's Love for Love , the greatest London box-office success for years. The actors' cooperative boasted the established star performers of
5607-437: The roads on which they lie (respectively Maze Hill and Westcombe Park Road). The foundation stone of the Maze Hill buildings was laid by Sir George Hopwood Hume MP, local politician and chairman of London County Council , in 1926. The school had two opening ceremonies: one in 1927, by Herbert Fisher MP, and another following completion in 1928. The John Roan Playing Fields are located approximately two miles (3 km) to
5696-462: The school's chair of governors; but more than 100 signed a separate letter supporting the improvement plans and criticising the teachers' industrial action. On 14 November, a Greenwich Council decision about academisation of John Roan was deferred to a meeting in December 2018. On 30 August 2019, the academy plan was finally forced through, John Roan, the voluntary controlled school was closed and it
5785-532: The south, in Kidbrooke Park Road, west of Sutcliffe Park. The school's motto is "With honour and hard work" ( Latin : Honore et labore ). The John Roan had four house teams, named after people of historic significance: Seacole, Da Vinci, Darwin and Stopes, named after Mary Seacole , Leonardo da Vinci , Charles Darwin and Marie Stopes . Two tutor groups per year were in the same house team. There were also house leaders and competitions amongst
5874-439: The summer of 1699, before the end of the year the model for Castle Howard was under construction, stone was being quarried and foundations discussed. It appears that the early drawings of the design for Castle Howard were made by Nicholas Hawksmoor , and in 1700 he was formally introduced by Vanbrugh into the project as draughtsman and clerk of works. Designs varied and evolved until 1702, the pair working together. In July 1700
5963-506: The title of "Lord Foppington" through the corrupt system of Royal title sales). Critics of Restoration comedy are unanimous in declaring Lord Foppington "the greatest of all Restoration fops" (Dobrée ), by virtue of being not merely laughably affected, but also "brutal, evil, and smart" (Hume ). The Relapse , however, came very close to not being performed at all. The United Company had lost all its senior performers, and had great difficulty in finding and keeping actors of sufficient skills for
6052-425: The unhappily married Lady Brute, even as she fires off her witty ripostes. In the intimate conversational dialogue between Lady Brute and her niece Bellinda (Bracegirdle), and especially in the star part of Sir John Brute the brutish husband (Betterton), which was hailed as one of the peaks of Thomas Betterton's remarkable career, The Provoked Wife is something as unusual as a Restoration problem play . The premise of
6141-495: The untrained and untried Vanbrugh astonishingly managed to out-charm and out-clubman the professional but less socially adept Talman and to persuade the Earl of Carlisle to give the great opportunity to him instead. Seizing it, Vanbrugh instigated European baroque's metamorphosis into a subtle, almost understated version that became known as English baroque. Four of Vanbrugh's designs act as milestones for evaluating this process: Work on each of these projects overlapped with that on
6230-404: The water off by drains and common sewers under ground." Vanbrugh's chosen style was the baroque , which had been spreading across Europe during the 17th century, promoted by, among others, Bernini and Le Vau . The first baroque country house built in England was Chatsworth House , designed by William Talman three years before Castle Howard. In the contest for the commission of Castle Howard,
6319-494: Was knighted in 1714. Vanbrugh was in many senses a radical throughout his life. As a young man and a committed Whig , he was part of the scheme to overthrow James II and put William III on the throne. He was imprisoned by the French as a political prisoner . In his career as a playwright, he offended many sections of Restoration and 18th century society, not only by the sexual explicitness of his plays, but also by their messages in defence of women's rights in marriage. He
6408-522: Was a lucrative business. Downes' example of one sugar baker's house in Liverpool , estimated to bring in £ 40,000 a year in trade from Barbados, throws a new light on Vanbrugh's social background, one rather different from the picture of a backstreet Chester sweetshop as painted by Leigh Hunt in 1840 and reflected in many later accounts. To dispel the myth of Vanbrugh's humble origins, Downes took pains to explore Vanbrugh's background, closely examining
6497-475: Was added in 1938, but at the outbreak of war in 1939 the boys were evacuated to Rye and Bexhill. Once it was realised that any German invasion would most probably occur in that area, the school moved again to Wales. The building became Grade I listed property in October 1951. The choral conductor James William Webb-Jones was Headmaster of the school from 1951 to 1955. The choral musician Peter Stanley Lyons , who
6586-618: Was also Vaux-le-Vicomte in France. The interiors are extremely dramatic, the Great Hall rising 80 feet (24 m) into the cupola. Scagliola , and Corinthian columns abound, and galleries linked by soaring arches give the impression of an opera stage-set – doubtless the intention of the architect. Castle Howard was acclaimed a success. This fantastical building, unparalleled in England, with its facades and roofs decorated by pilasters, statuary, and flowing ornamental carving, ensured that baroque became an overnight success. While
6675-456: Was attacked on both counts, and was one of the prime targets of Jeremy Collier 's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage . In his architectural career, he created what came to be known as English Baroque . His architectural work was as bold and daring as his early political activism and marriage-themed plays, and jarred conservative opinions on the subject. Born in London and baptised on 24 January 1664, Vanbrugh
6764-456: Was close to being standard practice in early 18th century England. Vanbrugh himself never seems to have pursued those who owed him money, and throughout his life his finances can at best be described as precarious. Vanbrugh's introduction and advancement in the College of Arms remain controversial. On 21 June 1703 the obsolete office of Carlisle Herald was revived for Vanbrugh. This appointment
