by Elizabeth C. Robinson, B.A.
In 1747, following his marriage, Sir George Smith and his new wife Lady Mary started the construction of Bromley House. The newlywed couple planned a sophisticated town house. Luckily Sir George was the successful and wealthy partner in Smith’s Bank, and he could indulge even Lady Mary’s family’s insistence that she had a carriage and the necessary carriage house. In 1752 their new home was completed.
The Smith family wanted the house to be of the highest quality, and one result of this was that the ceiling in what is now the Neville Hoskins Reading Room is a wonderful example of Georgian plasterwork [1]. Evidence suggests that the leading plasterer of the day, Thomas Roberts, was employed for all the quality plasterwork in the house.
We can see payments in Sir George’s personal account in Smith’s Bank to ‘Roberts’, totalling £111.00, between 1749 and 1750 [2]. (This is equivalent to £25,000 in today’s money). This is similar to the sums of £35 that Thomas Roberts was paid for each of eight ceilings at Radcliffe Camera, Oxford [3]. Another connection we can see between the Smiths and Roberts, is that Roberts also worked for Charles Sedley MP, at his house at Nuthall Temple, Nottinghamshire, from 1754 to 1757 [4]; Sir George and Charles Sedley were on familiar terms, Charles Sedley being a client of Smith’s Bank, and the influential Smiths supporting his successful attempt to become a Member of Parliament for Nottingham in 1747.
The main years of Thomas Roberts’ activity were between 1740 and 1760. This was the rococo period in architecture, where we see curved, asymmetrical ornamentation, often influenced by nature. His shellwork was particularly admired. Shells appear in the ceiling in the Neville Hoskins Reading Room, but a particularly fine example of shellwork can be seen from the second-floor balcony, where the intricate shellwork frieze below the cupola is almost at eye-level.
Every quarter of the ceiling of the Neville Hoskins Reading Room is different. This diversity is balanced by the basket of flowers which is set in the broken cornice of the chimney piece and repeated in the ceiling design too, giving a sense of harmony to the room.
Also set into each end of the ceiling are two identical roundels showing a classical bas-relief bust of a woman seen in profile. The story of this woman’s identity was lost over the years. To know who is portrayed we need to look at Lady Mary Smith’s family tree.
Lady Mary Smith
Family Tree of Lady Mary Smith, née Howe; taken from ‘A Collection of Royal Letters’ by Sir George Bromley, Bart. Published for John Stockdale in 1787.
Lady Mary Smith was the great-great-great granddaughter of King James I of England, VI of Scotland. His charismatic daughter, Elizabeth, married Frederick V of Bohemia. Their third son was Prince Rupert, and his daughter Ruperta was the grandmother of Lady Mary Smith. Ruperta married General Emanuel Scrope Howe in 1695, and they had six children, who all died as infants or young adults. Even William, Lady Mary’s father, and the eldest child, died at the age of only 33, seven years before his mother’s death.
Ruperta Howe was the illegitimate daughter of Prince Rupert and Margaret (Peg) Hughes, the famous actress. Prince Rupert, the nephew of King Charles I, came to England to support his uncle at the start of the Civil War, and became a much-acclaimed cavalry general. Margaret Hughes is thought to be one of the first actresses to take on female roles in Shakespeare’s plays after the Restoration, for example playing Desdemona in Othello. Before the Civil War female roles were acted by boys.
Prince Rupert’s youngest sister was the mother of the future king George I and so, when Queen Anne (George’s second cousin, and his predecessor on the throne of England) needed to send trusted members of court to meet him, who better to send than his relative Ruperta and her husband? Emanuel was duly appointed envoy extraordinary to Hanover and they met both the future king and Ruperta’s aunt, the Dowager Electress of Hanover.
In 1699 Emanuel and Ruperta were jointly appointed Rangers of Alice Holt and Woolmer Forest, areas of ancient woodland in Hampshire. After her husband’s death in 1709, Ruperta continued as Ranger until her own death in 1740.
Following Ruperta’s death, Lady Mary Smith (then 16-year-old Mary Howe) became the only living descendant. She inherited the estate, which was reputed to be worth £12,000 when Prince Rupert died, and which included paintings by van Dyck and other leading artists, and letters between members of the royal family. Ruperta and Emanuel had added further paintings and other treasures to the estate.
As well as this physical inheritance there was the pride in the achievements of the family, passed on through stories told by Ruperta to a young Lady Mary. When Bromley House was built, images of Ruperta could be used to symbolise this rich heritage. Evidence that these images are the ones we see in the ceiling of the Neville Hoskins room, and elsewhere in Bromley House, requires a look back through the paintings the family owned.
