It appears that at least three of these statues were made by Messrs Coade.
One is at Ham House, another is at Terrace Garden Richmond and a third at Moor Park, Herts.
Another was at Llewenny Hall, Denbighs, before 1789.
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The Richmond River God / Father Thames.
Coade's Artificial Stone.
Article December 1993 from Context -
After years of neglect, the River God by John Bacon has been completely restoredand resited in a prominent position in Terrace Gardens, Richmond. The restoration of this important Coade stonefigure was carried out by conservators Taylor Pearce, the £15,000 project being funded by an appeal initiated by the Richmond Society.
The one ton statue, which took pride of place in Mrs Coade's 1784 catalogue, was originally purchased for 100 guineas by the Duke of Montague for the pleasure gardens he was then laying out. The subject of an etching by Blake, only three other versions of Bacons River God survive according to Peter Locke, architect and advisor to the Richmond Society. "Its one of thefinest pieces made by the Coade manufactoryand its importance is increased by its rarity." It is also the largest Coade work every cast in a single piece. Of the three figures, one, in Coade, stands in the forecourt of Ham House; another, a bronze, is in the courtyard of Somerset House; and the last, in natural stone, is located at Powerscourt in Ireland.
The Somerset House bronze was used by Taylor Pearce as the pattern from which to reproduce a missing left leg, rightfoot and hand.
One interesting discovery was that the leg circumference of the bronzefigure was 2 mm larger than the Coade one, due to shrinkage of the clay in the Coade preparation of Bacons casting process. To account for this a delicate adjustment of the master casts had to be made from the bronze and, to give the cast items an authentic Coade appearance in keeping with the rest of the piece, a cement-based mixture of various sands was used.
The figure was first steam cleaned to remove over 200 years of disfiguring carbon deposits but not the pleasing patina of age.
Restoration work involved the removal of rusting iron cramps and their replacement with stainless steel, as well as the removal of some earlier and unsympathetic in-situ restoration work. The original plinth of the statue was restored and a new foundation for it was prepared at its relocated site in Terrace Gardens.
Instead of being tucked away just off a pathway in the gardens - a position it had occupied since 1902 - the statue now commands a central position on a hillock in from of an imposing hedgerow in the park.
Relocating it presented a considerable logistical problem far Taylor Pearce and fine art handling specialist Momart, who was responsiblefar transporting the statue in specially designed air suspension trucks. The problem of getting a one ton statue onto a base at the top of a hillock which is surrounded by, and consistsof soft soil is considerable. The problem was resolved by taking the statue off the truck outside the park and transporting it on a trolley over scaffold boards laid like tram lines to the one spot of level ground around the area - which was behind the hedge at the top of the hillock. From there it was winched over the hedge onto its plinth. A time capsule was enclosed in the base incorporating an account of the project and the names of the donors.
In view of its importance the statue has also been ringed by a security system
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Terrace Gardens, Richmond is now a public park created through the merger of the grounds of three houses, Buccleuch House (demolished 1936/38), Landsdowne House (demolished 1869) and Cardigan House (demolished 1970).
The grounds of Buccleuch House and Landsdowne House were initially consolidated by the Duke of Buccleuch in the 1860s and became a public park in 1887.
The grounds of neighbouring Cardigan
House were added in the 1920s. None of these houses is still standing but the
C19 layout of their gardens is still very much in evidence.
Sizes - H 157 x W 236 x D (?) cm; Plinth: H 87 x W 212 x D 89 cm.
The land on Richmond Hill was originally clay pits and brick works.
During the period 1765-1771 parcels of land in this area of Richmond Hill were acquired for George Brudenell, the Earl of Cardigan and Duke of Montagu.
The land purchased consisted of a parcel on the riverside west of the Lower
Road (now Buccleuch Gardens) and included the Tile Kilns / brickworks and the wharf, as well
as adjacent plots to the east of Lower Road.
