John Harris, ‘Designs for the Museum and Library of the

text © the authors 2011

John Harris, ‘Designs for the Museum and Library of the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xIx, 2011, pp. 39–49

In August , travelling for the Buildings ofEngland: Lincolnshire, I joined the SpaldingGentlemen’s Society, fascinated that the Society hademerged as long ago as as the singular creation ofMaurice Johnson (–), whose family had livedat Ayscoughfee Hall since the later-seventeenth century.The Hall, now the local museum, is still redolent ofthe Society’s founder, but I particularly recollect itfor the taxidermy in the Ashley Maples Collection ofBritish Birds, alas now partly dispersed to the LeicesterMuseum. I was introduced to Mr Woodward,Headmaster of the Spalding Grammar School, andex-officio Secretary of the Society, who had done muchto revive the Society’s fortunes during the s. I wasamazed that this kind encourager left me with the keyto the Museum, to spend three agreeable days withoutsupervision. I believe in my fashion I turned everythingover, for books, manuscripts and drawings in thisfascinating repository were all mine to examine, andI must confess that more than fifty years on I cannotrecollect a comparable experience. I already knew ofJohn Talman, for since I had been cataloguingthe Talman drawings in the Royal Institute of BritishArchitects where I was the Assistant Curator. Soimagine my excitement at finding an album ofdrawings with one sheet inscribed ‘Mr Tallmans planfor a Museum’, together with a group of others byMaurice Johnson, William Stukeley, ‘Messrs Toddand Sands’, Giuseppe Grisoni, and Captain FrancisPilliod. Alas, although I penned a draft of an articlein , it went into my ‘Pending’ file and remainedthere for fifty-one years, only briefly emerging in

when I acquired Dorothy Owen’s edition of the Minute

Books of the Society – ; again when Icontributed to Dr Cinzia Sicca’s edited book onJohn Talman; and most recently when I read withexcitement the Honeybones’ exemplary editing of theSociety’s correspondence in . This was the spurfor me to write the present account of this group ofdesigns for what would have been the second custom-built museum in England, albeit a small one.

Maurice Johnson (–), a young barristertrained at the Inner Temple in London, was

born in Spalding, where six generations of his familyhad flourished, in a town described in byWilliam Bogdani, Clerk to the Ordnance at theTower of London, and a member of the SGS in ,as ‘separated from the rest of Mankind’; and in thesame year by the antiquary Roger Gale, describingthe Spalding Gentlemen as ‘a sett of Virtuosi almostout of the world and who would never have beenknown but by the emanations of their own light’.

In London Johnson had enjoyed clubs and coffeehouses for social and cultural exchange, and it wasnatural that when he returned to remote and fennySpalding for marriage and the life of a countrylawyer, he should form a club where friends metweekly to chat and read the Tatler and weekly papersnewly arrived from London. A recent Public LibraryAct of was aimed at saving public libraries,often established in parish churches, and so it was atSpalding, where a library in the church had been setup in the mid-seventeenth century, and where thebooks were now in serious need of repair.

This cultural socializing led to the founding of

T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X I X

DESIGNS FOR THE MUSEUM AND LIBRARYOF THE SPALDING GENTLEMEN’S SOCIETY

J O H N H A R R I S

Maurice Johnson was the first to submit this ideaof a museum to paper on a single sheet (Fig.)inscribed ‘Mr Johnson secretary of the Gent Sochis Plan for a museum for Soc. Gent. Spal. ’.It proposed a museum and hall on two storeys, thelength of the museum feet ½ inches, the Hall feet inches, the building feet wide. Thedrawing is also inscribed as having a ‘Courtyard’measuring yards by , perhaps the first idea for theSociety’s Physic Garden. He seems to have proposeda ‘Winter’ and ‘Summer’ arrangement. No particularsite was indicated, and as it is not referred to in theMinutes, it might well have been a hypotheticalproject on Johnson’s land at Ascoughfee Hall. On July occurs the first reference in theMinute Books to the Free Grammar School proposal:

‘Proposed by the President [Captain Francis Pilliod]that some part of the Building used for the FreeGrammar School of Spalding be fitted up for aMuseum for the Soc. Ordered that the same beproposed to ye Governors of the said Schole by theSecretary … Accordingly upon the th of July … thesame was proposed by me to the Governors & Theywith the President & Treasurer Viewed and Measuredthe school & they declared Their Approbation of yeProposal provided the Same was executed so as not tobe any prejudice to the Use of ye said Building for theMaster & Scholars’.

