Still in Dorset we went on a church crawl today kicking off with Milton Abbey. It is beside what is now Milton Abbey School.
The house was built for Joseph Damer in the mid 18th century. There are parallels with Stowe; the village was demolished and relocated and Capability Brown hired to make the landscape pleasing. But there is quite enough to look at inside the abbey and it’s drizzling, so let’s go in.
The first thing you see inside the door near the north wall is this monument in white marble depicting Joseph Damer mourning his wife, Caroline. It was designed by Robert Adam and carved by Agostino Carlini in 1775. The detail is rather amazing – their clothes in particular. You can see the ermine trim on his cloak and the wrinkles in his stockings. Carlini was born in Genoa but lived all his working life in England, although he did design the pediment and eight statues for the Custom House in Dublin.
I am going to the National Portrait Gallery later today and will seek this fine portrait of Carlini (on the left) with Bartolozzi and Cipriani. They are all Royal Academicians, the last two being painters and engravers.
Damer was created Lord Milton and Earl of Dorchester but after only a century the estate was sold to the Hambros (the bank) who in turn sold it in 1932. There is another marble monument to a Hambro near the altar. Many effigies depict favourite dogs or (a bit gruesome) dead children but Hambro went one up by having a pious lion at his feet. A century later than the Damer memorial it is also exquisitely carved, designed by George Gilbert Scott.
Behind the altar is an impressive medieval reredos. It has twenty-six niches that are unoccupied. It is thought that the original statues were destroyed at the Reformation and indeed the reredos itself has been much restored.
No room to describe the other monuments but just time to digress. Pre-Damer the estate belonged to the Tregonwells who got it for a song (£1,000) after the Reformation. One of the children had a miraculous escape. He toppled off the tower while reaching for a flower but his stiff skirts (that’s how boys were dressed) acted like a parachute. There is a memorial to this remarkable death-dodge. On the way out look up at the ceiling.
