Fonthill Abbey—also known as Beckford's Folly—was a large Gothic Revival country house built between 1796 and 1813 at Fonthill Gifford in Wiltshire, England, at the direction of William Thomas Beckford and architect James Wyatt. It was built near the site of the Palladian house, later known as Fonthill Splendens, which had been constructed by 1770 by his father William Beckford. This, in turn, had replaced the Elizabethan house that Beckford the Elder had purchased in 1744 and which had been destroyed by fire in 1755. The abbey's main tower collapsed several times, lastly in 1825 damaging the western wing. The abbey was later almost completely demolished.
History
Fonthill Abbey was the brainchild of William Thomas Beckford, son of wealthy English plantation owner William Beckford and a student of architect Sir William Chambers, as well as of James Wyatt, architect of the project.
In 1771, when Beckford was ten years old, he inherited £1 million () and an income which his contemporaries estimated at around £100,000 per annum, a colossal amount at the time, but which biographers have found to be closer to half of that sum. Newspapers of the period described him as "the richest commoner in England".
He first met William Courtenay (Viscount Courtenay's 11-year-old son) in 1778. A spectacular Christmas party lasting for three days was held for the boy at Fonthill. During this time (c.1782), Beckford began writing Vathek, his most famous novel. In 1784, Beckford was accused by Courtenay's uncle, the 1st Baron Lougborough, of having had an affair with Courtenay. The allegations of misconduct remained unproven, but the scandal was significant enough to require his exile.
Beckford chose exile in the company of his wife, Lady Margaret Gordon, whom he grew to love deeply, but who died in childbirth after the couple had found refuge in Switzerland. Beckford travelled extensively after this tragedy—to France, repeatedly, to Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal (the country he favoured above all). Shunned by English society, he nevertheless decided to return to his native country; after enclosing the Fonthill estate in a six-mile long wall (high enough to prevent hunters from chasing foxes and hares on his property), the arch-romantic Beckford decided to have a Gothic cathedral built for his home.
Fonthill Abbey would be vast, reflecting "the aesthetic category of 'the Sublime' as defined by the philosopher Edmund Burke in the middle of the eighteenth century."
Construction
Construction of the abbey began in earnest in 1796 on Beckford's estate of Fonthill Gifford near Hindon in southern Wiltshire. He hired James Wyatt, one of the most popular and successful architects of the late 18th-century, to lead the works. Wyatt was often accused of spending a good deal of his time on women and drink. Consequently, he also angered many of his clients—including Beckford—because of his all too common absences from client meetings, for a general disregard for supervising the construction works he was in charge of, and for not delivering the promised results in time, with clients accusing him—in certain instances—of years of delay.
Although suffering from a relationship which was at times strained, Beckford and Wyatt engaged in the construction of the abbey. It is clear, however, that Beckford, due to Wyatt's constant absences from the site, and because of the intense personal interest he had in the enterprise, often took on the roles of construction site supervisor, general organiser, and patron, as well as client. Indeed, his biographers and his correspondence indicate that, during Wyatt's prolonged absences, he took it upon himself to direct the construction of the Abbey, as well as leading the landscaping efforts on his estate.
Furthermore, the evidence suggests that not only was he happy to undertake all of those duties but, as Brockman suggests, must even have lived some of the brightest moments of his adult life managing the gigantic efforts at Fonthill. This is not to say that Wyatt's role in the construction was by any means less than Beckford's. Wyatt had not only designed the building (based on Beckford's ideas), but was ultimately a master at combining the different volumes and scales. By combining different architectural styles and elements, Wyatt achieved a faux effect of layered historical development in the building.
Glass painter Francis Eginton did much work in the building, including thirty-two figures of kings, knights, etc., and many windows, for which Beckford paid him £12,000.