This minute is followed by dimensions of the schoolroom. On the August it was ‘Agreed & Orderedthat the Free Grammer [sic] School be fitted up &used for the Society to meet in’. However, as reportedin the Minutes, ‘The President declared That he hadheard Some People object to the Free Schole’s beingused for the Soc. to meet in … [and as a result] TheTreasurer [Neve] offered to spare the Soc. as muchof his garden fronting the North Porch of the Churchas is necessary to build a Museum on …’ So on September it was ‘Resolved upon Ballot that aMuseum be built on part of Mr Neves Garden asproposed by him & that the prompt paymt of Monthlysubscription be made as proposed’. To this periodmust belong the three designs (Figs. –) inscribed

the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society, the first referenceto which are to be found in the Society’s MinuteBooks. At the weekly meeting held on MondayNovember it is recorded that ‘the companyhad some Discourse about holding their Meeting inthe Record Room at the farther end of the TownHall, or in the Free School, if they could either ofthem be fitted up’. The use of the Free School wasencouraged by the Rev. Timothy Neve, the local Free[Grammar] school Master who taught his pupils in atwo-storey school building created in the s outof one of the chapels in the Parish Church, where theVicar was the Rev. Stephen Lyon, president of theSociety. Alas, of the Free School project at this time,despite high hopes, nothing came of this, and duringthe period – the Society met on everyThursday afternoon and evening, in a variety ofplaces: the White Hart inn, Mr Younger’s CoffeeHouse in the Abbey Yard, the Assembly Rooms, theTown Hall, in the homes of member or in a roomhired by the Timothy Neve in the parsonage house.

There are clear parallels between this new Societyand Johnson’s London experiences, particularly themeeting and drinking club revived in as theSociety of Antiquaries, with Peter le Neve as its firstPresident, Talman as its Director, and MauriceJohnson and William Stukeley as Officers. Notsurprisingly, as the years progressed, the rapidlyincreasing collections of books, curiosities,archaeological finds and scientific instrumentsencouraged the Officers of the Society to considersome permanent accommodation with a museum, alibrary and a meeting room. By Johnson alreadyhad what he called his ‘museum’ in Ascoughfee Hall.The idea of a specially-built dedicated museum wasnovel, even if the Society’s plans were modest fortheir parochial situation, for the only precedent wasthe Ashmolean in Oxford, opened in , althoughthere were many private collections of curiosities thatcould be described as museums, as well as the RoyalArmouries set up in in accommodation in theTower of London.

D E S I G N S F O R T H E M U S E U M A N D L I B R A R Y O F T H E S P A L D I N G G E N T L E M E N ’ S S O C I E T Y




Fig. (above). Maurice Johnson’s plan for a museum, .

Fig. (right). Messrs Todd & [William] Sands designs for a museumattached to the Free Grammer School, July to August .

Fig. (left). Design from Messrs Todd & Sands for fitting up the Free School & Museum. Fig. (above). Another design by Todd & Sands.

Here then is documentation for three of the survivingdesigns. Talman’s sheet (Fig. ) is fascinating, for theleft half is devoted to the museum, whereas the righthalf is his record of the Moulton Chapel of St Jamesnear Spalding, designed by Sands in , to whichTalman proposed to add an Italianate campanile.One plan on this left half of the sheet is inscribed‘Mr Tallman’s plan for a Museum’, indeed internallyin the shape of a double cube, but with externalattachments to the angles. However, another planabove this is more ambitious, proposing a buildingranged around three sides of a courtyard with a littlesketch to one side suggesting an internal chapel.He signed the sheet ‘Johes Tallman Ar[chitectus]delineavit apud Henxworth Agro Hertforde

Mesure Novr’. On the verso is a view of the centralelevation of Ayscoughfee Hall, where it is likely thatTalman stayed, for in the circles of Spalding, as a

‘for fitting up the Free Schole & Museum’, the buildingmeasuring feet high, feet long, and feet wide.

It would seem from the elevational sketches thatthe local mason-architect William Sands and Todd,his associate, were proposing a Gothic exterior,maybe in stylistic accord with the church building.On December there was further progress:

‘The Members who accordingly met to measure theground proposed & agreed to build the museum,return that they find there are Thirty four feet in Frontand as much room backwards as is necessary being notthat way confined. And hereupon the Secr[retar]y laybefore ye Society sketches for the plans thereof (viz)one drawn by John Talman of Hinxworth Esq being inthe proportion of a double cube. Another for bothstages by himself [Captain Pilliod] in the sameproportion & [indecipherable] another by DrStukeley in which the Proportion is not regarded &there were many debats thereupon’.



