Our response to receiving John Freeman’s drawing for an arch at Fawley Court lead to an intriguing insight into this ‘Alternative History’ and the creation of a 18th Century Mausoleum. His sketch shows a study for an arch that could have been part of the Mausoleum or Gothic Folly he built in the grounds.

Freeman was an amateur architect and a ‘dabbler’. Like many at this time, he was someone that would take ideas and re-create buildings or follies on their estates and country houses. The garden buildings and the mausoleum at Fawley Court show influences from Roman ruins, such as the tomb of Cecilia Metella on the Appian Way. Freeman himself never saw them, but was moved by his son’s drawings, who came back from his Grand Tour in 1746. Adapting what he saw in his sketchbook, John Freeman drew an arch rusticated in flint, adding a primitive decoration to the façade.

Our response to this drawing is an adaptation itself. It takes the elements of a ‘pediment’
and two arches that form a dome for a new mausoleum that may have been conceived at Fawley Court. A representation that conveys the ‘duality’ of an idea derived from Freeman’s own approach.