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Petworth House
The West Front
This is the view looking up to the west front of the House. The lower building to the left of this photograph shows
the additions of the North Gallery. The view from the House looks over the extensive lawns down to the lake.
Entirely rebuilt by the 6th Duke of Somerset between c.1688 and 1702, the
west front, 320 feet long, can only be described as palatial. It was conceived
as the visitor's first impression of the house, being approached through iron gates
via an enclosed courtyard with a circular carriage drive leading to the front
door in the centre.
Its architect is unknown, but the Huguenot architect and designer Daniel
Marot probably played the major role in its conception. Although the
west front of Petworth has been considerably altered since the Duke's day,
it remains one of the most impressive English translations of the European
Baroque Style.
Originally the central three bays were surmounted by a flat-roofed square
dome encompassed by a stone and 'ironwork bellcony' (as it was described
in 1697) supporting urns. The shape of the dome recalls Marot's designs
for the 'Paleis Wasse-naar-Obdam' at the Hague, and Montagu House, Bloomsbury,
rebuilt for Ralph Montagu after 1686.
The parapet of the Façade consisted, as it still does, of a wall punctuated
by stone balustrades above the windows. Originally, however, full-length statues
stood above the three-windowed central bay and the corner pavilions, with carved
stone urns in between. Above the ground-floor windows, corner pavilions retain
pairs of busts flanking the ducal pheonix crest.
Work began in about 1688, but the first referances to the west front occur
in 1689-90, when Samuel Foulkes, the mason, was paid 'towards the frontice-peece
in the new buildings' and John Selden was also paid for the'keystones with
carved winges' (the Duke's crest) above each window.
The fire of 1714 apparently destroyed the central dome, but as a dome is
still shown in a sketch of c.1770 it must have been rebuilt soon afterwards
- other repairs seem to have been completed by about 1720. The dome was removed
by the 3rd Earl of Egremont. possibly in 1777-8 when a mason, John Gilliam,
working under the direction of Matthew Brettingham the Younger, was paid for
'working and setting of sandstone on the Parrapet and setting D° in the
west front''.
Certainly, the 3rd Earl gave the façade its present guise, although his pediment
over the central three bays has since been removed. As well as simplifying the
roof line, he extended the ground-floor windows so that one could step out of them
on to a new stone terrace. Previously, guests had to jump from the original higher window cills
across an area lighting the basement, which had caused'some awkward accidents'.
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