Combermere Abbey - revealing an earlier house

Combermere Abbey in Shropshire received two grants from The Historic Houses Foundation (then Heritage Conservation Trust), between 2011 and 2015, for the cleaning and restoration of important paintings. The 2015 grant was for the Bird’s Eye View of the Abbey in 1730 by the Dutch artist Peter Tillemans.

How the Painting Survived

​Tilleman’s picture is a treasured record of the house before its gothicisation in the early 19th century. The current owners bought it in the sale of the contents of the Abbey in 1919 and it was one of only two pieces acquired from the Combermere family. During the recent restoration of the North Wing as well as the earlier replacement of the roof over the Library in 1997, it proved to be a very accurate record of the earlier building and of inestimable help to the appropriate repair of the roof. The grant supported its cleaning, re-stretching and some light restoration.  

​The picture, in oil on board, has hung on the stairs landing at the Abbey for many years. The detail in the image was obscured by centuries of dirt, and we could learn nothing from it. Now though it has been expertly cleaned by Harriet Owen Hughes and her team at the Liverpool Conservation Centre, and it is a revelation – in more ways than one.

What did it tell us?

It is very fortunate that we have had sight of a 1707 map of the estate at much the same time, as we have been able to compare the two and fill in details between the two sources. Tillemans’ point of view is almost due west of Combermere Abbey. It is important to understand that although the painting shows the larger mere running vertically up the image to the left of the house, it was joined to the smaller mere at a later date, so nowadays one would be looking across a sheet of water from this vantage point. We don’t know at what time of year Tilleman created the painting, but all the trees are in full leaf, so it must have been high summer.

Why is it typical of landscape panoramas?

Like landscape artists of almost any period, Tillemans exaggerated the topography. He is in very good company is doing so; it is certainly a charge that can be laid against the later work of Turner and Constable. They must have thought that flat vistas did not excite the viewer sufficiently, and a high level of artistic license was excusable. The land does not rise as dramatically as the extreme left and right of the pictures as it suggests, and the hills in the distance are much further away that Tillemans has them, and therefore appear in real life to be rather less high. The hill in the middle distance on the top right is inexplicable.

Panoramic visualisations of country house landscapes such as this were first seen late in the previous century, and the perspective on the earliest were far from accurate. The perspective on the bird’s eye view of Combermere is far better, but still not perfect. Although the land behind the house rises slightly, in this painting is seems to folded upwards. By the middle of the eighteenth century artists had solved this problem, as the panoramic paintings of Tatton Park in north east Cheshire attest.

The Abbey in the painting

Unlike its poor representation on the 1707 map, Tilleman’s depiction of the Abbey itself is very accurate. The difference in material on the ground floor in the central section shows the sandstone construction at that level, as it was and indeed still is behind the gothick facade, which dates from monastic times. The cupola – possibly a belvedere for watching the hunt and viewing the estate – is accurate, as is the shift in roofline to the left of centre (smoothed out when the house was gothicised early in the nineteenth century, and recently revealed once again with the restoration of that side of the house). We have no other record of the timber-framed ancillary buildings to the right of the main block, but as the central section is so accurate there is no reason to doubt them. They were re-built in the gothicisation, and reduced from three storeys to two in the twentieth century.

The circular feature in the middle of the central gable seems more elaborate than the oak quatrefoil which we know to have been there. The object on a plinth in the middle of the west courtyard may be a sundial; were this not the case then such an instrument might well have been wall-mounted within the gable.  There is a good argument that it is a large clock. Indeed, there used to be a large clock on the front of the stables, and it is possible that the house clock was transferred there when the house was re-modelled.

The two walled courtyards with their corner towers, to the west and east of the house, disappeared at some point. The one in the foreground was erased when the two meres were joined and the main approach to the Abbey came from the west – making what we see in the painting the entrance front. The current entrance is as it was after the gothicisation, when it was moved to the east front.

Discoveries after cleaning

The cleaning of the painting has revealed many previously unseen and unknown details, including the three figures close to the house; a lady in the doorway, a man to the left, and another women in the equivalent position to the right. In all, forty one people are shown in the painting; the vast majority of them busy with some useful industry. More than half are involved in occupations associated with food. Only two people – the two ladies in the boat – are definitely at leisure. If we take the painting as ‘real time’ snapshot of the estate, there must have been four or six children and perhaps a dozen servants in the house and as many again in ancillary undertaking. The servants would all have had their own spouses and youngsters, so a total of one hundred for the full-time occupants of the estate – excluding tenants and their dependents – is a modest estimation. The estate was larger than the average village, and its population was much the same.

Who was Peter Tillemans?

The artist of the panorama of Combermere Abbey, Peter Tillemans, was born in Antwerp in 1684, and learned his craft in his native city before moving to England in 1708. He became a fashionable painter of topographical and sporting scenes. A friend described him as having long, curling hair (his own rather than a wig), and being gentle and friendly. He lived by the Thames in Richmond, west of London – largely for health reasons; he was a chronic asthmatic. Despite that he travelled widely in the course of his work, and was often in the north and north west of England. He painted Chatsworth in Derbyshire for The Duke of Devonshire, Chirk Castle near Wrexham, and Holker Hall in Cumbria.

He was commissioned to paint horse-racing scenes by the Earl of Derby of Knowsley in south Lancashire, and painted the city of Chester on several occasions. He also painted a view of the Welsh town of Llangollen on the River Dee. He undertook many commissions for the English aristocracy, painting portraits and country houses, but from 1720 onwards he particularly specialised in sporting scenes.

Why it matters

The value of the newly restored panorama to the restoration project at Combermere Abbey has been inestimable.  It has given us a reference for the earlier appearance of the house which has informed and enriched our work in returning this great house to a living home for the family and visitors and a successful commercial life as a wedding venue and luxury accommodation provider. It is no small thing that there are as many people enjoying Combermere and working here today as Peter Tillmans included in his portrait in 1730.

Note: The 2011 grant was for the restoration of the panel paintings above the fireplace in the Library, one of which was badly split. Combermere has also received Historic Houses Foundation grants for the restoration of various buildings in the courtyard including the early nineteenth century game larder.