Lot 117: CHARLES GORE 1729-1807

COLE GREEN, HERTFORDSHIRE

COLE GREEN, HERTFORDSHIRE

measurements note
18 by 36 cm., 7 by 14 in.

inscribed u.r.: Lo^rd Coopers House Cole Green/Herts

pen and grey ink and watercolour over pencil on laid paper, watermarked

PROVENANCE

Sir Bruce Ingram (L.1405a);
Purchased from Leggatt Brothers, London, 1965

NOTE

Gore's watercolour depicts the house adjoining the hamlet of Cole Green in Hertfordshire built by the second Earl Cowper soon after he bought the estate in 1720. It was a handsome building, but Humphrey Repton felt that 'the chief Beauty of the Estate consists in the Valley, or rather the two hanging banks which form the Valley.' He also pointed out that 'the present mansion at Cole Green stands so far back from this valley as to make the views from it flat and uninteresting.' (see Christopher Hussey, 'Panshanger, Hertfordshire I', Country Life, January 11th 1936, p.42).

In 1799 Humphrey Repton advised the fifth Earl Cowper on the design and siting of a new house. Panshanger was constructed on the other side of the river Mimram from the original house in the castellated Gothic style. In 1919 a large part of the estate was sold to Ebenezer Howard and became the first part of Welwyn Garden City