Shugborough Hall stands in a beautiful and enclosed Vale of the River Trent. It is a world of its own, bordered on one side by the forest of Cannock Chase. Though it may seem a secluded Arcadian landscape the vale is also a key point for canal and railway, which pass through, linking the centres of industry of Stoke on Trent and Manchester to the south.

Thomas Anson (1695-1773) was the man behind Shugborough. He was a self-effacing figure. The only portrait, which is not definitely of him, is by Vanderbank, from 1739, curiously the same year as Vanderbank's portrait of Elizabeth Yorke, later Lady Anson, as a Shepherdess.

New evidence about Thomas Anson's life and connections has appeared since 2000 and each new clue builds up a picture of Thomas as a fascinating figure, with important influence in the arts and sciences.

The most important influence in the fortunes of the Ansons was the family connections of their mother, Isabella  Carrier and her sister Janette. The Carriers were a Derbyshire land-owning family. The Anson’s mother had married into a minor Staffordshire family, of lawyers, but her sister married a future Lord Chancellor, ThomasParker Earl of Macclesfield, with close links to Isaac Newton and the world of science and new thought.

Thomas Anson's cousin George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield was an astronomer and mathematician – the man responsible for changing from the Julian to Gregorian calendar in 1750.

On the death of Thomas Anson's father, lawyer William Anson, in 1720, Thomas Parker and Thomas Anson were joint heirs of the estate, with annuities granted to Thomas's sisters Elizabeth, Isabella, Jennet, Anna and Joanna and brothers George and William.

Another connection in their early years was the mathematician William Jones (c.1675–1749). Jones was tutor to the Anson’s cousin, George Parker, and lived part of the time at his house, Shirburn Castle. Jones left his library to Parker. A note in a biography of his son, the expert on Indian culture, Sir William Jones, says Jones sailed with Anson and taught him navigation. This is not actually possible according to the dates, but it is possible he was tutor to George, and Thomas at the same time as he taught their cousin.  Jones worked closely with Isaac Newton, who died in 1727. (The first Earl of Macclesfield, the Anson’s uncle, was a pall bearer at his funeral.) It was Jones who introduced the letter “pi” into mathematics.

William Jones was a member of the Royal Society, and proposed Thomas Anson for membership in 1730.

The other important influence on the Anson's family fortunes was Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, whose daughter, Elizabeth, married George Anson. Philip Yorke was a close friend of the Parkers from his youth, and was also taught by William Jones. Yorke's daughter married George Anson (she was twenry years younger than the Admiral) cementing the close family connection.

Thomas Anson entered St John's College Oxford at the age of 15 in 1711 and then studied law at the Inner Temple, going to the bar in 1719. He is described as a 'practising lawyer' (9) like his father, but in his will in 1771 he claimed not to understand legal formalities.

Thomas's father died in 1720. There is a May 1722 document in which Thomas Anson 'of the Inner Temple' sells South Sea stock. Presumably from this time Thomas abandoned a legal career and began his travels.

On the day Thomas Anson died (30th March 1773) Sir John Eardley Wilmot, a judge, who had worked on the Midland Circuit and turned down the offer to replace Hardwicke as Lord Chancellor (10), wrote that:

“In the former part of his life” Thomas Anson had “lived many years abroad; he was a very ingenious, polite, well-bred man and dignified…his accomplishments by his universal benevolence.” (8)

Ingamell's 'Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701-1800' gives a few clues to Thomas's travels.

In July 1723 he is said to have been in Spa with William Mytton and Simon Degge. In fact checking the entry for William Mytton shows that the source gives only the surname 'Mytten'

The Myttons were from Halston, Shropshire. William was a wine merchant but there are many references to a 'J Mytton' in the Anson papers.References in Lady Anson's letters to Mr Mytton's dealings with aunts' almhouses (Houblon Almshouses) in Richmond in 1758 seem to prove that he was James Mytton, then living in Richmond. Mytton looked after Thomas's business while he was in the east in 1740/1, visited Paris with him in 1748 and, from comment in another lady Anson letter was staying at Shugborough in 1756. He seems to have been Thomas's longest lasting close friend. Thomas Pennant, a later friend of Thomas's was Mytton's nephew.

