Big Rock at Ragley Hall

Do you like to go to new places? Well, Old Ken has been to lots of places of late, some new, some old. Needless to say, the whole thing has been such a business that, well, by jing, I just haven't been quite able to keep up with all things blog-wise. But, here I am, back talkin' at you in crystal-clear hi-fi.

The story I want to tell you about at the moment is a little visit I might have made to one of the few remaining private residences built by Robert Hooke, a famous experimental philosopher of the later seventeenth century and—so I'd like to think—someone close to the heart of my admirable namesake, the Right Honorable Sir Kenelm Digby. So my guide book tells me, Bob (as I like to think of Señor Hooke) built Ragley Hall for Lord Conway ca. 1680. As you may discern from the photograph above, Bob is still remembered on the gorgeous site with an appropriate monument: a coffee shop named in his honor. As you'll no doubt recall, Bob was a big fan of the coffee shop, which was something of a novelty in his day; his famous diary is packed with tales of meeting both intellectual luminaries and "friends in low places" at such places as Jonathan's or Garraways and enjoying a good chin-wag over a cup of coffee, chocolate, and even the inestimable cock ale. (Please tune back in for a subsequent blog entry for Sir Kenelm's cock ale recipe, which is soon to be a gift. Wink!)


But, let us not allow such digressions to take us away from Ragley Hall itself, which truly is a stunning building. Now, the photograph above shows the eastern face of the house—a view that requires a little imaginative intervention if we want to see it the way that it would have been built in Hooke's day. For, the portico and the twin ceremonial staircases leading into the Great Hall, which you see at the very center of the photograph above, were mid-eighteenth century additions.


Similarly, the loggia attached to the western face of the house (visible as the recessed, shadowed space in the photos above and below) seems to the Old Ken's mind to have been a subsequent addition. Upon what grounds would such an assessment have been ventured? Well, more qualified as an experimental philosopher than an architectural historian as I know myself to be, the loggia seems to give the house something of an edentate look. When in shade, as seen here, the open space of the loggia compromises the verticality of the house and makes it almost look as though it could be levitating.


Comparing with the dark, heavy decoration surviving from Hooke's period inside the house, which I was sadly unable to photograph, one wonders whether this lighter, airy effect might have been closer in spirit to the wonderfully bizarre rococo fantasies played out across the Great Hall than Bob's baroque inclinations.

But enough of such fancies. I'd like you to appreciate the beauty of the house from a distance, which really did feel like a kind of island amidst the rolling farmland of Warwickshire. Baroque or not baroque, I think we can all agree that this is some seriously big rockin' from Mr. Bob!