The Towers, by Robert Taylor Pritchett (1828–1907). 1868. Pen-and-ink. Shown at the "Drawing Esher" exhibition of R. T. Pritchett's pen-and-ink drawings, held at the Civic Offices in Esher, Surrey, 31 January - 21 September 2023. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
The Towers is a curious building — originally the gatehouse to Bishop Wayneflete of Winchester's palatial estate house at Esher Place. What is interesting about it, architecturally, is the work added to the fifteenth-century structure by the architect William Kent in the eighteenth century: "what survives of it belongs to the earliest examples of that Rococo-Gothic which found its crowning achievement twenty years later at Strawberry Hill" (Nairn, Pevsner and Cherry 222). Pritchett has shown it rising starkly close to the River Mole, heavily diapered, top heavy, and with its battlements and towers thoroughly overgrown by vegetation. Another of his sketches shows it from the other side, but at a distance.
Photograph, text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee; photograph reproduced here by kind permission of Elmbridge Museum and the Civic Offices, Esher.
Bibliography
Nairn, Ian and Nikolaus Pevsner, rev. Bridget Cherry. The Buildings of England: Surrey. 2nd ed. London: Penguin, 1971.
Created 10 September 2023