The roof of Blenheim Palace is a landscape of pillars and pagodas, gods and goddesses, eagles and lions, Roman emperors and a war-looted, 30-tonne marble bust of the Sun King, Louis XIV. These create the distinctive Baroque skyline of the vast 18th-century house—the birthplace of Winston Churchill, and still the home of the dukes of Marlborough.
From the ground it has always looked magnificent, but up among the 300 chimneys, slates were slipping, stone was crumbling, timbers were rotting, and gutters, overwhelmed by the torrential rain of climate change, were pouring water into roof spaces above the grandest state rooms.
Over the past year, 50,000 visitors have climbed to the top of the scaffolding to enter this secret world and watch a £12m conservation project by Donald Insall Associates, the most extensive in the 300-year history of John Vanbrugh’s masterpiece. The job is almost complete. Work will soon start on dismantling 31 miles of scaffolding poles held in place by 70,000 fittings—the scaffolding alone cost £1.7m and took six months to build—along with the one-acre tent that has sheltered the work through one of the wettest winters on record.
The roof of Blenheim Palace has many notable features, including a 30-tonne marble bust of Louis XIV, shown in the process of restoration Damian Griffiths; courtesy Donald Insall Associates
Blenheim, a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1987, was built between 1705 and 1722, a reward from a grateful nation to John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, for victories in the War of the Spanish Succession. His formidable wife Sarah Spencer wanted Christopher Wren, but Churchill chose Vanbrugh, a remarkable soldier and playwright, as his architect. Endless disputes over money followed as costs soared: Spencer fell out with Queen Anne, who stopped funding it, and the duke himself fell out of favour and was dead before Spencer finished the house (having sacked Vanbrugh).
The result, revered by architects including John Soane, was never to everyone’s taste. Jonathan Swift was memorably vituperative about Vanbrugh: “Van’s genius, without Thought or Lecture/is hugely turn’d to Architecture”.
Vanbrugh “was obviously a charmer, highly entertaining company, but many people thought success just came too easily and unearned to him”, Charles Saumarez Smith—Vanbrugh’s biographer and the curator of an exhibition about him that runs until 28 June at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London—tells The Art Newspaper. As for his falling out with Spencer, he concluded “the truth was they really just couldn’t stand one another.”
Donald Insall’s project is designed to protect Blenheim from the impact of climate change-induced super storms and droughts, as well as improving fire and lightning protection.
“Blenheim is a theatrical architectural masterpiece, but was it ever intended to last 300 years?” asks Edward Lewis, the project architect for Donald Insall. “We’re future proofing it, we hope, for the next 300 years.”
Wet winter coats
Work continues on conserving the enormous painted ceilings of the Great Hall and Saloon, by James Thornhill and Louis Laguerre respectively. Both are in remarkable condition given that water was dripping through them from the roof, but were filthy after centuries of fires, candles, breath and—a particular concern of Kelly O’Driscoll, head of built heritage at Blenheim—wet winter coats. The Great Hall has a full-sized reproduction of the original painting hung from the scaffolding while work continues overhead, and most visitors have not even noticed.
Blenheim was created to inspire awe from every direction. The only approaches are across fragile stone bridges; there is no vehicle access from the front of the house to the back, and no backyard where work, workers and materials could be concealed. The palace decided to boast of the work rather than attempt to conceal it: there have been after-hours receptions on the roof, and many locals have returned repeatedly to watch its progress. The estate never closed to the public for a day during the work, though some event prices had to be slightly reduced. “Brides don’t like scaffolding,” O’Driscoll says.
The majestic setting leaves the house exposed to every extreme of weather. Terrifyingly large blocks of stone have fallen in the past, and the project involved cutting out and replacing tonnes of crumbling masonry. Lewis found himself stranded in mid-air on a cherry-picker crane while trying to gather a few loose pieces for study; the crane broke down after he had overloaded it with around 200kg of decaying carvings. Intact stone was cleaned using lasers, carefully preserving beautiful and rare lichens.
Mistakes of the past
Much of the work has undone 19th- and 20th-century alterations and poor repairs. The 8th Duke of Marlborough was cash-strapped, and in the early 1880s he sold not only the books from the famous library, but, more seriously for the health of the house, much of the lead from the roof. Roof pitches were altered as cheaper slate replaced the lead, creating massive problems with gutters and drains, a process the current restorers are reversing using salvaged materials where possible.
The scaffolding platform has allowed spectacular views of the listed monuments and memorials studding 1,000 acres of parkland transformed by Capability Brown, including Vanbrugh’s bridge, which once contained 31 rooms. O’Driscoll sees only the work waiting when she turns her attention next year to the grounds. “The Temple of Health is not in the best of health,” she says.
The exhibition on Vanbrugh and Blenheim, which is threaded through the state rooms until mid-April, is part of the year-long Vanbrugh 300 celebrations mounted by the Georgian Group, marking the tercentenary of his death. There are exhibitions and events across England in museums including Sir John Soane’s Museum, Stowe House in Buckinghamshire, where Vanbrugh worked on the allegorical gardens, and other stately homes including his earliest masterpiece, Castle Howard in Yorkshire, where the architect’s magnificent tapestry room, destroyed by fire in 1940, was recreated last year.
