The Queens House at Greenwich is something of an oddity – a cool, white box sitting bang in the middle of Wren’s exuberant Baroque set-piece as though purpose-designed for such a setting– but it was never intended to be so. The Queen’s House was started in 1619, well before Wren’s involvement. It was designed by the brilliant architect and innovator, Inigo Jones, for Charles I’s Queen and was inserted within the red brick, fussiness of the then Jacobean Palace of Greenwich. It must have looked like a space rocket in suburbia – nothing like it had ever been seen in England before. It was the first Palladian, neo-classical, building in England and its perfect proportions, symmetry and lack of superfluous decoration was totally at odds with the, then current, Jacobean style of red brick with lavish decoration and architectural complexity.
Jones went on to design other great buildings in the Palladian style, the Banqueting House (begun 1622), the Queen’s Chapel at St James Palace (1623) and St Paul’s at Covent Garden (1631), where he also masterminded the plan for London’s first formal square. However, he was very much a sole practitioner in this style, though admittedly one with the important patronage of the King and his Court. Others continued to build in the familiar Jacobean style with little acknowledgement of the “new” style that Jones had brought to the country. It is difficult to know whether this neo-classical approach was not widely appreciated at the time or perhaps, more likely, the underlying principles were so completely different to all that had gone before in England that designers of the day were mystified as to how to work with it.
One thing is for certain though, Inigo Jones’s close relationship with Charles I and his Queen, meant that he was persona non-grata after the execution of the King and the establishment of the Commonwealth. He was arrested at the fall of Basing House in 1645, sequestrated of his property and, though this was later returned, died soon after in 1652. The Palladian style came to be considered un-English, dangerously foreign and Catholic. It fell completely out of fashion during the Restoration, being replaced by Wren’s more flamboyant Baroque style further developed by his protégé’s Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh .
The Palladian style in England remained dormant until increasing unease at the extreme development of the Baroque style by Hawksmoor and others led to a renewal of interest in “foreign” architecture, helped, no doubt, by the escapades of wealthy gentleman on the Grand Tour. In 1724, the building of Marble Hill House in West London became the first Palladian neo-classical house to be built for 100 years. It proved a sensation and soon the Palladian style was being utilized as the preferred style for houses, town and country, government buildings and other prestigious constructions. It was to remain so for the best part of 150 years until the introduction of Victorian Gothic challenged the hegemony of the neo-classical style.
Queens House at Greenwich forms part of the National Maritime Museum and is open to visitors. Entry is free. See the website for details of opening times and special exhibitions.
