CONTEXT 187 : MARCH 2026 51 East India Company before returning to Europe as a soldier, which led to his imprisonment in France for four years. On his release he became famous as a successful playwright and theatrical impresario at his theatre in the Haymarket before becoming an architect. The key was his membership of the Kit-Cat Club, which led to his close friendship with an influential group of young Whig aristocrats and literary contacts who were to become his enthusiastic patrons. One of them was the third Earl of Carlisle who, despite Vanbrugh’s lack of any formal training, commissioned him in 1699 to design his ambitious new country house of Castle Howard on his Yorkshire estate. The chapter devoted to Castle Howard describes how he prepared and modified the design of both the house and its garden setting, and uses the surviving correspondence to chart its progress while under construction. This is followed by a lengthy chapter which describes the troubled history of his next commission for the even more opulent Blenheim Palace on the royal manor of Woodstock in Oxfordshire. Built as a public monument to the Duke of Marlborough following his defeat of the French at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, it also served as a private house for the Marlboroughs, but the Duchess never felt comfortable with Vanbrugh’s extravagant concept and its soaring costs. Her dissatisfaction reached a climax with a bitter battle over the restoration of the ruined remains of the manor house. Vanbrugh wished to retain it as a symbol of the royal ownership of the estate and its associations with ‘fair Rosamond’, the mistress of Henry II. He had started to reroof it and repair the chapel when the Duchess stopped the work. She was determined that it should be demolished to save money and to concentrate the workforce on the completion of the palace. Despite presenting her with a two-page paper on ‘Reasons Offer’d for Preserving some Part of the Old Manor’, sadly, Vanbrugh lost the battle. However, he is now revered as a pioneering advocate for conservation. As Saumarez Smith comments, ‘no one else at the time was willing to make the case for the preservation of historic ruins so clearly’. His later country house and garden projects are dealt with in a single chapter which presents a perceptive analysis of the development of his architectural style and the importance of patronage in the architectural practice of the early 18th century. The emphasis is on the theatricality Portrait of Sir John Vanbrugh by Thomas Murray
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