Building record 1156702002 - THE AVIARY, WADDESDON MANOR

Grade II. Aviary. 1889, for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, restored 1960-66. Cast iron, metal lattice and wire mesh. Crescent-shaped with central and end pavilions. Rococo in style with slender cast iron shafts and lattice work pilasters dividing bays, and upper borders with elaborate scrolls and shell motifs. Curving ranges of cages, each of 4 bays, have roof in form of a pointed barrel vault, mesh to front pitch, enclosed to rear. End pavilions have shallow metal domes, slightly arched over each side. Central pavilion has glazed dome and rear wall of ashlar in form of grotto with wide segmental niche for fountain, piers with shaggy rustication, and tall flanking shell niches. Fountain has carved marble figure of Minerva, early C18 of Italian origin, reclining on rocks of tufa, with flanking marble tritons. Shell niches contain C17 Italian carved marble figures of a triton and a nereid sitting on twisted conch shells. Aviary has attached flanking walls of ashlar, the end piers with moulded capitals and bases. (T. Hodgkinson, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor: Sculpture, 1970, Catalogue Nos. 65, 77 and 78)(B1).
Trial trenching and watching brief carried by National Trust in winter 2002-3 during restoration works to aviary and aviary garden identified a number of 19th century flower beds and evidence for the locations of several of the original statues, removed in the 1964 reordering of the garden by Lanning Roper. See report for detail (B5).
Rocaille work and tufa provide the setting for the statuary in the grotto-alcove that forms the centrepiece of the nineteenth-century aviary at Waddesdon Manor (B13).