Portico
Category
Architecture / Exteriors
Date
1730 - 1769
Materials
Stone with painted and cast plaster
Collection
Croome Park, Worcestershire
NT 171407
Summary
The South side plaster portico ceiling of Croome Court. The portico ceiling appears to be contemporary with the mid Eighteenth century remodelling of the house carried out under the 6th Earl of Coventry. The ceiling is divided up into three bays by down stand beams running from the central pair of columns to the house. Each bay has an inset panel with a central stucco paterae with plaster ornament to the circumscribing panel edges. The front and portico sides are of stone and the down stand beams that run from the central columns back to the house are formed from plaster applied to timber carcassing below the structural timber lintel beams. The ceiling has undergone some restoration in the recent past which would appear to have involved the re-plastering of the lower section of the central down stand beams, some making good of cracks as well as re-painting the ceiling itself. The pediment contains a room with a circular window giving light through the tympanum. Beneath the pediment a stone entablature bridges four ionic columns and returns to the wall terminating in a pair of Ionic pilasters. The ceiling area is divided into three unequal bays by the inclusion of two down-stand beams tying the entablature to the body of the house. Each ceiling bay is coffered; the walls of the coffering contain an entwined ribbon and staff moulding and an elaborately enriched echinus moulding. The centres of each bay have hand-modelled paterae based on stylised acanthus designs.
Provenance
The portico ceiling appears to be contemporary with the mid 18th century remodelling of the house carried out under the 6th Earl of Coventry. Croome Court is leased from the Croome Heritage Trust by the National Trust.