The Belvedere

TR 24 NE SHEPHERDSWELL & COLDRED WALDERSHARE PARK 2/113 The Belvedere 22.8.62 I Belvedere. 1725-7 by Lord Burlington for Sir Henry Furnese. Plum coloured brick with Portland stone dressings. Externally rectangular in plan (a double cube on its smaller area) internally arranged on circular plan. Three storeys on stone plinth with rusticated quoins to ground floor only, with double projecting plat band, and sill-course over. Main entrance on north front, with large rust- icated semi-circular doorway. At first floor level a large Venetian window with Gibbs surround and triple keystones to all three openings, the main window originally balustraded. Single lugged square mezzanine window. The south front is a copy without the basement doorway. Identical east and west fronts with, in the basement, central semi-circular windows (or doors?) with Gibbs surround with side windows with large keystones and moulded surrounds. First floor with flanking windows with pulvinated frieze and cornice, and central semi-circular Ionic windows, with damaged balustrading below. Three square lugged mezzanine windows, one on east fgace with moulded stone surround missing. Pulvinated cornice and balustrade on top. Interior: ground floor with circular saucer domed ceiling, intact apart from a small, roughly 2 feet square hole. Fireplace on southern wall. Within the angles of the square enclosing this circular space were 3 chambers, and a spiral stair, still largely surviving in the south-east corner. The upper storeys, originally circular, and intended as a music room, are now ruinous. The whole, costing £1703 7s 4d to build, is one of Burlington's few surviving attested buildings. (See B.O.E. Kent II, 1983, 488).

Listing NGR: TR2794548248