Beckford himself was a fascinating figure who still attracts much interest and scholarship. His immense wealth brought him great privilege and power over the lives of others, a power that he abused. He was a brilliant and precocious only child, born to immense, if nouveau, wealth deriving from his family's exploitation of enslaved labour on sugar plantations in Jamaica.
Perhaps overprotected by his mother after his father’s early death, he was educated mostly at home and was sent abroad to finish his education in Geneva. This was the first of many European tours that were to encourage his eclectic cultural tastes and make him disinclined to take up the role in English politics which his mother had planned for him.
Beckford was a lively and colourful character, fond of music, the arts and, somewhat vicariously, religion and its trappings. Attractive to both sexes, it was clear early on that his preferences lay with his own. In 1779, aged 19, he developed an abusive attachment with 11-year-old William Courtenay, a relationship which developed over the next five years. In 1783, he married Lady Margaret Gordon, but this did not prevent the so-called Powderham Castle Scandal the following year, when his relationship with Courtenay was discovered. Sex between men was a capital offence at the time; Beckford fled from England into exile with his wife. The marriage was a happy one despite all, and they had two daughters before Margaret died in 1786. Beckford was ostracised by English society for the Courtenay matter for a decade or more, from which he never really recovered. He was now resolutely fixed upon relationships with his own sex and this reinforced his increasing tendency towards reclusion. Beckford knew that his own liberal attitudes and refined tastes were not those of his social peers, or ‘the Worldlings’ as he called them. A prolific writer, he published a novel, Vathek, and various travel and other works during his lifetime.
He is best known as the builder of Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire between 1796 and 1813, an extravagant Gothic fantasy based on mediaeval monastic buildings. Its central tower was close to three hundred feet high. It was designed by James Wyatt and was a hugely important building in its day. However, Beckford found he did not enjoy living in it and was heavily in debt. He sold it in 1822 to an aged gunpowder millionaire and moved to Bath. The central tower at the Abbey collapsed in 1825; only a fragment remains today.
The Tower that Beckford built in Bath is an important example of Picturesque architecture, a movement characterised by its eclectic combination of styles. The Tower and its accommodation block combine Greek Revival architecture and what became known as the Italian Villa Style. The blocking of the accommodation block mimics Tuscan vernacular architecture, from which a watchtower often sprang. Beckford’s and Goodridge’s innovation was in including classical Greek references to that tower. In its liveliness of style and integration to its natural surroundings, the Tower was one of the first examples of the Picturesque style in post-Georgian Bath.
Certainly there are similarities between the soaring shaft and almost top heavy belvedere of Beckford’s Tower and a Tuscan campanile. The square shaft of the tower rises as some 130 feet of plain masonry, relieved only by small windows to the spiral staircase it encloses. The tower then bursts out into an exuberant expression of Greek references, offering an unrivalled view of the city below.
For a short history of Beckford's Tower please click here.
To read the full history album for Beckford's Tower please click here.