Enfilade

On view next month in Spalding:

Drawings by William Stukeley
Ayscoughfee Hall Museum, Spalding, 5–16 October 2016

Presented by the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society

John Stukeley, Stukeley’s House at Holbeach (Spalding Gentlemen’s Society).

These drawings by William Stukeley (1687–1765) have recently been cleaned, conserved, and mounted under a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This is the first time they have ever been displayed in public. They are beautiful in their own right, examples of a drawing skill that used to be common before photography was invented in the nineteenth century.

Stukeley was born in Holbeach, a town he visited frequently as an adult. He was a founder member of the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society in 1710 and a noted antiquarian. The drawings on display are important for several reasons, not least for the light they shed on Stukeley’s role in shaping the evolution of garden design in Britain in the eighteenth century.