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Fonthill Bed and breakfast, Nairn Fonthill is an elegant and comfortable villa residence, set in quarter of an acre in the centre of Nairn. The house was named after Fonthill Abbey, one of England's most famous Palladion houses, and sits pleasantly between two churches. Fonthill is ideally situated just off the A96 Inverness to Aberdeen road, close to the centre of Nairn and within a stone's throw of a variety of local restaurants, pubs, the harbour and beaches. www.fonthill-nairn.co.uk   (296 words)

Guardian | The man who had too much The 276ft-high tower of his famous Fonthill Abbey, and the 154ft Lansdown Tower, which he built at the end of his garden in Bath, elevated him spatially and socially (from Lansdown, his gaze could sweep across six counties). Fonthill was a rushed job, and an impatient Beckford moved into the unfinished abbey in 1807, living there for 15 years in between extended buying trips on the Continent. "Fonthill Fever" swept England, although curiosity was thwarted by The Barrier, the dogs and the man-traps. www.guardian.co.uk /print/0,3858,4352254-103418,00.html   (1649 words)

Bolton Museums, Art gallery and Aquarium - Art: J M W Turner   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06) This watercolour is one of a series drawn at Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire in August to September 1799 for the eccentric art patron, William Beckford. In 1793 Beckford commissioned a vast Gothic Revival abbey from the architect James Wyatt, to be built at Fonthill in Wiltshire; Beckford lived there in extravagant circumstances from 1807 until he sold it in 1822. Turner was the guest of Beckford at Fonthill in 1799; he made several large drawings of the house and park, some of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1800. www.boltonmuseums.org.uk /HTML/art_watercolour_turner.asp   (232 words)

BECKFORD'S FONTHILL Spectator, The - Find Articles William Beckford's Fonthill Abbey is thought of as a supreme example of romantic hubris and defiance of nature. In his teens Beckford was already writing of his hopes of erecting 'a Tower dedicated to meditation' and his imagination was fired by Swiss scenery, the remoteness of the Grande Chartreuse and the monasteries of Alcobaca and Batalha. Fonthill with most of the contents was bought by a businessman, John Farquhar. www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_200401/ai_n9359341   (579 words)

Fonthill The young William's inheritance included a huge estate (Fonthill in Wiltshire) and a country house (Fonthill Splendens) in addition to capital of £1.5 million and an annual income from Jamaica of £70,000. The company on their arrival at the Abbey could not fail to be struck with the increasing splendour of lights and their effects, contrasted with the deep shades which fell on the walls, battlements, and turrets, of the different groups of the edifice. The table and side-boards glittering with piles of plate and a profusion of candle-lights, not to mention a blazing Christmas fire of cedar and cones of pine, united to increase the splendour and to improve the coup'-d'oeil of the room. www.aboutnelson.co.uk /fonthill.htm   (1595 words)

beckford2 The few visitors allowed into Fonthill were greeted by his doorman Perro, a Swiss dwarf, dressed in a suit of gold, who he had rescued from a life of poverty. Fonthill Abbey quickly became one of the wonders of the age and “Fonthill Fever” swept Britain. Unfortunately, the building of Fonthill Abbey cost such a fantastic amount of money that even “England’s wealthiest son” began to feel the pinch and eventually he was forced to sell it. homepage.ntlworld.com /jjlehay/PAGES/beckford2.htm   (1153 words)

Picturesque Gardens Repton probably didn't have Fonthill Abbey in mind when he wrote about "a chaste correctness of proportion"; but then, its owner, William Beckford, was never one to fuss much about propriety. Fonthill Abbey (begun in 1796), with its 300 foot tall tower, was not created for convenience; it was an attempt to inspire the sort of sublime feelings that Medieval cathedrals can evoke. In 1825, the tower fell, destroying much of the Abbey; more of the wilderness survived and still can be visited. www.suite101.com /article.cfm/garden_design/21924/2   (498 words)

Fonthill Abbey - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Fonthill Abbey was a brainchild of William Thomas Beckford, son of wealthy English plantation owner William Beckford and a student of architect Sir William Chambers. In 1771 when Beckford was ten years old, he inherited £1,000,000 and an annual income which his contemporaries then estimated at around £100,000 a year, a colossal amount at the time, but which biographers have found to be closer to half of that sum. Shunned by English society, he nevertheless decided to return to his native country; after enclosing the Fonthill estate in a six-mile long wall (high enough to prevent hunters from chasing foxes and hares on his property), this arch-romantic decided to have a Gothic cathedral built. en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Fonthill_Abbey   (785 words)

Fonthill Abbey-Hindon,United Kingdom - SkyscraperCity Fonthill Abbey - also known as Beckford's Folly - was a large Gothic-style building built in the turn of the 19th century in Wiltshire, England. Fonthill Abbey was a brainchild of William Thomas Beckford, son of a wealthy English businessman and student of architect Sir William Chambers. Beckford lived in Fonthill Abbey until 1822 when he lost two of his Jamacian sugar plantations in a legal action. www.skyscrapercity.com /showthread.php?t=186743   (666 words)

