Weir At North End Of The Canal, With Piers, Fishing Pavilions And Balustrade

A weir or cascade, together with associated piers, fishing pavilions, gate piers and balustrade, dating from 1716 and completed in 1728. The design involved John Simpson, stone cutter for John Aislabie, and Robert Doe. The structure is constructed from gritstone and ashlar, with Westmorland slate roofs to the pavilions.

The north face features a cascade of four steps, flanked by piers with bands of frosted rustication and ball finials. Each flanking revetment wall has a stone mask and water spout, with a stone basin projecting beneath the mask to the right. The walls terminate in fishing pavilions built over double-arched sluices projecting as bastions into the lake. These pavilions have Venetian windows, a moulded eaves cornice, pyramidal roofs, ball finials and weather vanes. To the east are three piers (gates restored), approximately 2 metres high, with moulded bases, deep cornices and flat caps. The revetment wall to the west of the west fishing pavilion, by Robert Doe, features two bull-nose mouldings and is surmounted by a balustrade with vase-shaped balusters and square piers supporting a moulded coping with ball finials.

The south elevation incorporates a 6-panel door in an architrave with a double keystone in each fishing pavilion. The return sides of the pavilions contain sash windows with glazing bars within eared architraves and cornices. The west pavilion was destroyed by fire around 1960; the east pavilion retains a projecting sill below the Venetian window, a dado and moulded skirting.

The weir and flanking bastions were among the first garden structures built. The Canal, begun in 1716, was designed with this northern termination as a major feature, initiated before John Aislabie’s retirement from politics following the South Sea Bubble of 1720. A parapeted wall to the west of the pavilion replaced an earlier earth embankment. Originally, the ball finials alternated with decorated and handled lead urns, two of which are now in storage. The bull-nose moulding is comparable to that found on the Octagon Tower, which received Gothic detailing in 1738. The structure was undergoing restoration at the time of resurvey.