Fig. . John Talman’s design for a museum and for altering the Moulton Chapel, .

storey. What is not mentioned in the Minutes is thesubmission (Fig. ) by Giuseppe Andrea Grisoni,Talman’s colleague and personal draughtsman inboth Italy and England, inscribed ‘Signr GiuseppiGrisoni’s plan for a Museum Soc. Gen Spaldg ’,drawn on the verso of a receipt dated November ,. Suggestively Grisoni’s sketch must have beenmade looking over Talman’s shoulder. As Grisoniwas married to the daughter of Francis St John, a

great collector and Director of the Society ofAntiquaries, he would have been a most distinguishedvisitor. William Stukeley’s design (Fig. ) datedNovember offers a free-standing open room ofthree bays with a table in the centre and a bookcaseat one end. ‘Captain Pilliod’s Plan of of Decr ’(Fig. ) is a free-standing building feet by feet,‘the height within feet’ and ‘ or Steppes raisedthe Floor being feet from the Ground’, so a single



Fig. . William Stukeley’s plan for a museum, . Fig. (above). Giuseppe Andrea Grisoni’s plan fora museum, .

Fig. (top). Captain Francis Pilliod’s plan for a museum, .

Sparke, a canon of Peterborough Cathedral, hadbeen a member of the SGS since . By January

it was minuted that ‘the Soc do move toMr Sparkes Room at the Abbey Yard; by April the‘Society Room’ was ordered to be altered’, and wasfinished by May when the officers instructed that‘the Presses to be fitted up for necessary Bookspapers & Curiositys in Art & Nature’ fitted up & awalk made in the garden, which was laid out as aPhysic Garden. This move is demonstrated by twosheets (Figs. –), dated March , detailingthe fitting up of the museum, a rare document.

The Society enjoyed their Abbey Yard roomsuntil early when the Society’s Minutes on May

describe new accommodation in Holyrood House, aproperty of the Ambler family that had descended to

distinguished collector of antique sculpture whoowned drawings of Talman provenance, and hadsucceeded to Thorpe Hall, Peterborough, in ,it is likely that Talman in this November took thecoach from Hertfordshire, meeting up with Grisoniat Thorpe Hall, when they both took the coach toSpalding.

This burst of optimistic architectural activity in came to naught, for perhaps it was just a littletoo ambitious for a provincial society. However, theMinutes of December disclose a happyalternative: ‘that the Soc do view Rooms ofMr Sparkes in a passage to the Abbey Yard in orderto remove thither if found commodious, until thesociety shall think proper to build a museum orsome more convnt plan’. The Reverend Joseph



Fig. . Scheme for fitting up the museum in Mr Sparke’s room, March .

larger and loftier room, though the first be of above tenfeet high. The hall is the orchestra or concert room,furnished with a press facing the door, well-storedwith a good collection of music of all masters inrequest, and some of the antients, or not now living,as Blow’s, Purcell’s, Bassano’s, Corelli’s works &c.This leads you into the Museum with four book-cases,two deeper for charts, plants, and prints, and two onthem, in one of which is our Hortus Siccus, and ourMatera Medica in the other, in proper partitions andsubdivisions, what medals, coins, small pieces ofcarving, turning, or other curious works of art, wehave, with room abundant for the reception of more.The like provision for gems, minerals, metals, fossils,petrifications, shells and insects. This our Museum is feet inches and a half clear within, by feet wide,and feet inches, and a half high within thecompartments’.

Johnson through his wife, and was adjacent toAscoughfee Hall, both facing the river Welland.This was the house before its Georgian re-fronting in. According to the plan of the rooms on theentrance or river front, the Society occupied the halland the adjacent parlour, with a servant’s room andcellars, of the late Tudor house, the hall adapted asan ‘Orchestra’ and entered directly from the porch.As there are few descriptions of society museumsat this time, Johnson’s letter to Samuel Gale, September , is worth quoting:

‘A pair of great gates, fronting the London Road, leadsthrough a court yard (of their garden) of yards by ,to this porch; thence into a hall of feet by inchesby feet, well paved, hung with maps, plans, charts,&c leading through a pair of folding doors into a much



Fig. . Scheme for fitting up the museum in Mr Sparke’s room, second sheet.

by Dr Marten Perry, senior physician at the JohnsonHospital in Spalding, who organized an appeal in which led to the building of the presentmuseum designed by J.B.Corby & Sons of Stamford,and opened in as a memorial to MauriceJohnson, and indeed, in retrospect, in memory of themuseum that might have been built in .

