Symposium | Vanbrugh from Stage to Stone
Sir John Vanbrugh, Seaton Delaval Hall, Northumberland, near Newcastle, 1718–28. Ravaged by fire in 1822, it is now owned by the National Trust.
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Next spring at the University of Cambridge:
Vanbrugh from Stage to Stone
Howard Theatre, Downing College, Cambridge, 27 March 2026
This international academic conference will explore the impact and legacy of Sir John Vanbrugh. The event marks the tercentenary of Vanbrugh’s death in March 1726 and forms part of the Vanbrugh300 festival for 2026, organised by The Georgian Group, the conservation organisation founded in 1937 to protect and promote Georgian buildings.
For those requiring hotel accommodations, there are two options nearby: the Regency Guesthouse, an independent boutique hotel, and the University Arms, a luxury hotel located directly across Regent Street from Downing College.
This conference is organised by the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture (CSCA) at the University of Cambridge in partnership with The Georgian Group.
Registration is now open via The Georgian Group website.
p r o g r a m m e
Detail of Blenheim Palace (Photo by Tony Hisgett CC BY-SA 2.0).
9.00 Registration breakfast with tea and coffee
9.45 Introductory Remarks — Frank Salmon (CSCA) and Anya Lucas (The Georgian Group)
10.00 Session 1 | Vanbrugh: The Writer and Herald
Chair: Charles Saumarez Smith
• Christopher Ridgway — Sir John Vanbrugh: The Letters of a ‘Great and Versatile Character’
• Annette Rubery — ‘I confess I have not at all stuck to the original’: John Vanbrugh as Translator and Adaptor
• David Roberts — The Playwright in Print
• James Peill — Vanbrugh as Herald
11.15 Coffee and tea
11.45 Session 2 | Vanbrugh: The Architect and Politician
Chair: Charlotte Davis
• Matthew Wood — Weighing Scales of Power? The State Apartments at Castle Howard
• Susie West — Vanbrugh and the Country House Plan
• Rory Fraser — John Vanbrugh: The Politician behind the Polymath
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Session 3 | Vanbrugh’s Network
Chair: Elizabeth Deans
• Melanie Hayes and Andrew Tierney — Building Relations: Collaboration, Achievement, and Artisanal Agency in Vanbrugh’s Architectural Practice
• Helen Lawrence-Beaton — Parallel Careers and Building Neighbours: The Relationship between Vanbrugh and Thomas Archer
• James Legard — Vanbrugh/Hawksmoor: The Graphic Anatomy of an Architectural Partnership
15.00 Tea and cake
15.30 Session 4 | Vanbrugh at Stowe
Chair: Frank Salmon
• Tom Nancollas — Vanbrugh’s Sleeping Parlour: Anatomy of a Lost Folly
• Michael Bevington — Vanbrugh’s Innovative Architectural Reconstructions at Stowe
• Francis Terry — Vanbrugh’s Design for Stowe
16.30 Break
16.45 Panel Discussion | Vanbrugh’s Influence
Chair: Matthew Walker
• Jeremy Musson, Frances Sands, and Owen Hopkins
17.30 Champagne reception
Talk | Christine Stevenson on Vanbrugh and His Clients
Sir John Vanbrugh, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, 1705–22. Seat of the Dukes of Marlborough.
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From The Georgian Group, in anticipation of Vanbrugh300 in 2026:
Christine Stevenson | John Vanbrugh and the Art of Client Management
The Georgian Group, 6 Fitzroy Square, London, 21 October 2025, 6.30pm
The early eighteenth-country houses designed by John Vanbrugh (1664–1726), including Blenheim in Oxfordshire and the now-lost Claremont in Surrey and Eastbury in Dorset are, or were, remarkable for their bold forms and unorthodox ornament. Yet in one respect Sir John’s work was supremely delicate: the ways in which he persuaded clients that boldness and unorthodoxy were the most economical routes to displays appropriate to their status. His arguments are gossipy, funny, and often suspect. They present the architect less as a designer than as a hedge against financial and reputational risk. At the same time, they offer us a fascinating insight into the sometimes-fraught social and familial relationships in play when it came to spending money on a house. Georgian Group members, £15 / non-members, £18; tickets include a glass of wine.
Booking is available here»
Exhibition | Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture
Soane office, Royal Academy Lecture Drawings of the work of Sir John Vanbrugh, Blenheim Palace, elevation
(London: Sir John Soane’s Museum, SM 74/4/8)
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The exhibition opens in the spring; the book launches this fall:
Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, 4 March — 28 June 2026
Curated by Charles Saumarez Smith
300 years after his death, a major new exhibition exploring one of the UK’s greatest architects—Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726)—will open in the spring at Sir John Soane’s Museum. Some of the UK’s most admired and loved country houses like Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard were the result of Vanbrugh’s genius, becoming cornerstones of English Baroque. Soane cited him as one of his great influences, saying Vanbrugh had “all the fire and power of Michelangelo and Bernini.”
Curated by Sir Charles Saumarez Smith CBE and architect Roz Barr, the exhibition will feature never-before-exhibited drawings from the collections of the V&A, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the National Portrait Gallery, and Sir John Soane’s Museum, including many in Vanbrugh’s own hand. Perhaps overshadowed by contemporaries Nicholas Hawksmoor and Sir Christopher Wren, the emotional impact and imagination of Vanbrugh has continued to be admired, particularly by architects, in the centuries since. The exhibition will highlight Vanbrugh’s enduring architectural ideas and influence, including on two of the most influential architects of the 20th century, Robert Venturi (1925–2018) and Denise Scott Brown (b.1931). A new short film by filmmaker Jim Venturi, their son, will explore this connection and will be shown on loop in the Museum’s Foyle Space. Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture will introduce new audiences to the work of an English Baroque architect, adventurer, playwright, and spy 300 years after his death.
Charles Saumarez Smith, John Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture (London: Lund Humphries, 2025), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-1848227316, £30.
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Book tickets at Wigmore Hall:
Book launch | John Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture
The Wigmore Hall, London, 20 November 2025, 12.30pm
Charles Saumarez Smith will give a lunchtime talk on Vanbrugh’s extraordinary life: his upbringing; why he spent so much time in a French gaol; the writing of The Relapse and The Provoked Wife; and how he came to design Castle Howard with no previous experience of architecture. Saumarez Smith will give particular attention to Vanbrugh’s work as a theatrical impresario and the designer of the Queen’s Theatre, Haymarket, so disastrous as a venue for plays, but where all of Handel’s early operas were performed. He will then describe Vanbrugh’s quarrel with the Duchess of Marlborough and his later work as an architect, at King’s Weston, Claremont, Grimsthorpe, Seaton Delaval, and Stowe. In recent years, Vanbrugh’s reputation as an architect has been eclipsed by his subordinate, Nicholas Hawksmoor. This talk and the accompanying book will explain Vanbrugh’s originality and influence on later architects from Robert Adam to Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.
Enfilade 
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