THE WEST FRONT
The West Front Entrance Court
Standing at the edge of the lawn, looking at the West Front of the Mansion, this 19th century entrance court we see today, is like a medieval theatre set. It was largely created for Hugh Smyth around 1810, with new ‘Gothic’ windows inserted over 6 centuries of building that form the setting.
In the foreground, for centuries, there was a true medieval gatehouse which led into an enclosed courtyard with walls and buildings around. Drawings, maps and documents give us conflicting information about when these stone structures were built and when, in the 18th century, they were demolished. It’s quite possible that beneath the tarmac, archaeology remains.
THE LATE 17TH CENTURY WEST FRONT OF ASHTON COURT
The late 17th century West Front of Ashton Court within an enclosed courtyard, entering through the medieval gatehouse with adjacent Palladian building. Probably drawn c1695, and copied to the 1730s/1765 Plan of the Manor of Ashton Court.
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Image: AC/PL/94 BRO (Bristol Records Office)
1.NW WING DINING ROOM LATER ‘LIBRARY & BILLIARD ROOM’
This building was first mentioned in 1769 but it is unclear when it was built. The ogee* arches of the elaborate Strawberry Hill* Gothic Revival style appear to predate the window insertions of the 1810 courtyard works. The fine plaster interior was partly destroyed in the fire of 2013 but the wing is still unmatched elsewhere in Ashton Court in style and quality.
John Hugh Smyth was wealthy enough to build at Ashton Court because he profited from the slave trade as a director of the Bristol Brass Company; from his wife - sugar plantation heiress Elizabeth Woolnough; from the coal mines of Ashton Vale and Bedminster and the tenant farmers he met with at the Star Inn (Steam Crane).
Bristol MP, Edmund Burke campaigned against slavery during the 1770s.
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* See Glossary of architectural terms
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2. NW WING STONE TOWER
The Stone Tower may have been built or altered from an earlier structure around 1810 to match the style & location of the Stair Tower of the SW wing across the courtyard. Both towers have a crenellated parapet* and down one side of the tower there are 4 small stone mullioned windows each with a string course or hood mould above.
Until the end of the 18th century a wall with a medieval gatehouse stretched between these two towers enclosing a courtyard. John Hugh’s nephew Hugh spent a fortune redesigning this area and enclosing the wider parkland with high walls and gatehouses.
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By the early 19th century Royal Navy press gangs roamed the pubs & wharves in Bristol, stealing men off to war with Napoleon, and Britain suffered food shortages and political instability because of the blockaded European ports.
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* See Glossary of architectural terms
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3. THE BILLIARD ROOM. FORMERLY THE DINING ROOM & LIBRARY.
Around 1810 we think the south wall of the Billiard Room was redesigned as part of an extravagant Regency Gothic makeover for Hugh Smyth’s new Entrance Court.
Strawberry Hill* style windows were replaced, the ground floor wall rebuilt in limestone masonry with traditional painted render above and surmounted by roof gables capped with tall stone chimneys. The 19th century Gothic Revival mixed many styles and motifs and much used at Ashton Court. The pattern of upper stone tracery in the 3 ground floor windows had been closely copied from the ‘original Perpendicular* window of the Inner Hall’.
At first floor, the windows have a single mullion* with simple ogee* arch, cinqfoil* tracery and quatrefoil* head. walls, finishes and window styles all closely matching the SW wing opposite.
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By 1811 the Regency officially began, George III was thought insane and Jane Austen published ‘Sense and Sensibility’ - qualities which some said Hugh Smyth was sadly lacking.
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* See Glossary of architectural terms.
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4. HUNTSMAN HALL
The Huntsmans Hall (with domestic rooms above) was probably built during the initial NW Wing works to provide access to the dining room, and possibly redesigned in 1810 and later to match the 17th century principal Stair Tower across the Entrance Court.
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The west, public facing ground floor window of Huntsmans Hall and the Stair Tower is a variation of the Inner Hall Perpendicular window, probably introduced c1810, and includes the elaborate stone 'transom'*.
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By contrast, the other windows here bar one, present a 17th century style of mullion* and transom* matching the Stair Tower opposite.
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The wall tops of Huntsmans Hall and the Stair Tower are crenellated*. 19th century sketches and photos show a more complicated window and building history where these buildings join the NW and SW wings.
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Bristol porcelain manufacture began in 1770 and the first Bristol blue glass was also first produced around this time.
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*See Glossary of architectural terms
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5. THE GABLE END WALL OF THE 14TH CENTURY CROSS WING (OLD REFECTORY)
The much altered hall wall dates from the 1390s when Thomas de Lyons (of Ashton Lyons) married the wealthy widow of wool Merchant, Edward Blanket, bought a deer park licence and did a lot of rebuilding. The earliest rubble stone wall may have been over a meter thick but has probably been rebuilt at higher level.
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By 19th century the west end of this once grand hall was sub-divided into passage-ways and servant’s rooms with a mezzanine floor and 1390s roof below the 2nd floor attic room. Early photos show the rendered wall lined out in imitation masonry but the medieval wall may have had painted images. There is one Gothic window to each floor, probably from the 1810 works. They match the window details of the adjacent Great Hall and floors above.
The 1390s rebuilding at Ashton Court followed decades of social upheaval begun by the arrival of the ‘Black Death’ in 1348 and it recurred for decades. Some say only 10% of adults survived in Bristol; by 1350 England had lost up to 40% of its population.
