Kingston Lacy House
NGR: ST977013, Lat: 50.811409, Long: -2.0333040. Lead author: PJB.

Kingston Lacy Part 4: Interior Stone - Sedimentary 

​William Bankes transformed the Kingston Lacy interior into an Italian palazzo with many floors, walls, columns, sculptures, fittings and collector’s items of both local and European stone imported via Venice under his personal supervision. 

1. The painted entrance hall columns and walling are supposedly Portland Limestone, a freestone but Charles Barry was positioned to make a two third’s cost saving had he chosen to use again but at Kingston, the William Ranger’s patent artificial Portland Stone replication. (Part 1. Image 18.) The sculpted coat of arms tympanum is oolitic Wardour Upper Building

2. The 25 inscribed tombstones, stelae of the Egyptian Collection, are made from the extracted tunneling waste removed from the Valley of The Kings burial chambers.  It is a chalky white, Eocene Limestone from the central member of the local Serai Formation.  (ref: Judith M. Bunbury “Geology of the Valley of the Kings”) This is a fine-grained freestone ideal to take the paint and gold leaf for tombs of the Pharaohs and also a freely available building and stelae stone of the Deir el Medina tomb-masons to the Pharaohs.   Google Link

3. and 4.This striding figure , recovered from the House garden, has the features of Rameses II. According to the Kingston Lacy guide book and their room notes it is a greywacke of unknown provenance and dated at 123 BC. Bekhen Stone, a Precambrian metagreywacke sandstone, was quarried for sculpting in the Wadi Hammamet Pass, the main Eastern Desert route-way east of Luxor, from pre-historic to Roman times. (Ref. Evaluating the Cultural Heritage and landscape of Quseir - Qift Road: with a special focus on the gold mines and greywacke quarries. 31 Jan. 2017  Univ. Padua, Archaeology Dept. (Fatima Al Fihri Project. http://paduaresearch.cab.unipd.it/10241/1/Tesi_Elsayed_Ahmed.compressed.pdf 

Polished Limestone - intensely altered, veined, deformed and variously coloured deeply buried sediments. All additional interior sedimentary stone has been deeply buried or compressed. Well known since Roman times, sedimentary evaporites and hard limestones can also be made to take a polish, and to compete commercially with true marbles.

5. Imposing crinoidal bioclastic limestone, probably European not British, was used by William Bankes for the communal faucet bowl, N.T. buffet, set amongst bedrooms and which pre-dated the first proper flushing water closet in Kingston House. Star-shaped crinoid ossicles (Pentacrinus), mussel shell and minute gastropods can be seen with a hand lens.

6. and 7.Bioclastic crinoidal limestone detritus at low and high hand lens magnification.

8. Black chequerboard flooring from Hainault or Tournai, were well-stocked by 19th century Italian suppliers. Together with white or graphite disseminated Carrara Marble, the high status Royal and later major western city halls, were floored with uniform, chequerboard slabs. Bankes perhaps economised by minimising the slab size of the always dangerously and expensively mined Belgian Black limestone. His effect is perhaps even more tasteful.

9. Belgian Red Limestone. He also economised by using Belgian Red Limestone, (rather than high status French Red Languedoc) for the fireplace in the National Trust Office.

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10. French Red Languedoc - Top landing.

Alabaster
Geothite dissemination of oxidised iron, gives the red/browns and less oxidised blue/greys to the staircase balusters of typically cloudy and banded English alabaster/gypsum – almost certainly ordered by Charles Barry from a Derbyshire source.

11. Alabaster. Geothite dissemination of oxidised iron, gives the red/browns and less oxidised bue/greys to the staircase balasters of typically cloudy and banded English alabaster/gypsum – almost certainly ordered by Charles Barry from a Derbyshire source.

12. and 13. Differently cloudy dissemination here, enhanced in active ornamental electric light fittings. (Installation date unknown)

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14. Transparent alabaster was used just for light access in some historic Italian buildings.

15. At Kingston Lacy, another 19th century Italian idea had mirrors set to reflect light deep into the house on two separate upstairs floors.