This move encouraged Maurice Johnson to drawand have engraved by George Vertue in abookplate for the Society. (Fig. )

The Society enjoyed twelve years here, butbecause of the death of Maurice Johnson in itnot only lost its Founder but also the moving forceand inspiration that had inspired the early foundingmembers. It then moved to rooms (Fig. ) in abuilding by the old High Bridge across the Welland,belonging to Michael Cox, the apothecary, who heldthe title of ‘Operator’ to the Society. This was themeeting place until the building was demolished forroad building in the s. The Society was revived



Fig. . Bookplate of a Society designed by Francis Johnson and engraved by George Vertue.

page is a set of sketches for Moulton Chapel nearSpalding] Verso: half is an elevation ofAyscoughfee Hall and an indistinct note reads‘John Talman of Hinxworth etc Director of theAntiquarian Society’; the other half is anunrelated letter, probably the first piece of paperthat came to hand at the time/

. William Stukeley’s plan for a Museum, datedDec . cm x cm.

, ‘Captain Pilliod’s Plan for a museum’ Dec.. cm x .cm/

. ‘Signor Giuseppi Grisoni’s plan for a MuseumSoc Gen Spald ’ cm. cm.

. The Sparkes Room : ‘The Schaeme for fittingup the museum of the Gents Soc’, . .cm x cm/

. The Sparkes Room, details for fitting up,inscribed ‘Schaema Musei agr Lady Day /[i.e. March ]. .cm x cm/

A P P E N D I X

List of the designs based upon compilation byMichael and Diana Honeybone.. ‘Mr Johnson Secretary of the Gents Soc his Plan

for a museum for Soc. Gen. Spal. ’. .cm xcm.

. ‘Messrs Sands & Todd plan for museum in theFree School’ [c.?]. .cm x .cm. N.B.This is drawn in the verso of sketch no.⁄

. ‘Messrs Todd & Sands for fitting up the FreeSchole & Museum for Gents Soc Sp’ [c.?] .. cm. x .cm. N.B. This is on the recto of and maybe is Todd and Sands/

. Messrs Todd and Sands plan for a museum inthe Free School/

. JohnTalman’s plan for a museum, inscribed,signed and dated, ‘Joh[ann]s Tallman Ar.Delineavit Apud Henxworth Agro HertfordeMesure Novr’. cm x .cm. [half of this



Fig. . View of the Meeting Room in Mr Cox’s rooms by the old High Bridge.

in the world of letters(where you are chieflyconversant) affords me no small pleasurewhere I’m only a humble admirer at a distancehow well the learned heroes of the ageperform’. ‘I am able to give you some betteraccount of our body Politick at Spalding than Idid at my last, these two last meetings we’rebrightened up, and either a spirit of wittymirth or learned dispute have agreeablyenough entertained us. I wou’d according to yradvice have set immediately about fitting upthe room for our Museum, but that it cannotconveniently be done till the Tenant that howhas shall have left it. I’ve sent Mr Todd tosurvey it, and to give me the changes of wt itwill amount to, & he reckons us pounds forthe bare flooring of it. But I suppose theexpence will terrifie none of us, and I’m verymuch oblig’d to you & Mr John for yr generousoffer’.

The situation at this time is referred to in theMinute Book , f. r : ‘the Society fitted up alittle Room in the Old part of the ParsonageHouse and by the favour of the Revd Mr Nevewho hired it met there at their usual times’.‘Untill the number of their members increasingThey were on that Act obliged to find a Larger& agreed for the use of the Assembly Room’.But see also SGS Papers () Acts, Orders &Minutes : ‘At the West end of the Vicaragehouse of Spalding a Room hired of theMinisters called Mr Neves Room fitted up bythe Soc: there remained in his hands :: ½wch part of wc[?] he was orderd to [being?]Mappe – this room because too small andinconvenient so that the society was obliged toremove from it and hired a larger wherein theGent & ladys kept an assembly’.

See Joan Evans, A History of the Society ofAntiquaries (London, ).

Minute Book, MB, f. r. ‘Height from ground under the Upper Schoolto the Beauces of the Upper School fet’‘Length Sch. Within walls feet’, ‘Breadththereof within walls feet’, ‘ Width of eachSouth Window within ye Lights ½ ft’ ‘Widthof ye East Window within ye lights ½ ft’, theSpace from the Light to the Walls of thewindow feet; the ‘Lower School is spacious

N O T E S

A typical guide to the Hall is Ayscoughfee AndIts History, ‘New And Enlarged Edition, FifthIssue’ (Spalding, ); or the History producedby the South Holland Museum Service in. At this point I must warmly acknowledgeDiana and Michael Honeybone , the editors ofThe Correspondence of the Spalding Gentlemen’sSociety –, (Lincoln Record Society,vol., Woodbridge, ) . My article couldnot have been written without their generousadvice, drawing upon Michael Honeybone’sdoctoral thesis, ‘The Spalding Gentleman’sSociety : The Communication of Science InThe East Midlands of England, –’(Open University, ).

