Out of focus windows, Moggerhanger Park

I went to Moggerhanger Park today for a work event. It's a beautiful, classically styled house designed by John Soane. This photo went a bit wrong but I like it better for that. It looks as though you are looking at the house in some old, decrepit photograph that's been damaged by years of exposure to light. See you don't need Instagram, you can take crappy old looking photos all by yourself if you don't know what you're doing. Serendipity, my friend.


'Originally Moggerhanger had been a small Georgian house. It was acquired by Godfrey Thornton, a Bank of England director, who commissioned the Bank's architect John Soane to remodel it between 1790 and 1793. More substantial work would follow when Thornton's son Stephen inherited the house. Soane continued from 1806 until the scheme was completed in 1812 while the Bank of England reconstruction was under way. Soane remodelled Moggerhanger entirely, enlarging it to the west, relocating the entrance to the north and reproofing the house completely. He incorporated his previous work from 1793 maintaining symmetries and Classical axes. Soane experimented with decoration using it as a prototype for the future work. As most of this is now lost the recent restoration of Moggerhanger House put it forward as Soane's design of tremendous significance.'

The house was rendered by Soane using 'Parker's Roman Cement' of biscuit-brown colour. This was a new material, patented hydraulic lime render, of his time. The garden side of seven bays has a wooden veranda. In the centre is a shallow pediment on pilaster strips with sunk panels. The entrance has a low centre with a semicircular porch of Greek Doric columns of the Delos type. The end bays have on the ground floor arched windows with broad Grecian pediment over. Behind the porch is a square entrance hall once with a shallow dome. The window bars are painted dark grey, which causes the window detail to disappear so that pure shapes of openings are clearly visible appearing like punch recesses. Inside there is an all-cantilevered staircase with simple iron balustrade.