Verona Red Ammonite Formation
Most polished stone at Kingston House is the Verona limestone, from the Valpolicella Region at the foot of the Alps of the Verona Red Ammonite Formation. (Oxfordian, Upper Jurassic 285 Ma.)  It is an hematitic, stylotised, commonly nodular succession of condensed sediments on an ancient submarine plateau. The commercial marbles, polished limestone red-Rosso, pink-Nembro rosato, yellow Giallo, and white Bassano Biancone, are all well represented at Kingston Lacy. The yellow Giallo texture is very commonly nodular and often with occasional macro fossil inclusions. Below left is the location of a 1” wide and bisected, Rhynchonella, in the left-hand side Drawing room/ Dining room entranceway.

18. The Rhynchonella, seen here centrally with calcite mineral veining and alteration weakness fracturing to the right.

19. A nice sectioned ammonite, one of many in the Drawing Room fireplace and together with the sculpted vase (see image 20) on the mantelpiece, revealing considerable stylolite weakness.

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21. Stained orange/red by a blending of iron oxide/geothite and hematite, this is the dark, polished Rosso di Verona. This world famous nodular limestone reaches the surface near Lake Garda. The paws are of Bianco di Verona.

22 and 23. Smaller nodules in pink Nembro Rosato, left and right with an adjacent white bedding layer, are from the higher, Upper Jurassic deposits.

23. The red spotted staining is accounted for by oxidised worm holes and geothite-filled cavities in the white Bianco di Verona beds below the Nembro Rosato.

24. Sadly with no scale, here are the very small nodules in the Nembro Rosatto as compared with the very large nodules of the Rosso di Verona. As seen in the garden’s two 1848 scaled-down replicas of the lions at the foot of the Capitol in Rome.

25. Good stylolite texture, in the white micritic Bassano Biancone stone stair-rails and adjacent walling.

​Microbial mats were laid down in the Tethys Ocean, preceding the Mediterranean Sea. They were important in trapping and binding the Verona Limestone Formation sediment, giving rise to early lithified nodules and stromatolitic layers.  From the Upper Bajacian to the Upper Oxfordian pseudonodular textures turned to massive bioclastic facies with much fossil content and finally these sediments were characterised by a long period of true nodular facies. The burial and tectonic compression of subsquent Alpine and Apennine orogenies removed vast volumes of material by pressure dissolution and thus stylolites are so much in evidence amongst all Kingston Lacy’s polished Verona Limestone.

Kingston Lacy Part 5: Interior Stone-Igneous and Metamorphic 

​William Bankes added his 1814-1820 Grand Tour Collections’ stone; to that of his father’s inheritance, to Charles Barry’s restoration requirements and his own shipments from Venice between his 1841 exile and death in 1855. At least twenty of the most popular, rare and sought after C19th hard polished stones can still be seen amongst both prominent and even most minor features finally included in the fastidious Italianate palazzo interior to his updated Anglo neo-classic Palladian Exterior.

Egyptian Stone – Granite

Image 1. Main hallway with Monumental Red Aswan Granite, MRAG sawn at Wimborne, polished in London 1844.

Image 2. Sourced from the Aswan exposure of intruded pre-Caledonian Arabian-Nubian Shield rock. Age: 606 Ma.

Basalt

Image 3. Table-top close-up 9” x 9” revealing pink/red orthoclase of true acid rock MRAG granite with grey quartz and black biotite mineralisation. Similar acid microgranites and layered altered intrusions are commonly available today.

Image 4. A Green basalt; Roman Republic period bust, first found about 1780 at Canopus in the Nile delta. Egyptian or even Roman sourced Jordanian stone? Basalt was long quarried close to Cairo and in both Eastern and Western Deserts from three orogenic periods of around 230 Ma / 140 Ma & 90 Ma.

Grecian Intermediate

Image 5. The Drawing room console tables both have green Porfido verde antico medallions, 6“/150mm across. Thought serpentinite by W’m. Bankes but epidote and chlorite minerals are now known to produce the green colouring in this igneous stone.

Image 6. The medallions are inaccessible to visitors - so are best seen as above. Never quarried, this stone is a porphyritic andesite or dolerite of Permian to Carboniferous age, coming only as loose blocks from south of Sparta, Laconia, Greece. Much favoured by Romans but ignored by the Greeks who invariably worked white marble.

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Eastern Mediterranean - Snowflake obsidian

Image 7. Presumed C19th souvenir polished cristobalite snowflake obsidian obelisks in the Egyptian room, are crudely engraved in English as: 'OBELISK CALLED CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLE AT ALEXANDRIA'

Image 8. This is not an Egyptian stone but the Ancient Egyptians used Cretaceous obsidian imported from the eastern Mediterranean and southern Red Sea regions. (Wikipedia.)