Portraits of Ruperta Howe
There are several portraits of Ruperta in existence, but the whereabouts of the portrait that most closely resembles the plasterwork in the Neville Hoskins Reading Room is unknown. Fortunately, a reproduction of this portrait has survived in a book published by Sir George Bromley, the only surviving child of Sir George and Lady Mary Smith. Through his mother he inherited letters written by the royal family, and decided to publish the letters in 1787. Apart from a single engraving of Prince Rupert, the book is illustrated with engravings from paintings owned by the family. One of these illustrations was an engraving of Ruperta by John Keyse Sherwin [5]. There is a remarkable resemblance between the figure in the portrait and the roundels in the ceiling, indicating that it was this portrait which Thomas Roberts used for the plasterwork. The only difference between the two images is that in the painting Ruperta is shown almost face on to the viewer, her head turned slightly to our left. Whilst the plasterer has changed this portrait to a classical profile, he has retained the likeness to Ruperta in her features, hairstyle, and dress.
In the engraving of Ruperta’s portrait in the book, she is wearing a low cut, plain gown, with a frill round her neck, and a brooch fastens a plain tucker to the front of her dress. The brooch consists of three miniatures, each showing a portrait that would have been much larger and clearer on the original painted portrait than it is in the engraving. We know details of this brooch because Lady Mary Smith inherited it from her grandmother, and it is mentioned in her husband’s will. Lady Mary died in 1761 and Sir George married his second wife Catherine Vyse on 23 February 1768, just a few months before he died on 5 September 1769. He had bought Catherine jewellery, and in his will, he wished to establish that this jewellery was hers to keep, as the same house contained jewellery that was intended for his son, Sir George Bromley, to inherit. To make sure there was no confusion after his death, Sir George Smith described the miniatures which form the brooch: ‘three pictures of Prince Rupert, General Howe and his lady [Ruperta] with solid gold backs and frames’. In the painted portrait this brooch faced the viewer, who would have been able to identify the three people depicted. When the image of Ruperta was created in plasterwork, the brooch cannot be seen, as it is sideways on, and the angle means the portraits are out of sight. This may have been done because the images could not have been portrayed in plaster, so the brooch would lose its significance [6].
There used to be another profile portrait of Ruperta in the house, not unlike the depiction of her on the ceiling of the Neville Hoskins Reading Room. A monumental rococo chimneypiece dominated the ground floor banking hall until it was sold in 1929, when each side of the passage was converted to shops. An ornate frame on either side of the chimneypiece contained the arms of the Smith and Howe families; these were impaled upon an uplifted central shield surrounded by leaves and scrolls [7]. In the centre of the composition was a medallion bust of Ruperta. It would have been essential for a representation of the family history to depict Ruperta, as she signified the link between the royal family, through Prince Rupert, and Lady Mary Smith.
Taken from ‘Nottingham in the eighteenth century especially with reference to domestic architecture’. By Harry Gill MSA. ‘Transactions of the Thoroton Society. 1912’.
A further image of Ruperta can still be seen in the ceiling of the Bromley House entrance hall. It is near the stairs, where she is shown with a garland of oak leaves around her head to evoke her role as Ranger of Alice Holt.
So the ceiling in the Neville Hoskins Reading Room holds important history, both in the context of Bromley House being the home of Sir George and Lady Mary Smith, and the importance of the house in Georgian Nottingham.
Footnotes:
[1] This ceiling was restored in 2013. My photograph shows the crack which had appeared in the ceiling.
[2] The Royal Bank of Scotland Archives. ‘Smith’s Bank’. The account of George Smith, 1748-1751:
- June 13, 1749, Roberts £25
- October 13, 1749, Roberts £25
- February 6, 1750, Roberts £35
- July 14, 1750, Roberts £21
[3] ‘Decorative Plasterwork in Great Britain’ by Geoffrey Beard. Published by Phaidon in 1975. Page 62.
[4] Ibid.
[5] This portrait is attributed to Sir Peter Lely. However, he died in 1680, and Ruperta was born in 1673. This means she was seven years old, or younger, when the portrait was painted. As she is wearing a brooch which included a portrait of her husband, this does not make sense. I would suggest that the portrait is by Wissing, or the School of Wissing.
[6] The Frick Collection. A Catalogue of the property of Sir George Pauncefote, Bart. (deceased).
On Friday 20th January 1809 there was a sale of the property of Sir George [Bromley] Pauncefote at his London House. The miniatures were described thus:
- Cooper – a very fine miniature portrait of PRINCE RUPERT, most beautifully painted in his best time and manner, truly capital.
- Sir Peter Lely – a [fine miniature of] Emanuel Scrope Howe, do. The miniatures of this artist are extremely rare.
- Ditto, RUPERTA, his Wife, do
[7] ‘Nottingham in the eighteenth century especially with reference to domestic architecture’. By Harry Gill MSA. ‘Transactions of the Thoroton Society. 1912’.