J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

This sketch records the view from the road to Wennington looking south-west down the valley of the River Wenning to Hornby Castle, from just above the Bridge Inn, Tatham, with Tatham Bridge in the left middle distance and Tatham Church to the right. It is continued to the right on folio 42 recto opposite (D11512), the double-spread forming the basis of a studio watercolour Hornby Castle from Tatham Church (Victoria and Albert Museum, London)1 engraved for Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s History of Richmondshire, part of the projected seven-volume General History of the County of York (see Introduction to the sketchbook), and published in 1822.

Hornby Castle dates back at least to the thirteenth century when it was occupied by the Neville family, but the only surviving medieval work is the fourteenth-century base of the keep. The house was extensively enlarged and remodelled in the eighteenth century and again in the nineteenth, and is now a private house. There is a sketch of the castle from nearer Tatham Bridge in the Yorkshire 2 sketchbook (Tate D11135; Turner Bequest CXLV 64a), and others in the same sketchbook from closer viewpoints (Tate D11133, D11134; Turner Bequest CXLV 63a, 64). The Yorkshire 5 sketchbook (Tate D11524; Turner Bequest CXLVIII 4a) has a detailed study of the view from the terrace of Hornby Castle, looking in the direction of the viewpoint of the present sketch. Turner’s viewpoints in the village are accessible, as is that of the present sketch (albeit on quite a busy road), but the viewpoint from the terrace is private, except for occasional public openings.

The reading of Turner’s inscription given here is by no means certain. Finberg read the first part as ‘Lime Kiln on the...’.