Apuan Alps Eastern: Marble

True Marbles – white, grey and blue Carrara marbles of the Apuan Alps have been predominantly worked inland of Carrara and Massa and multi-coloured breccias, southwards around Stazzema and Seravezza. The geological age of the marbles is invariably of Late Triassic/Early Jurassic origins and metamorphosed in the Tertiary to now contain a vast range of minerals and hence being both variously textured and coloured.

 http://www.apuanegeopark.it/ENGLISH_VERSION/apuanegeopark_geology.html
 The earliest, UK sculpted white Kingston Lacy Carrara feature, must be in the Library; probably brought from the ruined Corfe Castle. The fireplace panelling is surmounted by rather opaque but purely white Carrara marble Fleur de Lys emblems of the Bankes’ family.(9,10,)

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The panelling is of a most rare white calcite cemented; coarse grained black graphite disseminated marble - of provenance as yet unknown and far too coarse for Carrara. (Oregon settlers from 1830’s produced the then only similarly textured and only locally commercial polished stone from the now, Tate Quarry. This is the world’s deepest , supplying White Cherokee/Georgia Marble (12) http://midgagmsorg.ipage.com/?page_id=858 )

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Apuan Alps Statuary Carrara is the very finely grained most translucent and pure white marble, whereas the graphite streaked or clouded stone, long called Sicilian Carrara in Britain, is abundant and much used in high status flooring and stairways. (‘Sicilian Carrara’ referred merely re-shipment by Sicilian stone trading ports.

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Flaxman’s 1786 Saloon sculpting left (14, photo Daderot) and the Drawing room fireplace(15) exhibit the best white statuary Carrara marble.

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​Most commonly amongst the Carrara Marble is a very fine grey/blue colouring and darker veining of disseminated graphite. Where cavities and veining of graphite occur the name Bardiglio Carrara is given.  An unintended serendipity in William’s choice of this graphite bardiglio stone, for this monument to his architectural achievement, must be that Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Bankes family wealth was considerably based on their Borrowdale graphite wad/black lead mining, in Cumbria. The Bankes's rights to the graphite mining came in 1622 to Sir John following his marriage to Brave Dame Mary and brought in considerable wealth during the Napoleonic wars.

Kingston Lacy Part 5: Interior Stone – Metamorphic

Apuan Alps Southern:Marble

​Production and export of Oligocene-Miocene metamorphosed Seravezza and Stazzema areas’ calcareous marble was maximised during the C19th.  Matching or mixed clasts are along with the matrix, stained with oxides of iron or chlorite and most rarely with manganese piedmontite as below.

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Breche violet of the Dining room table, is the French trade term for this most popular oxidised plumb red brecciated stone but it is not the true Seravezza Breccia Violetta, that is rich in piedmontite – see Saloon niches below.(3,4)

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​Breccia di Seravezza Violetto, is today’s update, for the N.T.’s. antiquated 19th C. term, Mischio di Seravezza. (It’s also not as N.T. described - of fleur pêcher – the ancient Greek marble. Nor is this stone the repeatedly metamorphosed Italian Peach Blossom Marble, the Fior di Pesco of the Apuan Alps, which is used in the Drawing room doorway entablatures. Both as below.)

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​Here, close up(5), we can see the rich violet manganese colouration, generated by disseminated piedmontite and also the banded, elongate white brecciation, in a grey/green and red matrix of chlorite and other iron oxides.

Image 6. Central Dining room entablatures are of the true Apuan Alps Peach Blossom marble, that is still quarried other than at Seravezza. (The Classical Greek Fior di Pesco, from Eritrea Greece, is more crushed and striated, and can be seen at Chatsworth.)

Image 7. Rounded petal shapes and anhedral clasts, were repeatedly crushed and stretched, so that the crevices are filled, with secondary calcite. The veined, petal shaped texture, is considered to resemble peach blossom. (Colour tweaked brighter above to enhance clast crevicing.)

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In the Spanish room, generally grey and red matrixed, Apuan Alps metamorphosed marble pendants are set on Devonian Belgian Black limestone, both sides of pietra jura fire surround stone.

