[90613] Knole : Orangery - Plaster Frieze

Knole, Sevenoaks, Kent.

The National Trust.

The Orangery.

Plaster Frieze.

 

The plaques around the walls of the orangery are a mixture of casts of ancient originals, maquettes and test-casts and finished commissioned pieces. The plaster friezes and roundels were probably made by John Flaxman RA (1755-1826).

 

The Orangery, which now forms the south range of Green Court, was created in 1823 at the direction of Arabella Cope, widow of the 3rd Duke of Dorset, and her second husband, Lord Whitworth. It was converted from a much earlier space in an effort to bring an element of the Gothic Revival style, so popular at the beginning of the 19th century, to Knole.

 

The Orangery may have been planned as a gallery for the display of Classical sculptures as well as plants. An extensive collection of bas-reliefs, inscriptions and sculpture, both antique marble pieces and much later plaster casts, is fixed to the interior walls of the Orangery and may have been part of Cope and Whitworth’s original presentation of the building. They are mentioned in John Brady’s 1839 The Visitors Guide to Knole and may have been sourced from the Continent specifically for display here. Photographs reveal that by the mid-20th century the Orangery was used for the storage of other kinds of objects too. A black and white photo from 1945 shows the three-tiered Buzaglo stove, which dates to 1774 and previously stood in the Great Hall, had been moved to the Orangery. Before it was opened to the public in 2010, the Orangery was used for garden storage.

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