Freeman Mausoleum

The mausoleum consists of a large octagonal base, containing the burial chamber, surmounted by a rusticated drum with a shallow dome. The design was probably based on that of ‘an ancient tomb on the Via Appia near Albano’ in Giovanni Battista Montano’s Scielta di varii tempietti antichi (Rome, 1624) of which Freeman owned a copy. A sketch of the tomb of Cecilia Metella made by his son Sambroke may also have been influential. It is important as an early example of a mausoleum inspired by the funerary architecture of the Ancient World.

Architect

John Freeman

Style

--

Listing

Grade II* (England and Wales)

Year built

1750

History

John Freeman (c.1689-1752) inherited Fawley Court from his uncle, William Freeman, in 1707. The younger man was an enthusiastic amateur architect, antiquarian and designer of romantic landscapes. Sometime before 1732 he built a Gothick folly in the grounds at Fawley and used it for the display of ancient Greek and Roman statuary. In 1878 he bought the furniture which had belonged to the recently demolished chapel at Canons in Middlesex and installed it in the church at Fawley, where he was patron of the living. Then in 1750 he designed and built the mausoleum, as a tribute to his uncle as well as a family mausoleum.

Condition

Conserved in 1997-8 with the help of a grant from English Heritage the mausoluem contains to be well maintained and is in good condition (2014).

Sources

BoE: Bucks (1994), 326;

H Colvin, Architecture and the After-Life (1991), 335, figs 76, 311;

G Tyack, ‘The Freemans of Fawley and their Buildings’, Records of Bucks, (1982), 24, 130-43;

G Tyack, ‘The Folly and the Mausoleum’, Country Life, 20 April, 1989, 214-217.

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