Lyveden New Bield, Northamptonshire

The last of Sir Thomas Tresham’s three buildings is in some ways the most intriguing.  Whereas the Triangular Lodge is a complete entity, Lyveden New Bield is incomplete, presumably abandoned on Sir Thomas’ death in 1605.  It has sat on its hilltop in the wide Northamptonshire countryside for over four hundred years now, and only recently has it begun to make sense fully, thanks to a smart National Trust researcher and the German air-force.

The architecture is actually quite easy to read.  It was clearly intended as a small residence, capable of supporting a small number of guests for meals and probably overnight.  There is, for instance, a kitchen with a bread-oven.  But the building seems never to have been roofed or floored.

The façades have the same combination of classical proportions and Elizabethan mullion-and-transom windows as the Rothwell Market House.  Lyveden New Bield, however, is much more obviously cruciform in plan, and it bristles with religious symbolism that quietly asserts Sir Thomas’ Catholic faith.

The cruciform plan, for instance, consists of five squares.  Sir Gyles Isham explained, in the National Trust guide-book, that the end of each wing has seven faces each five feet wide, because in Christian numerology five is the number of salvation and seven is associated with the Godhead.  The Biblical and liturgical inscriptions around the entablature each have eighty-one (9×9) letters, adjusted so that the names ‘Jesus’ and ‘Maria’ appear symmetrically on the wall alongside the end bay.  The frieze between the two principal floors carries carvings of the symbols of the Passion, Judas’ money bag, the scourge, the pillar, the crown of thorns and the sceptre of reeds, together with the two Christograms, ‘IHS’ and ‘XP’ representing the name of Christ.

If you were a pious Jacobean Protestant, you might accept that the theme of the decoration is the Passion of Our Lord.  If you were a knowing Catholic, you’d realise that it also celebrates the sufferings of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows.  Catholicism in that dangerous age was a sort of Freemasonry, communicating to its adherents through secret signs and signals.  In the year that Sir Thomas died, a group of Catholics including his son, Francis, attempted an audacious act of terrorism that we still commemorate on November 5th.

So what was it for?  The answer has recently become clearer.  From the main house down in the valley, Lyveden Old Bield, of which very little now remains, guests were invited to walk up through Sir Thomas’ new fruit garden, climb to the top of a spiral mount that was restored in the 1990s, where their ultimate destination, the New Bield, was suddenly revealed in the distance.  Once there they could enjoy the view with refreshments in comfort.  Sir Thomas might have kept “secret house” there when the Old Bield was being cleaned.  I’d be very surprised if he didn’t also intend to celebrate Mass:  no Protestant spy could get within a quarter of a mile of the place without being seen.

We owe a clearer understanding of this layout to a the crew of a German spy-plane who photographed the site in 1944.  Chris Gallagher, National Trust gardens and parks curator, found the images in the US National Archive in Baltimore, and realised that they showed that a previously unsuspected labyrinth formed part of Sir Thomas’ formal garden.  [See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8112577/Photos-taken-by-the-enemy-in-Second-World-War-shows-lost-Tudor-garden.html and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1327165/Luftwaffe-WW2-photograph-reveals-lost-Tudor-garden-National-Trust-site.html.]

As a result the site has been regraded to Grade I by English Heritage.  It will be exciting to watch its restoration over the next few years.

The Old Beild, more commonly known as Lyveden Manor, was acquired by the National Trust in 2012 so that, in due course, the two properties will be reunited and both open to the public:  http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM66XE_Lyveden_Old_Bield_Near_Oundle_Northamptonshire_UK.

Triangular Lodge, Rushton, Northamptonshire

Sir Thomas Tresham had a lot of time to kill while in prison for his Catholic faith.  Like many of his generation he was fascinated by what they called “conceits”, intriguing visual or verbal puzzles which concealed meanings, whether for frivolous reasons or for deeply serious purposes.

