Colonnade Progress...

The construction of the colonnades commenced two weeks ago, and should be finished in a month or so. I will be able to see the walkway poured and the block work up when I go back next week...

Below: The start of the Carriage House foundations

Below: The colonnade foundations being dug out, looking towards carriage house:

Looking towards the dining room:

Below: Looking down on  the carriage house foundations from above. They should be pouring the concrete for them this week. The green barn which was to be demolished this month for the second half of the vineyard is going to stay now until October, as it has become the stonemason and plasterers' workshop.

Above: The trench dug out for the chapel colonnade foundation.

Below: Colonnade block-work began on the chapel side first.

Above: Colonnade on Chapel side looking from terrace outside the drawing room.

Below: Looking back from the Nymphaeum towards the drawing room and the northern side of the colonnade.

Below: Looking back on Colonnade from site of Chapel

Way back when I wrote my first post on colonnades, I took my cue from the Palladian houses of England, such as Stowe house in Buckinghamshire. But the first time I saw small colonnade wings, and the original inspiration for these little walls to no-where, came from a visit to Versailles and Le Petit Trianon...

But then I went on to find Kelmarsh Hall, designed by an antiquarian and home for over a decade to the famed interior designer Nancy Lancaster...

and  Ditchley Park, once home to Winston Churchill, which I came across in a magazine article about a butling school being run out of the house several years back...

As you can see from the three photos above, by reversing the curve of the colonnade from that of the Petit Trianon, one can form a structurally enclosed courtyard. This gave rise to my design for our courtyard...

Below: The colonnade arms stretching out to enfold the courtyard and to welcome guests...

The difference between our colonnades and those of the Petit Trianon, Kelmarsh and Ditchley is that they were actual covered rooms like these below:

We designed ours to be the same, but recently revised the idea of having them fully enclosed and roofed as we realised that they would have to be quite tall to allow for them to join the manor house wall above the french doors of the dining room and drawing room on either side, so we decided to remove the roof and uncouple the 2 walls of the colonnade.

We have kept the south facade of the colonnade exactly the same - with doors and windows the same as at Kelmarsh...

But the outer wall of the colonnade is now a self supporting garden colonnade up which wisteria will wend...

We will still keep the urns on top of the courtyard facade....

The colonnade should be finished by the end of June, so I should have a photo update then.