A Visit to Fonthill Fonthill Abbey was almost grotesquely vast: the tower of the Great Octagon soared upwards for 300 feet, and was so fantastically perpendicular that it collapsed several times, the final time in 1825 due to improper foundations. All that remains of Fonthill Abbey today is half of its north wing. To be fair, the remains of Fonthill Abbey may be somewhat disappointing except to the most devoted Beckfordite. www.infopt.demon.co.uk /beckfor3.htm   (1915 words)

History His dearest hobby, however, was Fonthill Abbey, a medieval-style monstrosity with a tower nearly 300 feet high, built on the family estate in Wiltshire. Turner produced several watercolours of the Abbey from various vantages, for his friend and patron - all mercifully remote. The real reason would appear to be an attempt to outdo William Beckford, whose tower at Fonthill in Wiltshire, although higher, had fallen down in 1825. www.webtribe.net /~franktalk/truth/history.html   (1845 words)

Press Release: William Beckford, 1760-1844: An Eye for the Magnificent Beckford finally opened Fonthill Abbey to the public in 1822 and again in 1823, offering to sell its contents in an effort to rebuild his diminished fortune. During the weeks in which the house was open for viewing a curious population flocked there and was astounded by the breadth and quality of Beckford's collections and by the knowledge, ambition, and wealth that he had brought to the creation and furnishing of Fonthill Abbey. Beckford departed Fonthill Abbey in 1822 and relocated to Bath, where he continued his passion for architecture and collecting. www.bgc.bard.edu /exhibit/exhibits/beckford/press_release.html   (1243 words)

LOST BUILDINGS OF BRITAIN - Simon Thurley - Penguin Books Others were repositories of our cultural identity, like Glastonbury Abbey, Britain’s oldest monastery, rebuilt by the Normans and desecrated during the Reformation to enrich Henry VIII’s war coffers; or the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where Samuel Pepys was enchanted by Nell Gwynne and where, under David Garrick, modern drama began. The last, Fonthill Abbey, was a fantastical folly, financed by the proceeds of the slave trade, that ruined its owner and then collapsed under its own extravagant design. Others were repositories of our cultural identity: Glastonbury Abbey, Britain's oldest monastery, rebuilt by the Normans and desecrated during the Reformation to enrich Henry VIII's war coffers; or the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where Samuel Pepys was enchanted by Nell Gwynne and where, under David Garrick, modern drama began. www.penguin.ca /nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780670915217,00.html   (536 words)

William Beckford   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06) Fonthill Abbey, architect James Wyatt (1746-1813), was the most sensational of the English Gothic revival. Beckford spent most of his life at Fonthill Abbey as a recluse. Fonthill Abbey ate away at his fortune, leaving a mere œ80,000, forcing him to sell Fonthill Abbey and retire to Bath. www.heureka.clara.net /art/beckford.htm   (522 words)

Fonthill Architecturally the most important of the remains of Fonthill is.. It is on a monumental scale, tripartite, with a big arch in the centre and lower balustraded one-bay side-pieces. He was father of William Beckford who built the famous Gothic Fonthill Abbey early in the next century and of which little remains) www.astoft.co.uk /fonthill.htm   (286 words)

Paintings for Beckford's Sanctuary: four lunettes commissioned by William Beckford at the end of his life for the ... He also purchased land behind the house from which he was able to create a mile-long ride to the summit of Lansdown Hill, where in 1826 he began Lansdown Tower as a place of retreat. It may be regarded as an attempt to recreate in the contrasting environs of Bath the seclusion and privacy Beckford had enjoyed at Fonthill Abbey with its eight-mile perimeter wall. The Tower is a fitting conclusion to the series of magical and sumptuous rooms Beckford created during his lifetime, in which he manipulated space, light and colour to great effect. www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_m0PAL/is_507_159/ai_n6152828   (1008 words)

July 2003 - Tea Clipper from www.TeaAntiques.com This most attractive vase is marked on the base with 'Fonthill Abbey’ in fl, together with the pattern number of 3/866 in orange. He is remembered for his writing of the Gothic novel 'Vathek' and for the building of his Gothic home, Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire. Fonthill was designed by James Wyatt, but it was Beckford himself that did the supervising and planning of what was to become the most extraordinary house in England! www.teaantiques.com /teaclipper/teaclipper200306_07.htm   (2649 words)

Bath Preservation Trust: Beckfords Tower Born to great wealth, endowed with precocious talent, displaying pride of ancestry and his family's notorious temper, William Beckford (1760-1844) was a character around whom legends grew, even in his own lifetime. Beckford's name will always be linked to Fonthill Abbey; the great neo-Gothic house designed by James Wyatt, and built on Beckford's Wiltshire estate. After selling Fonthill Abbey in 1822 Beckford moved to Bath, where he continued to indulge his taste for building, landscape gardening, collecting and creating magical interiors. www.bath-preservation-trust.org.uk /museums/beckford/beckford.php   (390 words)