6853-410: Was demolished in 1902 and the Nunnery was demolished in 1911. The house was occupied by engineer Dr Laurence Holker Potts from 1838, where he set up a laboratory creating equipment to treat spinal injuries. He left the house before his death in 1850. Oil merchant Alexander Duckham , who bought the castle in 1907 as his London home, added a prominent weathervane shaped like a duck in flight. He donated
6942-526: Was followed by a promotion to the post of Clarenceux King of Arms in March 1704. In 1725 he sold this office to Knox Ward, and he told a friend he had "got leave to dispose in earnest, of a place I got in jest". His colleagues' opposition to an ill-gotten appointment ought to have been directed to Lord Carlisle, who as Deputy Earl Marshal , arranged both appointments and against whose wishes they were powerless. Vanbrugh went on to make more friends than enemies at
7031-582: Was in India for part of this period, working for the East India Company at their trading post in Surat , Gujarat where his uncle, Edward Pearce, had been Governor. However, Vanbrugh never mentioned this experience in writing. Scholars debate whether evidence of his exposure to Indian architecture can be detected in any of his architectural designs. The picture of a well-connected youth is reinforced by
7120-434: Was intended for the use of an actors' cooperative (see The Provoked Wife below) and hoped to improve the chances of legitimate theatre in London. Theatre was under threat from more colourful types of entertainment such as opera, juggling , pantomime (introduced by John Rich ), animal acts, travelling dance troupes, and famous visiting Italian singers. They also hoped to make a profit, and Vanbrugh optimistically bought up
7209-442: Was mostly spent at Greenwich (then not considered part of London at all) in the house on Maze Hill now known as Vanbrugh Castle , a miniature Scottish tower house designed by Vanbrugh in the earliest stages of his career. A Grade I listed building, and formerly a RAF Boys' School, it is today divided into private apartments. Vanbrugh arrived in London at a time of scandal and internal drama at London's only theatre company, as
7298-434: Was much greater before it went public in 1700, in calmer and more Whiggish times. Downes proposes a role for an early Kit-Cat grouping in the armed invasion by William of Orange and the Glorious Revolution. Horace Walpole , son of Kit-Cat Sir Robert Walpole, claims that the respectable middle-aged Club members generally mentioned as "a set of wits" were originally "in reality the patriots that saved Britain", in other words were
7387-917: Was ordered to help garrison Guernsey . In spite of the distant noble relatives and the lucrative sugar trade , Vanbrugh never seemed to possess any capital for business ventures (such as the Haymarket Theatre ), but always had to rely on loans and backers. The fact that Giles Vanbrugh had twelve children to support and set up in life may go some way towards explaining the debts that were to plague John all his life. Some of Vanbrugh's kinsmen – as he addressed them in his letters: Vanbrugh's younger brothers, Charles MP and Philip , Governor of Newfoundland Colony , were naval commanders. Vanbrugh's own first and second cousins included Sir Humphrey Ferrers (1652–1678), Sir Herbert Croft Bt (1652–1720) , Sir Roger Cave Bt (1655–1703) and Cave's sister, wife of Sir Orlando Bridgeman Bt (1650–1701) . From 1686, Vanbrugh
7476-604: Was refactored as The John Roan School, a converter academy sponsored by the United Learning Trust . Since 1928 the school has been located east of Greenwich Park and south-east of Greenwich town centre, having moved there from Victorian purpose-built premises in Eastney Street (now Feathers Place). The school is currently split over two campuses — Maze Hill, where the 1920s grade II listed neo-Georgian building (architects Percy Boothroyd Dannatt and Sir Banister Fletcher ) stands, and Westcombe Park — named after
7565-474: Was refurbished and remodelled; both phases used funding originally granted when the school was due to move to the Peninsula. The John Roan School was inspected by Ofsted in March 2018; the resulting report, published on 8 June 2018, rated the school "Inadequate" and said it had "serious weaknesses". On 12 June 2018, the school was issued with an Academy Order. The following day, parents and staff received
7654-525: Was simultaneously Director of Music at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich , was Director of Music at Vanbrugh Castle School from 1950 to 1954. The school moved to Duke of Kent School in Ewhurst, Surrey in 1976. The house was then acquired by a group of four people for £100,000 and converted to four private flats. In the 1980s, scenes from the film Mona Lisa were performed on location on
7743-561: Was the fourth child (of 19), and eldest surviving son, of Giles Vanbrugh, a London cloth-merchant of Flemish descent (as evident in the name, contracted from "Van Brugh") and Protestant background, and his wife Elizabeth, widow of Thomas Barker (by whom Vanbrugh's mother had the first of her twenty children, Vanbrugh's elder half-sister, Elizabeth), and daughter of Sir Dudley Carleton , of Imber Court , Thames Ditton , Surrey. He grew up in Chester , where his family had been driven by either
7832-488: Was working undercover, playing a role in bringing about the armed invasion by William of Orange , the deposition of James II , and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He thus demonstrates an intense early identification with the Whig cause of parliamentary democracy , with which he was to remain affiliated all his life. Returning from bringing William messages at The Hague , Vanbrugh was arrested at Calais on
7921-483: Was written and staged in the eye of a theatrical storm. London's only and mismanaged theatre company, known as the United Company, had split in two in March 1695 when the senior actors began operating their own acting cooperative, and the next season was one of cutthroat rivalry between the two companies. Cibber, an inconspicuous young actor still employed by the parent company, seized this moment of unique demand for new plays and launched his career on two fronts by writing
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