Simon Degge, of Blithfield, was a Staffordshire friend, and a contemporary of Thomas's in the Inner Temple. He joined the Royal Society with Thomas in 1730. Curiously his brother William joined the Dilettanti Society with Thomas.

In September 1724 he was in Padua with Alan Brodrick, also of the Inner Temple.

In April 1725 he went from Rome to Naples with Simon Degge and Thomas Kemp (unidentified) and in May went to Florence with Degge. (16)

In the Staffordshire Archives there is a letter, dated 25^th September 1734, in Armenian script. This was partly translated by Revd Dr V Nersesssian of the British Library in 1983. It is a letter from an Armenian named Babjanian of Izmir, Turkey, to a wealthy and influential merchant of Livorno, Italy, named Sharimaniants, whose son’s name is Petros Bortolo. The letter describes Mr Thomas Anson as the kindest man he had met in England and is asking Mr Sharimaniants to grant him a recommendation if he needs it. The letter (in a mixture of Persian and Armenian) suggests that either Mr Anson or his friend is in trouble and has been jailed and is asking Sharimaniants assistance in freeing the man. The mixed language makes it difficult to translate. It may be that Thomas was in Italy in 1734, and that he took this letter with him as an introduction to Sharimaniants. 

The Society of Dilettanti was founded by Sir Francis Dashwood and a group of friends in Italy, on the Grand Tour, in 1732. (6)

Horace Walpole said that official qualification for membership of the Dilettante was that you had been Italy, but the real qualification was that you were drunk. The register of the society was kept in a box called “Bacchus’ Tomb”.

The Society of Dilletanti became a serious force in the arts in the 1740s when they supported Stuart and Revett’s expedition to Greece to record, for the first time, genuine Greek architecture.

Very few English travellers had ventured further East than Italy. Thomas Anson is listed as one of the earliest members, joining before 1736 when the list was compiled. He joined at the same time as William Degge, presumably brother of Simon Degge with whom he had travelled in Italy been elected to the Royal Society. Another early member was Lord Harcourt, who was a lifelong friend and attended Thomas's funeral in 1773.

As with the Royal Society there are no records of his later involvement but his long association with James “Athenian Stuart” suggests that Thomas Anson’s interest in ancient architecture was deep and long lasting and that he was a key figure in the spread of the Greek Revival.

.

1730 ROYAL SOCIETY

Thomas Anson was proposed for membership of the Royal Society in 1730, by William Jones and Rev. Zachary Pearce, then rector of St Martin’s in the Fields. Pearce was supported, as patron, by Lord Hardwicke, and he was also an associated of Sir Isaac Newton, helping him with his biblical chronology. Pearce visited Newton shortly before his death in 1727 and found him sitting in the depths of his room, far from the window, without spectacles revising his chronology.(5) There was a copy of the chronology, published in 1727, as well as Newton’s Principia, in the library at Shugborough.

Thomas did not sign the register of the Royal Society or pay his fees, though Simon Degge, of Blithfield, who had entered the Inner Temple the same year as Thomas and was proposed with him, did. (4)

There is no evidence that Thomas Anson knew Newton, but the links with Jones, Pearce and both Thomas and George Parker, Earls of Macclesfield , place the Ansons very close to the “Newton Circle”.

The Royal Society was dominated by supporters of Lord Hardwicke, and his son Philip Yorke. Thomas may have joined just because of this family interest. (4)

1740 – TRAVELS IN THE EAST – THE EGYPTIAN SOCIETY and THE DIVAN CLUB

Thomas left a sketchy journal of his travels in 1740-1. (1) Rather surprisigly he set off with his brother at the start of Admiral Anson's circumnavigation in September 1740, but they separated on September 29th. Thomas sailed, in naval ships, as far as Egypt, visiting Alexandria, Rosetta, Cairo and Aleppo, returning with Admiral Haddock. The diary notes 'Mr Mytton to answer my bills'.

Thomas is mentioned in letters from Francis Congreve, a merchant in Cairo, but from Staffordshire. Congreve sent a parcel of coffee to his brother in MInorca with Thomas and wrote that 'Mr Anson's stay here has been nothing ut hurry.'