Fonthill Abbey West and North Fronts Fonthill Abbey: View of the West and North Fronts: from the End of the Clerk's Walk The grouping of the great divisions of the Abbey is very perfect from this point. The enormous height of the central tower is reduced into proportion by the lofty erections about its base, and a magnificent idea of extent is produced by the great distance at which the towers appear, which teminate the eastern and southern extremities... special.lib.gla.ac.uk /teach/gothic/fonthillfronts.html   (107 words)

William Beckford At Dulwich Picture Gallery - London City Guide news Having built Fonthill Abbey, which he used to entertain the likes of Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, he filled it with a remarkable collection of art and antiques from classical Europe and Asia. As Sir John Soane was an equally avid collector, and indeed was invited to work on a corridor at Fonthill, it seems apposite to have Beckford's work displayed in Soane's delightful Dulwich Picture Gallery. The book is a magnificent piece of louche, hallucinatory, bonkers Orientalism, which seems to be based around the memories of events at the party (the interiors of Fonthill were notoriously expensive and vulgar, with a Turkish room and Egyptian Hall trasporting the residents to the fashionable east). www.24hourmuseum.org.uk /london/news/ART11629.html?ixsid=   (935 words)

BBC/OU Open2.net - The Slavery Business - Programme 1 - sugar dynasty With the Beckford name ruined he sought to re-enter public life by building the greatest stately home in Britain – Fonthill Abbey. But this huge Gothic folly and the double dealing of the man who was supposed to manage his wealth meant that the Abbey bankrupted the family. Shunned by society it became William’s pleasure dome where he lived out his exile and watched as the sugar industry that had made him so rich began to slowly collapse. www.open2.net /slavery/sugar_dynasty.html   (468 words)

A Description of Fonthill Abbey (1822)   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06) In the wake of public interest in the sale of Fonthill Abbey, John Rutter's brief guidebook - A Description of Fonthill Abbey and Demesne - went through a total of six editions. Accompanied by a soutwest view of the Abbey (very much reminiscent of the polygraph of which a detail is presented [see left]), Rutter's Description was a 'budget' version of the larger, folio Delineations which appeared in 1823. A Description of Fonthill Abbey and Demesne, in the County of Wilts: Including a List of Its beckford.c18.net /rutterdescriptionindex.html   (177 words)

The Literary Gothic   |  William Beckford Not all Oriental tales have a "Gothic" component, although many do (cf the vampire section of "The Giaour"); Vathek is over-the-top in its wild supernaturalism and its strange, calm mingling of the comically grotesque and the disconcertingly horrific. Includes a brief biographical note and some images of Fonthill, as well as some bibliographical research and information on The William Beckford Society. Maintained by a leading Beckford scholar, this site includes Vathek (although as a series of images, not plain text; this is the web version of a facsimile edition, in this case of the 1823 edition of Beckford's novel). www.litgothic.com /Authors/beckford.html   (426 words)

AmericanHeritage.com / American Gothic In 1796 he began the building of Fonthill Abbey, the great tower of which rose 276 feet. The tower was none too solid; it eventually crashed into a noble ruin, but this was after Beckford had disposed of his abbey to gunpowder merchant John Farquhar for £300,000. Americans with money to spend could not resist the charm of Strawberry Hill and Fonthill, and by 1799 the first Gothic villa had been built in the United States. www.americanheritage.com /articles/magazine/ah/1971/6/1971_6_26.shtml   (3271 words)

The Beckford Project: Fonthill Abbey Here are some pictures of Beckford's folly, Fonthill Abbey: A view of the Abbey from John Britton's Graphical and Literary Illustrations of Fonthill Abbey (London, 1823), in the collection of the Beinecke Library, Yale University [image found on the web]. This is a watercolour of the interior of Fonthill, by the architect James Wyatt. www.personal.psu.edu /special/C18/beckfont.htm   (116 words)

Fonthill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Fonthill or Font Hill could refer to any of the following places: A community in the town of Pelham, Ontario, Canada: see Fonthill, Ontario A village in Wiltshire, England: see Fonthill Gifford (also Fonthill Abbey and Fonthill Lake) en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Fonthill   (114 words)

Introduction to Beckfordiana Set your monitor to screen resolution 1024x768 and millions of colours. You may also wish to download a few desktop images of Fonthill Abbey and Fonthill Splendens, devised for a 1024x768 desktop. This lecture explores the influence of far away lands, both real and imagined, on Beckford and his writings. beckford.c18.net /beckfordiana.html   (642 words)

Compare Prices and Read Reviews on Abbey Road - The Beatles at Epinions.com Abbey Road - Where it all Begin W/O Muze: Copyright 1995 - 2006 Muze Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. You should confirm all information before relying on it. www.epinions.com /musc_mu-81445   (79 words)

WOOD & SONS, ENOCH FONTHILL ABBEY at Replacements, Ltd WOOD & SONS, ENOCH FONTHILL ABBEY at Replacements, Ltd Pattern: FONTHILL ABBEY by WOOD & SONS, ENOCH [WOOFOA]   If you have not indicated to us the pieces you need, click here to register for updates when pieces come in, or call us toll-free at 1-800-REPLACE (1-800-737-5223) seven days a week, 8:00 am to 10:00 pm ET (we answer the phone very quickly). www.replacements.com /webquote/WOOFOA.htm   (155 words)

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