Summary

A Gothic tower, built in the mid 1730s, towards the north of the Water Gardens.

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Description

The Octagon Tower stands on the western edge of Constitution Hill. As the name suggests, it is octagonal in plan and two storeys tall (on a raised base) though only one is currently accessible, or has been so in living memory. Logic suggests its roof would have made an ideal viewing platform, but there is no evidence for any such use.

The building is accessed from the east, up an elegant flight of eight steps approaching a 90cm deep porch, to a door 1.5m above local ground level. The stairs are not bonded to the main structure suggesting that they may be a later alteration in their current form.

The room once gave access to a series of principal vistas - of the Obelisk (and later St. Mary's Church), Studley Royal House, The Roman Monument, The Chinese Temple (after 1745) Mackershaw Lodges (after 1750), How Hill, perhaps the abbey, the north end of the water garden and the Banqueting House. It was therefore axial in providing an overview of John Aislabie's pleasure grounds, though most of these vistas have been blocked by unsympathetic tree management in the last 50 years.

The Tower is Gothic in style and was built in the mid 1730s. Only this building and the vanished Belvedere on Gillet Hill were designed in this style. There is some suggestion from the estate archives that it may have started life in classical mould, but no representation of this survives and it is possible that the entries are a confusion with the similarly shaped Temple of Venus. The interior was plastered by Cortese: the modern plasterwork is reproduction. Fragments of the original were recovered from a dump of masonry waste in an adjoining part of the Ha-Ha in 1995.

The Tower was framed by two east facing tufa arches, on the Serpentine tunnel (30154) and Aislabie's Kitchen (30148), along with their associated earthwork mounds.

There is a small undercroft accessed via a door under the steps. The building was ruinous and underwent substantial restoration work under the auspices of the North Yorkshire County Council in 1976. Up to 40% of the stonework was replaced, and the building was refenestrated and replastered. Dumps of the original stonework existed to the south-east of Aislabie's Kitchen (until clearance in 1994) and in the Ha-ha (30203) to the east.

Documentary Sources: As with several other key garden buildings, the Octagon Tower only initially appears in the estate papers late on in its construction. Earlier references are clouded by their simply referring to "the Tower", which in a number of cases could as easily be references to the Temple of Venus (30149).

Glazing work is first recorded in 1735, arguing for construction commencing at least in the previous year. Scaffolding work was going on in October of that year, with the flagging of the cellar in November and the completion of surrounding paling in December. The following year saw work on a surrounding bastion and on the doorcase, steps and decoration. This work was the subject of a separate estimate by Doe (V.6288) and may possibly reflect an alteration to the design motif. Vassali was employed on decorative plasterwork in January 1737 - to be replaced in February by "the other Italian" - possibly Cortese. Vassali returned in August, although it was Bagnall who appears to have completed the task in March 1738.

The exterior appearance was also modified in 1738 with the removal of the palisade. From October 1740 until July 1741 Doe worked on the doorcase and steps again, creating those seen today (traces of the earlier scheme surviving beneath the current stonework having been noted by WTWC during restoration work in the 1970s) with further mason's work in 1743. Cortese was employed on (?) new schemes of plasterwork (or repairs), first in September 1739, then in May 1746 and for a third time in September 1768. The remaining "pales and pallisadoes" - probably the 1736 "bastion" - had been removed in May 1755.

The visual depictions add little to our knowledge of the building. It was first described in 1741 (Text 15) as an "octagon room" and by Philip York as a "gothic tower" in 1744 (Text 12). The purpose of the tower, to command a number of prospects, is the characteristic most frequently commented upon.

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