Thomas was not alone in visiting Egypt at about this time. In 1741 Lord Sandwich started a possibly short-lived Egyptian Society, inviting William Stukeley to join him with others who had explored Egyptian remains, including Martin Folkes, Dr Pococke (who had brought a mummy back and wrote journals of travels) and the Danish explorer Nordem. The club’s symbol was “the so famous Egyptian rattle” of Isis. (14)

The figure of Isis in the dining room ceiling, must commemorate Thomas’s visit to Egypt and his membership of the Egyptian Society. Thomas's signature is on the minute book of the Egyptian Society, now in the British Library.

Isis is clearly identified by the rattle, or sistrum, she holds. Isis faces a plaster roundel of her partner Serapis (with a corn measure on his head). These are the later Greek versions of Egyprian deities as described by Plutarch.

Thomas's travels qualified him for membership of another club which shared several of the same members, including Lord Sandwich and Dr Pococke. This was Sir Francis Dashwood’s Divan Club, which had less serious purposes.

Dashwood founded this club after traveling to Smyrna and Constantinople in 1738-9 for people who had travelled in the Sultan’s dominions. The meetings of the Divan Club involved dressing up in Turkish clothes and getting drunk. Women seem to have been members too, including courtesan Fanny Murray, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Dashwood’s wife. Dashwood was painted by Knapton as “Il faquir Dashwood Pasha” in about 1745. Thomas and George Anson are both listed as members, though, as with the Royal Society and the Dilettante Society there is no trace of their attendance or level of involvement. The club faded away in 1746. (2)

There is no trace of the Anson’s involvement with Dashwood’s Hell-Fire Club, though Admiral Anson’s friend and colleague Lord Sandwich was involved with most of Dashwood’s enterprises including his more riotous activities.

1745 THE JACOBITE REBELLION

The Jacobite Rebellion came alarmingly close to Shugborough. Bonnie Prince Charlie’s forces marched to Derby and Thomas Anson kept his brother George informed of events, riding himself to Stone to hear news from Newcastle-under-Lyme, and sending agents up towards Ashbourne.

(Letters from Thomas Anson to George Anson, in the British Library)

December 4th '45 Wednesday
Dear Brother

You will share my disappointment when I relate the sequel after your alarm of
your midnight march and most positive assurances that the Rebels were at
Newcastle. I went to Stone in the morning full of the battle I was to see and met Crowds of People coming back in great Consternation who cry'd out 'it was begun'. I heard no firing, when I came I found all the Troops in and about the Town upon heaps. I forc'd my
way to the Duke's (Cumberland) Quarters where I learn'd that the Rebels were
at Leek. Having been long tir'd to death I got home as fast as I could, and
find the Rascals left Leek at one this morning and tis suppos'd will be at
Derby tonight.

Shugborough, 7 December 1745

...the rebels yesterday marched out of Derby and lay at Ashburn and the
adjacent villages. A person I sent to reconnoitre saw the whole body pass
along a valley at the other side of Weaver Hills, the road to Newcastle or
Leek.

The rebels exceed 7,000: 3,000 or 4,000 good troop, the rest rabble and
boys. The Pretender's son marched at the head. He is something under 6 feet
high, wears a plaid, walks well, speaks little, and was never seen to smile.
My situation is still the same - between two fires.

Shugborough 9 December 1745

They marched out of Leek yesterday, and are probably returning by the same
route they came.

The rebels are greatly exasperated at their reception in Derby: their leader
was observ'd to be much more gloomy than usual; their ladies wept; and their
whole body marched out with visible dejection and despair. They have
plundered and ravaged, murdered two or three people, and wounded others, so
that their name is in horror and detestation. Their cruelty will probably
increase, if they have time to exert it, which I fancy the Duke will not
give them.

