In the latest in our A-Z series, volunteer archivist Cluny Wells serenades the Sphinxes of Chiswick House & Gardens Trust.

Chiswick House and Grounds contain eight sphinxes in total, four on two sets of gateposts, three on the Western lawn and the last one now inside the House. A print by Rigaud, dated 1733, shows the entrance gates for the forecourt topped by two stone sphinxes, sculpted by Guelfi.

The sphinxes were modelled on the ancient Egyptian one which now resides in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. These sphinxes have the head of a woman and the body of a lion and are wingless and benign creatures. They have Nemes-type headdresses and double crowns – meant to signify both the Upper and Lower kingdoms of Egypt. The decoration is of painted triangles and the wearing of necklaces, and a saddlecloth was added to each of them.

By 1742, Burlington had these Sphinxes moved onto pedestals and positioned on the North lawn near to the Exedra, and he commissioned a pair of lead ones for the forecourt gates from John Cheere. Seven years later Cheere produced a third lead Sphinx for the lawn to go next to the stone pair.

After the 6th Duke of Devonshire had Duke’s Avenue extended, he moved the lead pair from the forecourt gates to the newly purchased gates (from Heathfield House) at the end of his new Avenue in 1837. The pair of lead sphinxes lived there for only sixty years and then were taken, with their gates and piers, to Devonshire House, in Piccadilly, by the 8th Duke of Devonshire. Devonshire House was demolished in 1921 and its gates and Sphinxes were bought for the Nation and erected at the Piccadilly entrance to Green Park, where they still live.

It was all change back in Chiswick when the road for the new A4 extension had to be widened – the entrance into the Grounds through Duke’s Avenue had to move back 74 feet as reported in the Minutes of the Parks and Open Spaces Committee of 1956. The new entrance gates were to be 11 feet high, with flanking pedestrian gates of four feet in height. The Arms of the County Council and Brentford & Chiswick Council were to be placed on the wrought iron gates, and the total expenditure of the work, with no mention of replacement sphinxes, was to be around £10,000 (minutes of 1961). At some time during the next 20 or 30 years it seems that a new pair of stone sphinxes was procured for above the Duke’s Avenue gates, and a single one for the lawn in 1994 to replace the lead one now in the Villa for protection.

Sphinxes returned to the forecourt gates when a new lead pair were cast from the one inside the Villa in 2006.

So ended the story of the nomadic sphinxes of Chiswick. Well not quite… the Archive received an enquiry in 2015 relating to the position of a particular Sphinx in the grounds on a day in 1957. The enquirer was a local artist, Fay Ballard, who was trying to piece together the story of her early life with her parents, specifically her father J.G. Ballard, the author of such books as ‘Empire of the Sun’. She had a photo of each parent holding her as a baby in 1957 posing in front of a Chiswick Sphinx on a plinth, and she was puzzled as to its whereabouts in the grounds – and so were we Archive volunteers.

After several discussions it was decided that this solitary Sphinx on its plinth, in Fay’s photo was on the lawn in front of the main A4 gate, because of the houses which could only be those on the A316, opposite the park entrance, and they provided the backdrop to the scene. Fay seemed satisfied with the outcome of our deliberations, and carried on to finish her piece.

Richard Hewlings states that “Sphinxes were evidently a particular object of Burlington’s interest.” – perhaps because Burlington already had five in the grounds, and Hewlings went on to say that the number of sphinxes, both as statues and drawings outnumbered all the other figure types he owned apart from the herms/terms by that date of 1749.

The Sphinx as a statue is very ancient icon – the Great Sphinx in Giza is around 4,500 years old, and we know that Burlington was drawn to the ancient, as his reverence for Classical architecture and his statues in the Exedra show. He was also drawn to other examples of Egyptian iconography, such as obelisks and the Egyptian door frames on the Deer House, and the lining up of the two obelisks at the front and back of the Ionic Temple. Another example of links to Ancient Egypt are that the sphinxes at the rear of the Villa were oriented to face east to face the rays of the rising sun. Most importantly, was the belief that sphinxes would protect temples, pyramids and one’s home, and probably because of this belief Burlington placed his sphinxes at the front and back of his home in what could be seen as a protective manner. The Great Sphinx was seen as the protector of the Great Pyramid of Giza or Khafre, as it stands right in front of it.

Finally the meaning of the word Sphinx, as suggested by the writer and historian Susan Wise Bauer, is that it was “a Greek corruption of the Egyptian name ‘shesepankh’ which means ‘living image’. This refers to the statue of the Sphinx being carved out of ‘living rock’, part of the stony body of the Earth, shaped but not cut away from its original source, rather than to the animal itself.”

Sources used:
Books

• Chiswick House and Gardens. Gillian Clegg
• Chiswick House Gardens. David Jacques
• Lord Burlington, Architecture, Art and Life. Edited by Toby Barnard & Jane Clark
• The Story of Egypt. Joann Fletcher
• Ancient Egypt. Donald P. Ryan

Article

• History of the Gates to Chiswick House. Gillian Clegg