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Mostly oxidised colours from these otherwise usually white Carrara marble quarries, recently revealed to be those from the historic 300 years’ Fabricatti family quarries, are of grey to black graphite and red iron oxide disseminated mineral deposits. On the G M Fabbricotti trade website there is a  photogallery of this stone today.

Tuscany Marbles

Image 12. Two Drawing Room Siena Marble console tables of richly goethite egg yolk yellow Giallo di Siena have variable white calcareous shell remnant veining. They are of fine-grained Jurassic limestone metamorphosed during the Eocene and still quarried today.

Image 13. The three lighter yellow Siena Marble Dining Room doorways, and darker lower entablatures of the Drawing room, are also of a rare and worked-out yellow Siena Marble but have a purplish or reddish veining in a very brecciated appearance.

Image 14. The three lighter yellow Siena Marble Dining Room doorways, and darker lower entablatures of the Drawing room, are also of a rare and worked-out yellow Siena Marble but have a purplish or reddish veining in a very brecciated appearance.

Liguria and Tuscany Serpentinites

Image 15. The central panels of the two marble stands are also of clearly brecciated Convent/ Broccatello Siena but the red and green stones are of serpentinite.

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​William Bankes’s C19th masons were limited for Italian serpentinites to those from Levanto and or most likely Polcevera at Genoa, Liguria.  Ophiolitic serpentinites and other altered Pyroxenes have been long quarried in Liguria’s techno-stratigraphic units and many textures have probably been all worked out. Best known Genoa textures are well brecciated while classic commercial Rosso Levanto stone is typically a very heavily white calcite veined Magnetite rich bastite serpentine, which causes it to appear a darker green and when hematite rich water, percolates through it, the stone becomes deep red. Traded Rosso Levanto is typically a heavily white veined mix of both colours. Tertiary lithification.

Image 18. These bronze statuette pediments are a ‘serpentinite’ but not clastic Verde Antico as is N.T. Guide described. It is a polished version of Verde di Prat, a long-used, local high-status decorative dressings building stone used around this town in northern Tuscany. Observable veining here and right may be of calcite but also of talc or hydromagnesite and commonly risked a veining network weakness to long-term weathering if used as a building stone.

Image 19. Verde di Prato – as above in this zoomed macro image, illustrates well the Tertiary serpentinised enstatite-rich peridotite (probably Late Jurassic/Cretaceous harzburgite) in which relict enstatite crystals now form the texture of this stone. Fine reticulated veining can just be discerned centre left.

Image 20.

​This stone is most probably a Connemara Marble, from the Clifton area of western Galway and much more darkly banded with Serpentine minerals than usual. Connemara serpentinite textures are very variable, and the predominant colouring is often of lighter greens and even yellows. A Precambrian metamorphosed impure limestone was available in time for Bankes’s use at Kingston. (First floor landing.)

French Haute Pyrenees – and Languedoc

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​From Italy, we go to the French Pyrenees.  Incredibly large sharp edged Lower Cretaceous tectonic breccias, of the Haute Pyrenees, are known as the Breche Grande Antique.  Blocks, of just two cubic feet or so, are set as plinths, to the four Dining Room, door frames.

Image 23. Repeatedly fragmented and slightly metamorphosed red breccia in grey matrixed Haute Pyrenean Sarrancolin but with white calcite infills and veining, is seen in two top passageway tables leading to the attic stairs.

Image 24.In this example from one table, only light metamorphism is revealed, despite repeated orogenic alteration events, by the remnant fossils’ evidence easily seen centred here. This stone is still actively quarried.

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​Good but small, top landing, examples of the world-famous red Devonian crinoidal limestone Rouge Languedoc including stromatactis sponge cavities filled with layered grey and white calcite. (Layering remains open to agreed petrological explanation.)  Still actively quarried in south-west France.  

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 Easily accessible References:
 1) Price, Monica,  Decorative Stone - The Complete Sourcebook.  Thames & Hudson Remaindered New & Used via Amazon. Also USA edition; with title reversed in paperback.
 2) Rogers, Patrick:  The Beauty of Stone - The Westminster Cathedral Marbles. Only from the Cathedral shop.
 3) Sebba,  Anne,  The Exiled Collector – William Bankes and the Making of an English Country House.   John Murray New & Used cloth & paperback.
 4) Monica T. Price & Lisa Cooke - The Corsi Collection of Decorative Stones - website http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/corsi/
​All photos are by kind permission of the National Trust