The Peasants Revolt of 1380 finally ended serfdom and encouraged the move from crops to sheep farming for Manors like Ashton Court. In 1399 Plantagenet Henry IV took the crown from his cousin Richard II.
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6. THE PORCH TOWER
The Porch tower provides a direct entrance to the north end of the Great Hall and so stands between two ancient gabled buildings. The ground floor entrance and stone face of the Tower probably date to 1810 but the Porch Tower has 16th century plasterwork and may date to before John Smyth’s time. When he bought Ashton Court in 1545* it already had: ‘a tower, great hall & gallery, parlour, chapel, kitchen, several chambers, stable buildings, barns, gatehouse, dairy, brew house and estate workers lodgings’, and a long history as a wealthy fortified Manor.
The Smyth Family Legacy
John Smyth was a shrewd merchant: he made a profitable marriage, traded widely with Europe & knew how to avoid customs dues. He benefited from the Dissolution of the Monasteries, negotiating land sales for the King as well as being Sheriff and Mayor of Bristol. He bought lands in Gloucestershire and Somerset including Ashton Court in 1545. His family extended the parkland, built new and adapted old at Ashton Court for over 4 centuries. Bristol Corporation acquired the house and park in 1959.
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*1545 was the same year King Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose, sank in battle against the French. Three years earlier, Bristol became a city, with an Anglican bishop and Cathedral founded at the old Abbey.
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7. THE GREAT HALL
A Great Hall has been on this site and in use since Saxon times (possibly 9th century). It looked very different then and even in 1545 when new owner John Smyth built the gables above. The Great Hall and adjacent buildings today look largely as they did in a photo of 1866. Five Gothic windows match the three in the adjacent west end gable in style but reveal the different floor heights and probably date to 1810.
An early accountdescribed Ashton Court as a ‘wealthy estate with Manor House, Great Hall and courtyards entered through gatehouses’.
The earliest Saxon ‘Hall’ was probably timber built with a central open fireplace and smoke rising to the roof. Bantock says the Saxon Hall dimensions were the same as the Great Hall today.
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Romano British settlements, and the theory that the defensive ‘West Wansdyke’ from Dundry to Stokleigh Hillfort in Leigh Woods roughly coincided in the Ashton parkland area, meant the mansion site was possibly on a frontier for nearly 250 years. It was exposed to raiders from Ireland and British incursions from the south against the Saxons who didn’t secure Somerset till around 650AD. Saxon enslavement of native Britons was widespread and was also exported through Bristol to Viking Ireland.
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8. THE PRINCIPAL STAIR TOWER
The Principal Stair Tower appears to date from the 17th century providing access from the Great Hall to the main bedrooms but was probably preceded by a smaller stone stair tower here. The current 'Restoration' stair was either repaired or built new in 1885 for Greville Smyth by Major Davis.
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As part of works to the SW wing, he changed the window style and location of the stair window which no longer corresponds with that in the Huntsmans Hall. Other windows of the Stair Tower can be seen in the near mirror image of Huntsmans Hall.
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The two main SW Wing building phases in the 17th century, in the first decade and then in the 1630s, may have reused an existing or understated stair tower. Todays 'Restoration' stair case may originate from the 1660s when an earlier Hugh Smyth was knighted.
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The Restoration of King Charles II to the English throne after the Civil War and puritanical Commonwealth, unleashed a flourishing art and architecture in the 1660s. Large rambling houses needed several stair towers, often built outside the main building, to give direct access to rooms as corridors were uncommon until the 1880s. Until then, servants with the contents of chamber pots, wash tubs, and hot coals moved through each room.
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9. THE SOUTH WEST WING
The wall finishes and windows of this north facing wall closely match those of the NW Wing opposite, date from the 1810 works, and were designed to create a more visually harmonious arrival for the visitor. They almost entirely conceal the 17th century windows in the earlier wall but provided covered corridors for servant access to rooms and prompted the changes to the Stair Tower window.
The rendered gables with tall stone chimneys above the bedroom fireplaces align with the earlier wall but superficially appear the same as the NW wing.
The west part of the long SW Wing may date to early 17th century when Hugh Smyth was knighted and married the goddaughter of Elizabeth 1st in 1604, he gained great wealth and they may have extended or built the fashionable ‘Long Gallery’.
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From late 1500s Shakespeare was writing plays, theatres were repeatedly in lockdown due to outbreaks of the plague and there was religious and political instability after Elizabeth I died in 1603.
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10. THE SOUTH WEST WING STAIR TOWER
The SW Stair Tower is probably from the 1600s, providing servant access to master bedrooms, servant attic rooms and onto the roof. The tower is built with hard rubble stone quarried from the park with a rendered and painted finish like all pre 19th century buildings at Ashton Court. It would have been joined to the wall and buildings that enclosed the courtyard.
Although there are several differences, the design has been copied quite effectively onto the corner of the NW Wing. It was an important part of Hugh Smyth’s vision of a Gothic Revival vision of a grand entrance in the newly opened up West Court at the end of the long carriage drive from the new Town Lodge, now Ashton Gatehouse.
The high parkland walls and Lodge, drive and tree plantations were Humphrey Repton’s recommendations for a fashionable park. In 1802 Hugh Smyth rejected Repton’s plan for a serpentine lake and a Gothic entrance on the east side (now the Stable Yard and cafe) but he set about closing farmland and roads including Parklands Road to the South Court and made the West Court the principle entrance.
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Yards from the Lodge, the Ashton Vale coal mine was developing and the nearby the New Cut, opened in 1809, brought more traffic and industry.
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