Shugborough 14th December 1745

The rebels marched out of Preston yesterday, our horse marched in that
afternoon, and it was thought would be up with them by noon today. (13)

1747 MP FOR LICHFIELD

Thomas Anson was MP for Lichfield from 1747 to 1770.   He was a whig MP in the interest of George Anson. He had little interest in what he called (on the 8th February 1748) the “cabal, intrigue, and…huddle of politics.” (8) He very rarely voted and in 1764 was referred to as one of “the deserters this session”. His only recorded speech was on an enclosure bill concerning Lichfield Cathedral. His last recorded vote was 29th March 1768 (9)

THE EXTENSIONS TO THE HOUSE AND FIRST FOLLIES 1748

In spite of his dislike of politics Thomas Anson travelled to France in June 1748. He was taking a message to the French foreign minister from Lord Sandwich at the time of the peace negotiations at the end of the War of the Austrian Succession. Lady Anson wrote to her sister in law, Jemima, at Wrest Park that he would be away for six weeks and would meet Philip Yorke, Jemima’s husband, there.(7)

The building of the library and drawing room, assumed to be the work of Thomas Wright, may have happened while Thomas was out of the country. The Chinese House had already been built, in 1747, based on drawings made in China by George Anson’s colleague Captain Piercy Brett. The landscaping, including the lake, cascades and colonnade bridge, may have been begun at this point.

The work was intended to make the house a suitable country seat for George Anson and Elizabeth Yorke who had become engaged in January 1748 and who were married on 25 April 1748. The family connection between the Yorkes and Ansons may have stretched back many years. Elizabeth Yorke’s father was only a few years older than George Anson. It is usually thought of as a marriage of convenience and Elizabeth spent a great deal of time at Shugborough while George was at sea.

The refurbishments of the house included a room devoted to George Anson’s naval adventures, and the exotic landscape, with its fanciful mixture of buildings, may have been designed to reflect George’s circumnavigation, though the Egyptian deities in the dining room are more likely to refer to Thomas’s Egyptian voyage.

The other two roundels in the dining room are of a maenad, a frenzied follower of Dionysus, and a Chinese figure which almost certainly intended to be Confucius.

Lady Anson’s letters to Thomas in Paris tantalizingly refer to his own lost, and obviously amusing, letters to her:

“The titles of the chapters which your letter contains, excite our curiosity and impatience very highly, as they promise that your memoirs will be extremely entertaining.”(1 – letter wrongly dated 1749).

She refers to Thomas having “spent four days at the magnifique Palais de Versailles.”

Only a few days later (June 28th) she is writing to Thomas about Bonnie Prince Charlie, then in France:

“I beg my account of the low state of the monarchy here may not tempt you (or you French ministerial friends) to send us over the young Gentleman, whose forlorn and neglected condition we heard from you with so much pleasure”.

Lady Anson also sends Thomas a list of souvenirs to buy for their friends, including crayons for the Duchess of Bedford, and a French embroidered short apron and tippet for Lady Hardwicke.

These letters refer to a French friend M. St George whom Thomas was meeting in Paris. St. George had been the Commander of L’Invincible which Anson had taken in the Battle of Finisterre in 1747. Anson’s fleet fought French ships bound for Quebec, including La Gloire, and the East Indies, including L’Invincible. M.  St George delivered his sword to Anson on board the Prince George with the words:

“Monsieur, vous avez vaincu L’Invincible et la Gloire vous suit.”  (13)

George Anson reported to Lord Sandwich:

“To do justice to the French officers, they did their duty well and lost their ships with honour.”

Glory followed within a month when George Anson was created Baron Anson of Soberton in the County of Hants, and only six months later the war was coming to an end and Thomas Anson was free to travel to Paris and buy luxury goods for Lady Anson and her friends.

M. St Georges immediately became a friend of the family and is mentioned in several letters. He is not to be confused with “Chevalier St Georges”, the name Bonnie Prince Charlie used when he escaped to France. In 1750, confusingly named as 'Chevalier St Georges' he was elected a member of the Royal Society, supported by Anson, the Duke of Richmon, prime minister Henry Pelham and others.

On November 1st 1749 Lady Anson reports that M St George had been out of touch,  apart from writing to Lord Parker (the Anson’s cousin, later Earl of Macclesfield) for a couple of Fans. “So high do they carry their resentment of the treatment shown him by the English that was not permitted to accept a very civil invitation to dine at Aubigny with the Duke of Richmond.”  St George moved in the highest society but obviously his compatriots had not forgotten that the French had been at war with the English only a few months before.

Mr. Mytton was also in Paris, travelling with Thomas Anson.

