FEATURE
Tresham’s Garden Lodge Tom Quinn visits a remarkable monument to the Catholic Faith
T
he Triangular Lodge at Rushton in Northamptonshire is well known. This extraordinary structure was built in the 1590s by Sir Thomas Tresham as a physical symbol of his Catholic Faith, a faith at that time under attack. Despite being knighted by Elizabeth I in 1575, Tresham, like many Catholics at the time, was continually fined for his recusancy and imprisoned for many years. But the Triangular Lodge is a statement to the world that not for anything would he give up his Faith. Wherever you look the number three is locked into the design of the Triangular Lodge – as well as being three sided (hence triangular) the building has trefoil windows and three floors; each wall is 33ft long and surmounted by three gargoyles; and there is a delightful pun that links the number three to family intimacy: the inscription above the door reads, ‘Tres testimonium dant’ meaning ‘the number three bears witness’, a quotation from the Gospel of St John, but also a reference that only the family would have understood – Sir Thomas Tresham was always referred to as, ‘My Good Tres’ in letters written by his wife. The lodge is covered in many other carvings – a pelican (symbol of Christ and the Eucharist), a chalice, the monogram IHS, the dates of the Creation and the calling of Abraham, and much more. But if Tresham’s Triangular Lodge is well known, the same is not quite so true of another building he commissioned as a tangible reminder of his faith: this is Lyveden New Bield. The Triangular Lodge was really a sort of magnificent folly, never intended as a place where someone might live; Lyveden, by contrast, was designed as a summer house, a private Catholic retreat away from the prying eyes of the accusatory and the unsympathetic. Built a little later than the Triangular Lodge and some eleven miles from Rushton, Lyveden was unfinished at Tresham’s death in 1605, and it has
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Powerful figures
Air time: Lyveden is built in the shape of a Greek cross
remained largely untouched since that date, a ghostly reminder of religious faith at one of the darkest times for Catholics in England. Lyveden seems almost as remote today as it was in the early seventeenth century. A tiny road runs for what seems like miles across wide fields from the main A6116 north of Thrapston, until we reach Lyveden Old Bield, the manor house where the Treshams lived and entertained when they were away from the family seat at Rushton Hall. A good walk beyond Old Bield we reach New Bield, although, confusingly, New Bield is actually older than Old Bield!
Sir Thomas Tresham was born in 1543 into a wealthy landowning family and brought up in the Catholic Throckmorton household, where he was the ward of Sir Robert Throckmorton. In 1566 Sir Thomas married Muriel Throckmorton. As a young man he was widely seen as devout, gifted and sure of a great future. He became an avid book collector and corresponded regularly with some of the most powerful figures in the land: with William Cecil, Elizabeth I’s secretary of state, for example, and with Lord Chancellor Christopher Hatton. Until the 1580s Elizabeth stuck largely to her policy of not ‘opening a window into men’s souls’. But as the perceived threat from Spain increased, along with the crisis over Mary Queen of Scots, Catholics were increasingly ostracised and persecuted. The idea that as a Catholic he was automatically to be considered disloyal was utterly rejected by Sir Thomas, but his declaration that a man must believe according to his conscience brought him under increasing suspicion. The situation was made more difficult because his association with the Jesuit St Edmund Campion was well known. Any chance that Sir Thomas’s life as a public figure might have flourished were dashed: between 1581, when he gave shelter to Campion, and his death in September 1605 he paid fines totalling
Decorated friezes
AUTUMN 2020
