Building record 1323100000 - THE MAUSOLEUM, WEST WYCOMBE

Grade I. 1763-4, designed by John Bastard the Younger of Blandford. Hexagonal tall flint rubble wall ashlar dressed with entablature and panelled parapet surmounted by stone urns grouped in threes at angles. Exterior has attached stucco Roman Doric columns under entablature with triglyphs, guttae and urn reliefs to frieze, modillioned cornice. Interior, unroofed, has wall monuments, 1 with figure sculpture early C18, and central 1769 monument of urn on pedestal under Roman Ionic stone canopy. Arches, bricks and rectangular openings to walls. Wall inscriptions to Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord Le Despencer, and friends. Church of Saint Lawrence and the Mausolemn form a group (B1).
Background research and detailed earthwork survey carried out by English Heritage between April 2000 and June 2001. The Mausoleum was built for Sir Francis Dashwood between 1764 and 1765, with a legacy of £500 left to Sir Francis by his uncle and guardian, George Bubb Doddington, Baron of Melcombe Regis, with instruction 'to build an arch temple, column or additional room at whichever of His Lordship's seats was likely to remain the longest.' It was built by John Bastard the Younger of Blandford probably to a design by Revett. The Mausoleum was completed in 1765 at a cost of £495 5s.3d and dedicated to the memory of its benefactor.
A vast, roofless, hexagonal structure, the Mausoleum has maximum dimensions of 41m (on a north-north-east alignment) by 30m (on the west-north-west axis). The walls, of grey flint rubble ashlar, are punctuated by open Roman arches three to a side each of which is separated from the next by massive attached stucco Roman columns (repetitions of the single archway at the Temple of Apollo [CASS 0446503008]). The panelled parapet is surmounted by stone urns grouped in threes at each apex of the hexagon. The interior walls have memorial inscriptions and niches for the funeral urns of the Dashwood family and friends. Extensive restoration work was carried out by the West Wycombe Estate in 1956 with the addition of drainage and flood-lighting. A series of small scarps, 0.4m in height, around the base of the Mausoleum to the south and east are associated with these later works.
The Mausoleum was approached via a tree-lined avenue which led up the hillside to the south-east and is flanked on the south-west by a substantial scarp up to 1.2m in height. The avenue is depicted on Richardson's 1767 map, and trees still stand on the alignment of the original avenue, although these, presumably, are the result of more recent re-planting, perhaps as part of King George's Jubilee celebrations of 1935. At the top of the avenue a pair of symmetrical scarps 0.3m high to either side of the main entrance, probably the remains of a formal staired approach to the building. A semi-circular platform 50m wide and 2.2m high seems to have been constructed for the building of the mausoeum; in the 1970s material dredged from West Wycombe lake was dumped here to consolidate the platform (B2-4).