By far the best general account of Talman isGraham Parry, The John Talman Letter Book,based upon the work of the late HughMacandrew (Walpole Society, vol. , ),especially sections and . But see alsoHoward Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary ofBritish Architects – (th ed., NewHaven & London, ), pp. –, andCinzia Sicca (ed.), John Talman: An EarlyEighteenth Century Connoisseur (New Haven& London, ).

A very large volume titled ‘An Alphabet of theArts and Sciences’. I am grateful to Michaeland Diana Honeybone for elucidating thewhereabouts of the drawings.

D. Owen, The Minute Books of the SpaldingGentleman’s Society – (Lincoln RecordSociety, vol. , ), a misleading titlebecause she only published a facsimile of theminutes for ; but in particular see herintroduction.

Listed as an appendix to this article. I am quoting from the Honeybone’sintroduction, p.xi, letter , October , .

Honeybone, letter , September , . Minute Book , f. r; but see the telling letterfrom T. Neve to Maurice Johnson, [in London’at the Widdows Coffee-House in DevereuxCourt near The Temple’] March –,inscribed by Johnson, ‘abt fitting up the Vic.Ouths [ outhouse] for house of the Soc’,(Honeybone SGS no. ): ‘The kindinformation you so often give me of wt passes



you to Judge of that when I have told you. Allwho have the honr to be known to him admire& love him., & that Noble & learned sett ofmen, the Society of English AntiquariesUnanimously Elected him their Director of theWorks & Undertakings where no Man acquitshimself better or be more highly Esteemed forhe is not only an Ornamt to that Soc But anhonor to the Nation’.

For Grisoni, see Sicca, op. cit. . SGS MB, December , f. v. Ibid., January , f.v. Ibid., April , f. v. Ibid., May , , f. r. See also SGS Misc

papers, showing seven wall divisions for booksand curiosities etc, and a plan for the garden.

Michael Honeybone’s account of this physicgarden in his thesis is very important forgarden history studies in relationship to theinfluential Chelsea Physic Garden.

SGS Minutes, MB, f. r, May , withthe plan of the Society’s proposed apartmentsin the house; but see also MB, recto,minutes of May.

Bibliographia Topographia Britannica, III. Steel engraving, ‘Interior Of The Gentlemen’s

Society Room’, printed by William Pickering.

For the events at this time written bycontemporaries, see the Rev. W.Moore,The Gentlemen’s Society at Spalding (reprint,Cambridge, ), including an addendum byMarten Perry, who also wrote a full piece onthe SGS in the Journal of the BritishArchaeological Society, () (March ).In addition Chris Renn has fully described therevival of the Society between and inhis article ‘Keeping the Flame Burning’ inLincolnshire History and Archaeology ().

enough for many Cellars feet high’; the Flooris half Oak, and half old badd firr and muchbroken. The walls are of stone and very strongas is the Roof & Leaded the basse tracingssupporting the Floor will do again. & oldfloors will well make partitions for Cellars.

SGS, MB, f. v, September . Ibid., f. r. Ibid., f. v. For Sands see Colvin, Dictionary (),pp. –. He has no reference to Todd, butDr Richard Hewlings has kindly given methe information that Todd was one of fourarchitects who contributed to the building ofthe New Cross, a Market arcade with a roomover it in Boston, Lincolnshire, in .

SGS I, , verso, December . See alsof. r, December : ‘Capt Pilliod laydbefore the Soc. a sketch of a Plan for theMuseum /museum/Capt Pilliod/sketch of Plan.

See Colvin Dictionary (), p. , for theaccount ‘by a member of the SpaldingGentlemen’s Society’ of Talman’s collections.The original source has never been given, andfor this I am indebted to Michael Honeybone.In fact it is by Maurice Johnson : SGS, MB, f.r, minuted January , ‘The Secr read tothe Soc. part of Lr da Nov at Henx(sic)worth in Hertfordshire the seat of mylearned & most ingenious frd John TalmanEsq’… adding to the transcript in Colvin,‘This Gentleman’s Father was a CelebratedArchitect years in Collecting, & he himselfspent many years in Italy. He is deservedlyblessed in a Excellent Lady of Fine Tact, has avery good Estate Fine Gardens & Enjoys Lifein a most rational & agreeable mannerimaginable. It wou’d be Vanity in me toattempt his character, therefore I shall leave



Documents

John Harris, ‘Designs for the Museum and Library of the