Rushton Triangular Lodge
The Triangular Lodge is a folly, designed and constructed between 1593 and 1597 by Sir Thomas Tresham and to be found near Rushton in Northamptonshire. The lodge is now in the care of English Heritage.
Sir Thomas Tresham was the local squire, was imprisoned for a total of fifteen years in the late 16th century for refusing to accept the Protestant settlement of the Church of England. On his release in 1593, he designed the Lodge as a protestation of Christian faith. The design reflects his belief in the Holy Trinity common to the Reformed and Roman churches, and Tresham's own name (tres being Latin for "three") for everywhere in the Lodge reflects the number three:
- It has three walls, each 33 feet long;
- Each wall has three triangular windows and is surmounted by three gargoyles;
- The building has three floors, upon a basement, and a triangular chimney.
- Three Latin texts, each 33 letters long, run around the building on each facade.
The quotations running along the walls are all Latin texts from the Vulgate Latin translation of the Bible:
- Aperiatur terra & germinet Salvatorem: "Let the earth open and … bring forth salvation"[1]
- Quis separabit nos a charitate Christi?: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"[2]
- Consideravi opera tua, Domine, et expavi: "I have contemplated thy works, O Lord, and was afraid"[3]
The stone used for the construction was alternating bands of dark and light limestone.
The windows on each floor are of different designs, all equally ornate. The largest, those on the first floor, are in the form of a trefoil, which was the emblem of the Tresham family. The basement windows are small trefoils with a triangular pane at their centre. The windows on the ground floor are of a lozenge design, each having 12 small circular openings surrounding a central cruciform slit. Heraldic shields of various families surround these windows.
The slightly raised ground floor has an entrance in the south-east facade. Over the door, beneath Tresham's coat of arms, is the Latin inscription: Tres testimonium dant , meaning "The number three bears witness" or "Tresham bears witness" (Tres was the pet name his wife used for Tresham in her letters). Also above the door are the numbers "5555". The figures are oddly shaped, and architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner speculated that this may once have read "3333", but that number seems to have no particular significance. (It has been suggested[4] that if 1593 is subtracted from 5555, it leaves 3962; the date, BC, of the Flood, according to Bede.)
The principal room on each floor is hexagonal, thus leaving the three corner spaces triangular; one of these spaces contains a spiral staircase, the remaining two are small rooms.
The building is crowned, above the quotations on each facade, by three steep gables each surmounted by a three-sided obelisk at the apex. Among the emblems carved on the gables are, on the southeast side, the highly symbolic seven-branched candelabrum within an octagonal plaque, and a heptagonal plaque depicting the seven eyes of God. On the north side are a Pelican in her piety, a symbol of Christ and the Eucharist, and a Hen and Chickens; on the southwest gable are a Dove and Serpent; and the Hand of God touching a globe. The triangular chimney is adorned with the holy monogram "IHS", a lamb and cross, and a chalice. While the lodge is indisputably a testament to Tresham's faith, it is also an example of the Elizabethan love of allegory. Carved in the gables are the numbers "3509" and "3898": these are said to be the dates (BC) of the Creation and the Calling of Abraham. Among the more recent dates carved on the building are 1580, thought to be the date of Tresham's conversion, and also the future (at the time of their carving) dates 1626 and 1641 - to what do they refer? One suggestion[4] is that not only are they divisible by three, but that, when 1593 is subtracted from them, they give 33 and 48, the ages at which Jesus and the Virgin Mary are said to have died.
The broken inscriptions inscribed on each gable combine to read "Respicite non mihi laboravi", which means "Behold I have not laboured for myself alone".
The Lodge was the only building Tresham designed which he saw completed before his death in 1605. Nikolaus Pevsner in his The Buildings of England: Northamptonshire states: "as a testament of faith this building must be viewed with respect". He also considered the lodge so architecturally important that he chose its photograph for the front cover of the first edition (1961) of his book; it also features on the cover of the current edition.
The Lodge figures prominently in the chapter of Alan Moore's novel Voice of the Fire concerning Tresham's son Francis, a Gunpowder Plot conspirator. Moore, a Northampton native, touches on the history of several local sites in his speculative magical realist history of the town.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Rushton Triangular Lodge) |
- Rushton Triangular Lodge page at English Heritage
- Rushton Triangular Lodge details
- 360 degree views of the lodge
- National Heritage List 1052038: Grade I
- Some of the Lodge's symbolism interpreted on everything2.com
- South-west elevation of the lodge, drawn by JA Gotch, 1882
- Details of the upper windows of the lodge (JA Gotch, 1882)
- Details of the decoration of the lodge (JA Gotch, 1882)
References
Coordinates: 52°26′21″N 0°46′48″W / 52.4393°N 0.7799°W