Overlooked Britain
‘For picturesque grounds and garden furnishings few houses can compete with Shugborough’; no mean praise from Sir Nikolaus Pevsner himself in his The Buildings of England series, covering Staffordshire. ‘Coming upon them,’ he writes, ‘is an experience which will never to be forgotten.’ Wise words for this assembly of 18th-century architectural fancies that picturesquely people the park and garden of the great house. It is a handsome neoclassical pile, which, although looking all of a piece, in fact dates from between 1693 to 1806.
Surrounding it, like an enchanted architectural skirt, there are buildings great and small – all of them created with the serious scholarly influence of Thomas Anson, who owned the house and was a founder member of the Society of Dilettanti. Establishing the club to promote the study of ancient Greek and Roman architecture and art, Anson and his companions – with such famed figures as James ‘Athenian’ Stuart and Nicholas Revett – practised what they preached with aplomb: going on Grand Tours galore and, over the years, compiling three volumes of The Antiquities of Athens, with drawings of the principal buildings.
Many of these were then to be recreated in Staffordshire: the Arch of Hadrian is there in its full glory against England’s northern skies, as is the Lantern of Diogenes – the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates; and many
more, sprouting forth from this enclave of the Greek Revival in Staffordshire. Most beguiling of all is a monument to a cat: a lofty pedestal supporting a garlanded urn – with bulls’ and cows’ heads entwined with the foliage. On the top of the lot sits what is undoubtedly a Persian feline, with a flat face and a wealth of whiskers. His great round eyes are set into their almond-shaped openings; a noble monument commemorating a nobly named cat, called Kouli Khan after a Persian king known as ‘the Persian Napoleon’, who was assassinated in 1747.
The man responsible for its design was the great and glorious Thomas Wright, architect, garden planner and astronomer, mathematician and instrument maker who, if you please, was responsible for the ‘beautification’ of Durham Cathedral with additional pinnacles! He was the first to use the word ‘galaxy’ to describe a giant cluster of stars, and during his researches discovered the Milky Way.
There are two wildly different theories as to the identity of this nobly elevated creature: that it was the last of the breed of Persian pets kept at Shugborough by Thomas Anson’s younger brother, George. A letter from his wife survives, with plans for sculpting ‘Kouli Khan’s … stupendous… monument’.
The second and tremendous theory of this cat’s life is that it accompanied Admiral George Anson on his famed circumnavigation of the world aboard the flagship Centurion. Britain was at war with Spain, and in 1740 he was dispatched to capture Spanish ships and their possessions in the Pacific.
It was to be both a miserable and magnificent mission, one made particularly perilous by regular troops being unavailable and them having to be replaced by invalids from Chelsea Hospital. ‘Worn out and crippled men’, many actually had to be carried aboard on stretchers; borne into what was to become a coffin on the high seas, rife with dysentery, typhus, malaria and scurvy.
The losses were terrific: of the some 1,500 men who set off, not 200 were to survive. There were, however, many triumphs, in particular the capture of the treasure ship Nuestra Señora de Covadonga in 1743, with its hoard of 1,313,843 pieces of eight, making Anson a rich man for life.
When his treasure was paraded in 32 wagons through London, the streets lined with cheering crowds, he was hailed as the nation’s hero. The monument is Admiral Anson’s tribute to his feline companion.