His Triangular Lodge in the park of Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire, is an astonishing puzzle.  Its practical purpose was as a base for the warrener who looked after the rabbits which provided fresh meat.  Lodges also served as a destination for outings from the main house, and occasionally for “secret house”, when the owner retreated from the main residence while it was spring-cleaned.  It could just as easily serve as an unobtrusive location for the illegal celebration of the Catholic Mass.

That would explain not only its triangular shape, but also the complex inscriptions which cover its walls.

Its plan is an equilateral triangle, each side 33 feet long;  each face has three pinnacled gables;  there are three storeys, each of which has three windows on each of the three walls.  The inscription round the frieze contains 33 letters on each side.  Inside on each floor, the triangular plan is divided by cross-partitions into hexagonal rooms, which of course create further equilateral triangles.

The inscription above the door translates two ways:  Tres testimonium dant can be “There are three who bear record in heaven” [John ch 5, v 7] or “I, Thomas Tresham, bear witness”.  The three inscriptions on each gable are verses from the books of Isaiah, Romans and Habakkuk.  The innermost room has the acronym “SSSDDS” [Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth].  The numerical inscriptions, many of which are divisible by three, relate to Biblical dates of the Creation and the Flood, and the ages at death of Jesus and his mother, subtracted by the AD date 1593.

The blogger Scriblerus [http://everything2.com/node/1241850] suspects obsessive-compulsive disorder;  Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, that austere German scholar, took a more serious view:  “…as a testament of faith this building must be viewed with respect”.

Scriblerus comments, “I’ve never known a building so ostentatiously incognito.”

It is a curious building to look at.  Buy the guide-book and seek out the puzzles.  There’s nothing like it anywhere.

The Triangular Lodge is in the care of English Heritage:  see http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/rushton-triangular-lodge/.  Be aware that there are no facilities, though there are a number of pubs and garden centres nearby.  Rushton Hall Hotel http://www.rushtonhall.com/restaurant.asp?id=42&sid=79 is luxurious:  afternoon tea starts at £24.00.

Market House, Rothwell, Northamptonshire

Sir Thomas Tresham II (1545-1605) occupied a place at the very top of Elizabethan society.  At the age of fifteen he inherited a huge estate from his grandfather, Sir Thomas Tresham I.  He knew the most powerful courtiers in the kingdom – William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, and Sir Christopher Hatton, the Lord Chancellor, both of whom had seats within a few miles of Tresham’s estate at Rushton, Northamptonshire.  Lady Tresham was a daughter of the Catholic Sir Robert Throckmorton, who withdrew from public life as soon as Queen Elizabeth took the throne.  One of their sons was implicated in the Gunpowder Plot and died (of natural causes) in the Tower of London.

Brought up a Protestant, Tresham appears to have undergone a conversion to Catholicism in 1580.  Despite his wealth and status, his uncompromising allegiance to the Catholic faith for the latter part of his life drained his fortune and often restricted his freedom.  When he had his freedom, he spent freely.  His lasting legacy consists of three buildings he created, with much ingenuity.

The earliest of these, though it wasn’t roofed until the nineteenth century, is the Market House, Rothwell, begun in or shortly after 1578.  Apparently entirely secular, it is cruciform in shape, ostensibly built as a covered market and meeting room to celebrate and carry the heraldic emblems of himself and his neighbours.  Its classical proportions are remarkably correct for a building of its period.  The design of the Market House is credited to William Grumbold, but it seems extremely likely that the decorations were tightly specified by Sir Thomas.

Its Latin inscription records that it was built “to the perpetual honour of my friends” and “as a tribute to [my] sweet fatherland and County of Northampton, but chiefly to this town [my] near neighbour”.

It’s unclear whether building-work was never completed or whether it had at some point been partly dismantled:  Sir Thomas was described as “more forward in beginning than finishing his fabricks”.

Finally completed by the Victorian architect John Alfred Gotch, it continues to serve the community, as Sir Thomas wished, as the council chamber for Rothwell Town Council:  http://www.rothwelltown.co.uk/rothwelltowncoun.php.