Philip Yorke and his wife, Jemima, Countess Grey (with whom Thomas Wright had lived as a tutor at their home, Wrest park in Bedfordshire) visited Shugborough not long after this trip, in August 1748, when the library and dining room were finished. Lady Grey referred to the library as “exceedingly odd and pretty library.”

An entry in Philip Yorke’s journal in 1763 mentions that the ceilings were by “Vassalli, wholives in the neighbourhood”. Francesco Vassalli came from Lugano, in northern Italy. He worked on many important houses, including Hagley Hall, where James “Athenian” Stuart built the first strictly Grecian building, a Doric Temple, just before working at Shugborough, in 1758. Vassalli also worked at Patshull Hall and Chillington Hall. (11)

As Vassalli lived locally it seems likely he was brought over to England by Thomas. It now appears (see DNB) that the painter Nicholas Dall, who painted large pictures in the drawing room, murals in the Green House and landscapes of Shugborough over nearly 30 years, was also brought over from Bologna by Thomas and then became a succesful theatrical painter.

The ceiling in what is now the Dining Room is based on Guido Reni’s Apollo and the Hours, with the roundels of Isis, Serapis, a Maenad and Confucius.

There are no documents to prove Wright’s activity at Shugborough, but the landscape was typical of his style and Eileen Harris found that details of the ceiling design matched Wright’s drawings for his lost house Nuthall Temple.

Thomas Anson does mention Thomas Wright's main patron of the 1750s in one of his very few surviving letters. Sometime in the 1750s Thomas set off on a tour of Wales. Thomas writes from Bath that he will visit 'Mr Berkeley's, who I hear is at Stoke.' This is Norborne Berkeley whose estate at Stoke Gifford was laid out by Wright. 'I shall aquit myself of a promise made him that if he would permit me to see his place in December I would certainly revisit it in a better season.' So Thomas is taking an interest in other Wright landscapes. 'God's country, as Lord Littleton calls Brecknockshire, I shall not reach. Going up and down mountains takes a deal of time and is too tedious when one is alone.' (18) Lady Anson visited Stoke Gifford in 1755 and mentioned Wright in a letter.

SEE: THOMAS WRIGHT, THE DRUIDS AND THE SOPHISTICATED LADIES

Lady Anson wrote many letters to Thomas Anson, often mentioning details of her visits to Shugborough. (see SHEPHERDS, SHEPHERDESSES AND THE GOLDEN AGE) She was a witty and well educated woman and friend to many “bluestockings”, including her equally witty Sister in law Jemima Grey and the circle of young writers and poets who were also close friends of Thomas Wright, including Catherine Talbot and Elizabeth Carter.

In May 1749 Lady Grey had referred to the ridiculous appearance of the small bowed extension on the West Front (now replaced by the saloon) – which may have looked strange before the house was rendered. This would have marked the end of the work attributed to Thomas Wright. Wright was the first architect to build bow windows.

On June 13th 1749 (the date is fixed by a reference to Bonnie Prince Charlie in Venice) Lady Anson writes to Thomas about “Mr Flitcroft”, who had a new process for rendering on brick to make it look like stone. Thomas Flitcroft was a distinguished architect then working for Lord Hardwicke at Wimpole. His method may have been used to cover the old brick house and make it match the new extensions by Wright.

THE CAT’S MONUMENT, PIGEON HOUSE AND  PAGODA

Lady Anson, in Bath on 16th August 1749, wrote to Thomas to suggest a stone quarry who could make the Cat’s Monument. It's possible that Wright had supplied a drawing before this date. She calls it “Kouli-Kan’s Monument” (12). The ancient Persian Emperor Kubla-Khan and his pleasure grounds are described in the 17th century study of Middle Eastern people and religions “Purchas his Pilgrimage” (1613) which Thomas had in his library.

“In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant Springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game,and in the midst thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure, which may be removed from place to place.”

This passage inspired Coleridge and Thomas may have imagined Shugborough’s park  like this. There may not have been a mobile pleasure house but there was, at least, a barge kept in boathouse by the Chinese House.

A more likely source of the name, usually spelled as Lady Anson spells it, is the 18th century Persian Emperor Kouli-Kan – the European name for  Nadir Shah, emperor of Persia and conqueror of India who died in 1747. It seems most likely that the eccentric looking cat was one of Thomas’s Persians and named after the Emperor.

