Everything about The Triangular Lodge totally explained
The
Triangular Lodge is a
folly, designed and constructed between
1593 and
1597 by Sir
Thomas Tresham near
Rushton, Northamptonshire,
England. It is now in the care of
English Heritage. The stone used for the construction was alternating bands of dark and light
limestone.
Tresham was a
Roman Catholic and was imprisoned for a total of fifteen years in the late 16th century for refusing to become a
Protestant. On his release in
1593, he designed the Lodge as a protestation of his faith. His belief in the
Holy Trinity is represented everywhere in the Lodge by the number three: it has three walls 33
feet long, each with three triangular windows and surmounted by three
gargoyles. The building has three floors, upon a basement, and a triangular chimney. A
Latin text 33 letters long runs around the building on each facade. These quotations are:-
- Aperiatur terra & germinet salvatorem.
- Quis seperabit nos a charitate Christi.
- Consideravi opera tua domine at expavi.
The windows on each floor are of a different equally ornate design. The largest are those on the first floor, in the form of a
trefoil, which was the emblem of the Tresham family. The basement windows are small trefoils with a triangular pane at their centre. The slightly raised ground floor has an entrance in the south-east facade, above the door "5555" (
Pevsner speculates this may once have been "3333"). The windows on this floor are of a
lozenge design. The principal room on each floor is a
hexagon, thus leaving the three corner spaces triangular, one of these spaces contains a spiral staircase, the remaining two are small rooms.
The building is crowned, above the quotations on each facade by three steep
gables each surmounted by a three-sided
obelisk at the
apex. Among the emblems carved on the gables is the, highly symbolic, seven-branched
candelabrum representing the
seven eyes of God. A
pelican emblem, a symbol of
Christ and the
Eucharist, is also carved. The triangular chimney is adorned with the holy
monogram "
IHS", a
lamb and cross, and a
chalice.
While the lodge is indisputably a testament to the faith of Tresham, it's also an example of the Elizabethan love of
allegory. Carved in the gables are the unexplained numbers "3509" and "3898". Among the dates carved on the building are
1580, thought to be the date of Tresham's conversion, but also the (future at the time of their carving) dates
1626 and
1641 - to what do they refer? The broken inscriptions inscribed on each gable combine to read
"Respicite non mihi laboravi".
The Lodge was the only building Tresham designed which he saw completed before his death in
1605.
Nikolaus Pevsner in his famed
Buildings of Northamptonshire states: "as a testament of faith this building must be viewed with respect". He also considered the lodge so architecturally important that he chose its photograph for the front cover of the first edition of his book.
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