The Fonthill Abbey was a house built at a fantastic scale.
The front doors were 30 feet high and windows were taller still at 50 feet.
The curtains that hung from the four arches in the central room were 80 feet long.
His doting mother made sure the young Beckford enjoyed every advantage wealth could provide.
She arranged for Wolfgang Mozart, then only eight years old, to give him piano lessons.
Sir William Chambers, the kings architect, taught him to draw.
Lord Byron called him Englands wealthiest son.
The scandal ruined Beckfords reputation, and he fled the country.
James Wyatt was an architect of considerable repute.
James Wyatt
James Wyatt, however, was a mess of a human being.
He was disorganized, forgetful and alcoholic.
One year he missed fifty straight weekly meetings at the Office of Works as the Surveyor General.
William Beckford would learn that the hard way.
Construction of the Fonthill abbey began in earnest in 1796 on Beckford’s estate of Fonthill Gifford.
Beckford hired 500 laborers to work day and night.
He also commandeered all the local wagons for transportation of building materials.
To compensate, Beckford delivered free coal and blankets to the poor in cold weather.
The hall of Fonthill Abbey.
Photo:Wikimedia Commons
On Beckfords request, Wyatt designed the mansion in the scale of superlatives.
At the center stood an octagonal tower 280 feet tall.
The tower was so tall that it collapsed during construction, twice.
Once he told his workers to hurry so that food could be prepared in the new kitchen.
The kitchen collapsed as soon as the meal was over.
Despite its grandness, the interior was surprisingly dark and gloomy.
Most of the bedrooms were as bare as monastic cells, and thirteen of them had no windows.
Beckfords own bedchamber contained a single narrow bed.
Beckford lived alone in this colossal mansion, and he dined alone in a 50-feet-long table.
Yet, his kitchens prepared food for 12 every day.
The surplus food was sent away afterwards.
It was twelve feet high, twelve miles long, and surmounted by iron spikes.
Three years later, in 1825, the Abbeys tower collapsed for one final time.
The house was never repaired.
Unlike Fonthill Abbey, this tower, called Lansdown Tower (or Beckfords Tower), still stands.
Beckford’s Tower in Bath.
Photo:Michael Day/Flickr
The ruins of Fonthill Abbey today.