The gothic Pigeon House was built in 1748 or 1749. It was attached to the ruins by the river. Thomas Wright was one of the first to build follies in the gothic style. Lady Anson writes to Thomas on November 1st 1749:

 “Sorry was I to hear so indifferent account of the Pigeons, whose having so little Taste would almost make one suspect them to be of the same Race with those Birds upon the Tuscan Altar you and I contemplated so long, of which it is doubtful whether they are Doves of Crows…they had so little sense of the many Beauties of their new Palace that you cannot wonder if Lady Grey and I durst not trust ourselves to the conduct of such simple animals…..”

The mysterious Shepherds Monument has a complex history. It's most likely date of building, in origibal form, is 1750.

SEE: THE SHEPHERDS MONUMENT for the detailed story and SHEPHERDS AND SHEPHERDESSES for its possible meaning.

Lady Anson  also mentions the long vanished wooden pagoda under construction in November 1752. This may have been the first pagoda in England. The pagoda at Kew was built in 1762. Also built around this time was a wooden obelisk on the hill, perhaps not far from the junction of the farm drive and the Lichfield Road. This blew down in the nineteenth century.

Shugborough only acted as a country residence for George and Elizabeth for a few years.

By 1752 they had bought Moor Park in Hertfordshire as their seat and Elizabeth was waiting for Thomas to “ ‘comb it’ a genteel phrase for opening and improving” the park – suggesting that it was Thomas who was seen as the adviser on matters of taste. Their lives together at Moor Park would be short. Elizabeth died in 1760, George in 1762. Thomas sold Moor Park for £25,000

By the mid 1750s Shugborough was an eccentric rococo landscape, mixing styles inspired by cultures from all round the world. The overall mood may not have been particularly serious. “Kouli Kan” has the comicalness of an 18th century Cheshire Cat.

The Shepherds Monument, whenever it was built, stands as a gateway between two worlds. It links a world of Shepherds and Shepherdesses in a fantasy Arcadia, with a quite different attempt to explore and recreate the spirit of Ancient Greece. The period between 1758 and 1762 marks a change in European fashion and Shugborough is at the forefront of new and revolutionary ideas.

THE NORFOLK CONNECTION

In 1750 Thomas bought the manor of Knightley in Satffordshire from Thomas Coke, first Earl of Leicester, for £15,000. Coke had bought many art works in Italy as a young man and was building Holkham Hall to display them. He lost a fortune in the South Sea Bubble and needed to raise money to finish Holkham.  A few years later the Ansons bought extensive estates in Norfolk from Coke, and Admiral Anson was Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk.  Letters from Coke to Thomas in 1749 make it clear they did not know each other before this, but the connection with the Coke family became very important in later generations.(15)

SEE: THOMAS ANSON AND THE GREEK REVIVAL

(1) Staffordshire Records Office
(2) Sir Francis Dashwood: The Dashwoods of West Wycombe, Aurum Press, 1987
(3) John Martin Robinson: Shugborough, The National Trust, 1989
(4) Royal Society records of Fellows are accessible on http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/
(5) Frank E Manuel: Life of Sir Isaac Newton
(6) J Mordaunt Crook: The Greek Revival
(7) Lucas Papers, Bedfordshire Record Office
(8) Romney Sedgwick: The House of Commons, 1715-1754, HMS0, 1970
(9) Sir Lewis Namier & John BrookeThe House of Commons 1754-1790 (HMSO 1964)
(10)Oxforddnb.com
(11)Wolverhampton City Council website “Important finds at the Molyneux Hotel 21/12/2004)
(12) Staffordshire Records Office D615/P(S)/1/310A
(13) Captain S.W. C. Pack CBE MSc ADC RN: Admiral Lord Anson, Cassell, 1960
(14) Stuart Piggott: William Stukeley, an eighteenth century antiquary, Thames and Hudson, 1985

(15) Letters from Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester and Deeds in Staffs Record Office

(16) John Ingamells: A dictionary of British nad Irish travellers in Italy 1701-1800, Yale UP, 1997. I am very grateful to Rachel Finnegan for this information.

(17) Staffs Record Office Congreve letters D1057/M/G/4

(18) Staffs Record Office