Summary

The statue base is to be found at the top (east) end of the south side of the Grecian Valley by the footpath circling the top of the Valley. It once held the statue of Hercules and the Boar, which was sold in the 1921 sale and is depicted on both the 1843 estate map and the 1880 1st Edition O.S. map. The base was found in 1992 and properly excavated and recorded in April 1998.

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Description

The base is fundamentally square in shape, its dimensions being 1.5m x 1.5m x .01m, with the north east corner missing. It is made up of, among other materials, limestone (20%), ironstone (5%) and mortar (70%). The blocks around the edges, especially prominent on the north edge, range in size from 13cms to 30cms and consist of ironstone and limestone. Smaller blocks of rubble in the centre (between 5cms and 13cms) are set in a dense matrix of orange coloured mortar. The profile is moderate in clarity being masked by mortar and vegetation but it is still possible to make out its square outline.

Vegetation is beginning to reclaim this base and if the statue, or a copy of it, is found, then it needs to be kept clear for it's mounting.

Archaeological Comments - Site:155034*0 Although this base was excavated in April 1998, vegetation is slowly beginning to reclaim it. This may have the detremental effect of slowly breaking up the mortar which is dominant on the top. This base needs to be cleared and monitered for when it is needed for a new statue.

(4) Whately’s French translator, M. Latapie, recorded the presence of ‘several statuary groups in whitened lead ... the best of which are Hercules and Anteus [and] Cain & Abel, both pieces full of vigour.’ These colossal lead groups were supplied by Andrew Carpenter in the 1730s. The Hercules and Antaeus is first recorded in another part of the garden in 1735; in 1756 Earl Temple decided to remove the Grenville Column to its present position close to the Temple of Ancient Virtue, and the Hercules and Antaeus took its place to the north-west of the Grecian Temple. The Cain and Abel (see p. 18) was part of the original iconographical scheme of the Temple of Venus and was moved to the far end of the Grecian Valley in 1765. These two groups, and a Hercules and the Boar, which also stood at the north-eastern end, all celebrate the triumph of physical strength, which would have supported the imperial programme of the valley when fully established in the 1760s. They were carefully positioned in the way that painters such as Claude used figures to frame a landscape and enhance the effects of perspective. Latapie’s description provides useful evidence that such lead statues were frequently painted to resemble stone.

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