The coat of arms on the figures are those of the city of London. This figure was originally purchased by George Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan, the Duke of Montague in 1781 for his house on the site of the present day Buccleugh Gardens and was placed in the Pleasure Gardens nearby.
Horace Walpole said of a visit in 1790 that '[the garden] is
perfectly screened from human eyes, tho' in the bosom of so populous a village:
and you climb til at last, treading the houses under feet, you recover the
Thames and all the world at a little distance. I am amazed that it is not more
talked of'. In 1796 the house and gardens were described by Daniel Lysons: 'At
the foot of the hill the Duke of Buccleuch has a villa ... It is situated on
the banks of the Thames. From the lawn there is a subterraneous communication
with the gardens and shrubberies on the opposite site of the road, which
extends almost to the summit of the hill. They are laid out with taste and have
local advantages to most places of the kind in the kingdom'.
The house was demolished in 1936 - 38.
In 1887 the Vestry acquired the existing site and
opened what is now Terrace Gardens to the public. The original position of the
work is unknown, but it was discovered in the early 1990s buried in a nearby
patch of undergrowth in a neglected state. In 1993 it was restored and reset as
part of voluntary community project by the Richmond Society on behalf on the
London Borough of Richmond on Thames with the help of grants and donations from
numerous organisations and individuals.
For Adam's unexecuted designs see -
https://collections.soane.org/SCHEME1214
The image below from
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The Moor Park Coade Stone River God.
The recently rediscovered Moor Park River God lies semi-hidden at Moor Park at Rickmansworth. Although headless and armless it is recognisably the same as the Ham House river god, even to the Code signature nestling inside.
It appears to have been moved to its present position in a 19th century shrubbery during a remodeling of the gardens by Lord Ebury and was still intact when the mansion was sold to Lord Leverhulme in 1919 to convert to a country-club come golf course.
Lady Susan Grosvenor returned to her childhood haunts and described ‘Neptune’ as being ‘brown with age,…, head engulfed in a Portuguese laurel’ but with water still trickling from the pitcher in his hand (though it looks more like tucked under his arm).
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inside the bottle kiln at theCoade Manufactory
European Magazine.
"Publish'd by J. Sewell, Cornhill
1786".
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1978-U-1958
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The Coade Manufactory - in the Yard.
Two men mixing something by the Pump.
George Shepherd (c. 1782 - c. 1830).
Watercolour.
They suggest c. 1800.
https://www.watercolourworld.org/collections/89f0de8d-1ed4-37b1-bbf8-6516a3a1e9bc/?s%3DCoade&pos=4
Image courtesy London Picture Archive.
https://londonpicturearchive.org.uk/view-item?i=17371
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Coade at Lleweni, Denbeigh.
The British Architect 30 April 1875.
Mark Henry Blanchard was born at Portsea, Hampshire and
christened on 30 August 1817. He was apprenticed at the Coade Factory in
Lambeth in the firm's declining years, probably when it was managed by Thomas
John Croggon between c.1835-37, or after the business had been let to Thomas
Routledge and John Danforth Greenwood 1837 and lasted until 1840.
Blanchard commenced business in Blackfriars Road, Lambeth
shortly after 1840 (probably working initially in plaster) and then appears to
have acquired some of the Coade Factory's moulds when Routledge and Greenwood
consigned them at auction in 1843.
Note the continued use of a varient of the Coade engraving
in Blanchards promotional material (below) and the mention of John Bacon as
designer.
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The Bottle Kiln.
https://www.hamishjacksonpottery.com/blog/2018/5/30/winchcombe-pottery-kiln-restoration-project
https://www.thepotteries.org/bottle_kiln/bottle_kiln_two.htm
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Commerce, or the Triumph of the Thames (painting 4 of 6 in
the series 'The Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture')
James Barry (1741–1806)
Royal Society of Arts.
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/commerce-or-the-triumph-of-the-thames-218503
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