SOUNDING SPACE Marble Hill House #027
London
Notes compiled by Roger
Millington and Dr. Stella Barrows
INTRODUCTION and OVERVIEW
The Marble Hill House Sounding Space lies near to the great tidal River, the Thames. Occupation and activity in the immediate area of Twickenham can be traced back thousands of years, from Early Neolithic (possibly Mesolithic) settlements, through to Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman and Norman occupations. It seems the area was first mentioned as “Tuican hom” and “Tuiccanham” (in writing at least) in the 8thCentury. Previous to the building and landscaping of the 18th century, the site was farmed for several hundred years and the banks of the river being used for fishing and trade.
The NISG team posit that recent archaeological work undertaken by English Heritage in the environs of this park have stimulated conversational, melodic, ambient and proto-historic sonic phenomena through its (careful) disturbance of the underground strata. This proliferation of sonic ‘hot spots’ demonstrates that Marble Hill House is clearly a deeply significant site.
CONSTRUCTION
Marble Hill was named after a “shot” - a term for a parcel of land and not the geological content of the bedrock beneath! The estate was built on land acquired for Henrietta Howard (1689-1767) who became the Countess of Suffolk and was the mistress of George II for sixteen years. Henrietta became the darling of Georgian society and was courted by the greatest wits, poets and intellectuals of the age.
Building started on Marble Hill House in 1724 and was completed in about 1729. The house, designed in the newly fashionable Palladian manner was built under the supervision of Roger Morris, the gardens laid out by Charles Bridgeman, aided by her great friend Alexander Pope. Henrietta established the house as the liveliest social centre outside of court and the circle of famous people became known as ‘The Twickenham Set’ – Pope wrote ‘There is a greater court now at Marble Hill than at Kensington’.
Pope and his friends Jonathan Swift and John Gay showed an interest both in Mrs Howard (and her wine cellar), which, during the summer of 1727, it is said they emptied. Pope regarded Mrs Howard as that rare being, “a reasonable woman, handsome and witty, yet a friend”.
After an abusive first marriage, Henrietta was happily married in later life to politician George Berkeley. In later years Horace Walpole became a close friend, enjoying the pleasures of gossip over strawberries and cream. However, lest we only write about this woman in terms of her relationship to ‘great men’, Henrietta Howard was an extraordinary witty, accomplished and resilient woman in her own right and an advocate for women.
GARDENS
Marble Hill house was set in an ‘Arcadian’ landscape inspired by representations of ancient Greece and Rome.
At least one grotto was constructed in the grounds and one still survives. A nine-pin bowling alley which was built over 250 years ago was discovered by more ‘traditional’ archaeologists than our affiliate organisation The National Institute for Sonic Archaeology (NISA) in 2017.
NOTE: Jonathan Swift thought that Henrietta’s gardener, Moody, passed too much time spending his wages drinking in the Dog and Partridge.
GEOLOGY
Alluvial landscapes are rich for the formation of sonic emissions.
The London Basin was formed during the Paleogene period from sedimentary rocks which were deposited when the land was submerged under the sea. Chalk was laid down first followed by sand, gravel, silts and clay. The gravelly and sandy soils found here are free draining overlying acid rocks, and is a common feature of many parts of London, and so becomes an integral part of lowland heath landscapes, commons and parklands.This soil type is well-known for it’s sonic porosity.
The flow of the River Thames dropped Kesgrave Sands and Gravels along its massive ancient river bed, and has transported puddingstones and sarsens, quartzes and gravels, all of which are well-known for their ability to trap sonic phenomena within their crystalline structures, a phenomenon explained by Dr Stella Barrows in her seminal paper Rocking Radiophony – Crystalline Induction in Sonic Geology.
One would assume that this were enough to explain the abundance of proto-historic musical, industrial and conversational sonic phenomena found in the Marble Hill House and surrounding Park area, such as the ‘singing’ of the ancient riverbed, the ‘sonic sermons’ recorded from beneath the nearby churches, the repeated campanological bell patterns, the geological historical echoes of ancient battles.
It is suggested that this geological fault-line, and the ‘London Basin’ acts to focus subterranean sonic phenomena in the manner of a ‘speaker cone’, allowing for detection of Deep Sound by means of NISG Ear Trumpet technology, and that this should be the focus of NISG investigations in the area.
It has been suggested that this may also have released detectable sonic phenomena, in the manner of repeated echo-type, induction, and auricular events.
SIGNIFICANT BUILDINGS IN THE VICINITY
In 1713 the nave of the ancient and local St Marys Church collapsed and the church was rebuilt in the neo-classical style. The St Marys Church tower has a ring of eight bells, of which one dates from the early 16th century, three from the 17th and four from the 18th and they are likely to be some of the loudest sounds audible in this area of London during Henrietta Howards lifetime.
EAR TRUMPETS
Unrelated to our listening activities, it is worthy of note that Henrietta Howard herself was a famous early adopter of Ear Trumpet technology, although this was due to her hearing loss than her commitment to sonic geology (though she was an extremely clever woman and who knows where her passions and curiosity would have taken her!).
In a short and complementary poem about Henrietta’s positive attributes, Pope concludes with a rather mean stanza about Henrietta’s deafness:
'Has she no faults then (Envy says), Sir?'
Yes, she has one, I must aver:
When all the world conspires to praise her,
The woman's deaf, and does not hear.
Yes, she has one, I must aver:
When all the world conspires to praise her,
The woman's deaf, and does not hear.
However, Henrietta did ‘hear’ in many ways, was a keen observer of body language and was known as ‘The Swiss’ for her neutrality and the confidences she kept. In her later years she continued to be known for her great wit and good company.
