NASH, John

Nash successfully designed several country houses in which he switched effortlessly between versions of Castellated Gothic, Neoclassic or Italianate styles, as the client’s whim dictated. However, he also took commissions for smaller-scale country dwellings which, imitating country cottages, aroused great interest at the time as expressions of an idealized rural existence.

In Henbury, near Bristol, Nash designed in 1811 a whole village of little cottages, called Blaise Hamlet, using the opportunity to create the very image of the Picturesque Style with this artificial idyll. The cottages, which are loosely clustered around a village green, are all completely different from each other with low-slung, interlocking roofs of stone slate, pantiles or thatch, bay windows and additions, picturesque dormers, and a whole variety of chimneys.

Nash successfully designed several country houses in which he switched effortlessly between versions of Castellated Gothic, Neoclassic or Italianate styles, as the client’s whim dictated. However, he also took commissions for smaller-scale country dwellings which, imitating country cottages, aroused great interest at the time as expressions of an idealized rural existence.

In Henbury, near Bristol, Nash designed in 1811 a whole village of little cottages, called Blaise Hamlet, using the opportunity to create the very image of the Picturesque Style with this artificial idyll. The cottages, which are loosely clustered around a village green, are all completely different from each other with low-slung, interlocking roofs of stone slate, pantiles or thatch, bay windows and additions, picturesque dormers, and a whole variety of chimneys.

Around Regent’s Part, a new park established as part of the development of London’s West End, Nash built homogenous rows of houses in longitudinal blocks called terraces. They are up to 300 m long, and each block is different from the other. Generally the terraces have four stories: a plinth level (mostly rusticated), two upper floors (often decorated with giant pilasters or detached columns), and an attic above the entablature. To break up the great length, Nash uses temple projections, bay windows or pedimented porticos. In some places the terraces are linked by open arches on the model of triumphal arches. Behind the lavish, palatial language of these fa�ades is a series of ordinary terrace houses and apartment blocks. But each resident enjoyed an undisturbed prospect on the park landscape as if he were living in the middle of his own estates and not in a city.

With their monumental colonnades and occasional theatrical flourishes, Nash’s terraces around Regent’s Park are among the great townscape achievements of neoclassicism, as yet they consist, like a stage set, only of plaster and stucco on plain brick structures.

Around Regent’s Part, a new park established as part of the development of London’s West End, Nash built homogenous rows of houses in longitudinal blocks called terraces. They are up to 300 m long, and each block is different from the other. Generally the terraces have four stories: a plinth level (mostly rusticated), two upper floors (often decorated with giant pilasters or detached columns), and an attic above the entablature. To break up the great length, Nash uses temple projections, bay windows or pedimented porticos. In some places the terraces are linked by open arches on the model of triumphal arches. Behind the lavish, palatial language of these fa�ades is a series of ordinary terrace houses and apartment blocks. But each resident enjoyed an undisturbed prospect on the park landscape as if he were living in the middle of his own estates and not in a city.

With their monumental colonnades and occasional theatrical flourishes, Nash’s terraces around Regent’s Park are among the great townscape achievements of neoclassicism, as yet they consist, like a stage set, only of plaster and stucco on plain brick structures.

The Royal Pavilion in Brighton is Nash’s best-known work. It was designed in an exotic style.

From 1783 the Prince of Wales often spent the summer season at the fashionable seaside resort of Brighton. In 1787, he commissioned Henry Holland to build him a villa with a central domed rotunda and two bow windows on each side. At the end of the Napoleonic wars, the Prince, then Regent, commissioned Nash to modernize the building. Between 1815-22, Nash and his extravagant client transformed the modest villa into an opulent, exotic, dream world, where no costs were spared. Nash extended the villa by a large new room at both north and south ends to make a banqueting room and music room, and transformed the rooms along the garden fa�ade into a series of splendid drawing rooms. He used for this a mixture of Chinese and other oriental styles.

Even more bizarre than the interior is the exterior of the Royal Pavilion. Nash retained the basic Neoclassical villa with its central rotunda and bow windows at the sides, but clad it in a decorative style borrowed from Mogul India with quatrefoil and horseshoe arches, pierced latticing, polygonal piers growing from lotus blossoms, and a busy roofscape of tent roofs, minarets, and onion domes.

Nash extended the villa by a large new room at both north and south ends to make a banqueting room and music room, and transformed the rooms along the garden fa�ade into a series of splendid drawing rooms. He used for this a mixture of Chinese and other oriental styles. In the banqueting room, for example, the walls are covered with Chinese paintings, and the dome opens into a painted sky, where the astonished visitor’s gaze falls on the giant, partly illusionistically painted, partly projecting sculptures leaves of a banana palm. In the middle, an equally huge silver dragon supports an enormous chandelier with further dragons and lotus blossoms.

The photo shows the Banqueting Room.

The opulent dream world of the Royal Pavilion was only possible with the (artfully concealed) use of modern technology. Iron was used for the structural work and even the slender columns disguised as palm trees, while gas was used for the huge chandeliers and an early form of cement (Hamlin’s Mastic)for the outer skin of the domes.

The photo shows the kitchen.