'The Royal Pavilion, Brighton, reflects fashionable tastes

in architecture, design, attitudes and way of life?'

Do you agree with this hypothesis?

The Royal Pavilion was a very fashionable building in it's day. The architecture was quite fashionable as it used the idillic style which was fashionable and the farmhouse idea was fashionable, however the Indian style the Royal Pavilion used was unfashionable. On the outside of the Pavilion the Prince also used the neo-classical style which was fashionable back then. Trompe l'oeil was a fashionable interior design which the Prince used. However the Prince did use chinoiserie which was unpopular then but was popular 50-60 years before the Prince used it. The Prince then used wall-to-wall carpets which was unfashionable but caught on. The Royal Pavilion was also fashionable because it had banquets, balls and many other social events. Also in the Pavilion it is clear to see the attitude from the rich towarde the poor, the rich thought very little of the poor and didn't like being around them. The Royal Pavilion does reflect the way of life in Brighton as all the rooms reflect how the people in Brighton liked to live.

The farmhouse was a very fashionable place to live in 1786. It was so fashionable because it was linked with the Romantic Movement, the Romantic Movement was where the rich "pretended" to be like the poor and stayed in places where they could escape the city life and all the frustrations of it. A French philosopher, Rousseau, said that people should get back to their natural state and live simply. The idea was thought to be the simple life of the poor, like shepherds or peasants. The farmhouse was also so fashionable because the King and Queen of France, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who were leaders of a very fashionable society in France. They built a pretty cottage in the grounds of their palace at Versailles, French styles were very fashionable as well. They could of gone to exotic places like India or China. Romantic writers turned to the supernatural, as in the horror story by Mary Shelley "Frankenstein", written in 1818. Many of the typically Romantic characteristics appear in the poetry of the "Lake Poets", William Wordsworth got inspired by the beauty of the Lake District for his poems. He believed that he could learn more by talking to country people and then reading books.Samual Coleridge was also a poet, he used imagination to concentrate on the strange and fantastic. He was interested in dreams and hallucinations. His poem "Kubla Khan" is supposed to be remembered for an opium dream. Romantic painters often used bold lighting effects, dramatic painting were also popular. Constable was an English artist famous for his landscape paintings. He tried to infuse quiet English landscapes with profound feeling. His paintings make a dramatic use of light, colour and atmosphere. These three people plus many of the other Romantic writers, poets and artists contributed to making living in the county or being part of the Romantic Movement a very fashionable thing to do. In October 1786, the Prince rented Brighton House-a farmhouse between Castle Inn and Grove House. The house had a clear view of the sea. It was a simple timber-framed double fronted farmhouse, two-up-two-down, with bay windows. The farmhouse enables Prince Regent to enjoy the company of Maria Fitzherbert in a small, simple home.

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The Marine Pavilion was fashionable because it made use of the popular neo-classical style. The neo-classical style was very fashionable to have. It was so popular because the French had used the style and having a French styled building was fashionable. The Duc d'Orleans made a hoterl in Paris, France called 'The Hotel de Salm'. The hotel had a simple structure and bothe sides were symmetrical. The Marine Pavilion also was built simply and also both of the sides were symmetrical, so it was a French based building. The neo-classical style was also so fashionable because the building tryed to reflect the influence of the ancient Greeks and the Romans, it was compleatly different to the Romantic idea in fact it was the opposit of it. When the Prince used the neo-classical style to build the Marine Pavilion the Romantic Movement was still going on but the style was still very fashionable. The neo-classicle style was also very fashionable in the Regency time because he was basing his building on it and so the other rich people disided to base some of their buildings on it. The style was also so popular because the rich and famous people of the Regency period has a great interest in the style's architecture. The Prince was not the first preson to use this style though because a number od buildings were built in London that incorporated neo-classical design. At the time it would be fashionable for the wealthy to go on a 'Grand Tour' of Europe and, as a part of their tour, they would visit Italy ang Greece to experience the history of these countries. Undoubtedly, the Prince would of toured these countries at some point and been impressed by some of the classical architecture. When the Marine Pavilion was constructed, the original farmhouse was copied to form a new wing, and the two wings were joined by a domed rotunda. Ionic columns encircled the eastern side of the rotunda and classicle statudes were placed on its roof. The reason for the rotunda was that it had a high celling and it provided the one grand room in the Pavilion suitable for entertaining guests. To make the Marine Pavilion good Prince Regent had to make sure it was semmetrical which it is, he had to make sure that it all fited in with each other, for example the bays were rounded to match the rotunda. Finally he had to make sure that it was built simply because it isn't ment to be too ornate. The plan of the Marine Pavilion was a classical 'E' shape, woth the main entrance, looking like a temple, on the eastern side.

The Pavilion is Chinoiserie in style;not anything like real Chinese. Instead it is on imaginative interpretation of the Chinese style.The Chinese style was popular but only 50-60 years befor the Prince had used it. In 1801 Henry Holland produced plans for the Pavilion with a Chinese exterior-but these were never used. In 1802-1804 the interior was decorated in Chinese style know as Chinoiserie. In the 18th century Chinoiserie was very fashionable. Almost every fashionable great house had a room in Chinese taste-usually a bedroom or drawing room. The Royal Pavilion is unique (a one off) because in 1790 the Prince had decorated the drawing room of Carlton House and all of the other rooms in the Chinese style! Which was not a very fashionable thing to do because by 1802 the Chinoiserie stye was unfashionable for domestic interiors. However the Prince still chose the style for his rooms in the Pavilion. This could have been because in 1802 he was presented with some rolls of Chinese wallpaper and thst might of inspired him to redecorate his Brighton home. Whatever reason the Prince had for doing that he started a revival in the fashion for Chinese decoration;including wallpaper, paintings, lanterns, bells, bamboo, lacquered cabinets, porcelain, mandarin figures, dragons and serpents. Chinoiserie was also so fashionable because it was linked into the Romantic Movement. It was linked with the Romantic Movement because it was an exotic and faraway place and also writers turned to places like India and China because their thay can escape from the modern world.

The Prince used an Indian style on the front of the Pavilion. This was not a very fashionable thing to do because not a lot of people liked the style, but the interest in Indian architecture grew.There are not many examples of the Indian style on the inside of the Royal Pavilion but the outside has many of them. If you compare the Taj Mahal and the Pavilion you can see many similarities for example, the domes and minarets are indentical to each other. The style also became fashionable because the Pavilion's exterior has many other Indian Moghul style features like scalloped arches, Islamic battlements and graceful stone tracery-suggesting Indian Jali work but they were still popular. The Indian style became popular because the epic Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and the culture-an alternative and possibly comparable to the ancient Greecs. This all added to the Romantic appeal of Indian architecture, and it was linkes into the Romantic Movement. The Stables (today know as the Dome) were designed in the Indian style,William Porden chose this design to be done. The Indian style became fashionable because it was part of the British Empire so it showed that Britain was the most powerful nation, back then. There are also Domes. England also did a lot of trade with India. However the actuall building is not a real Indian building, the Prince had never even been to India before. The style was also popular because it was supposed to mimic Indian palaces, but Queen Victoria hated it so it wasn't used for much until WW1 when a hospital for Indian soldiers was based there. The Indian style became in fashion because the Prince had most probably seen the building of Sezincote in Gloucestershire, the only other great English house to be built in the Indian style. It was also fashionable because it reflected the growing inportance of India within the realm.

The Prince used Trompe L'Oeil in the Pavilion. Trompe L'Oeil ment a trick of the eye. Trompe L'Oeil was a very fashionable thing to have in your home because the French-who were leaders of a fashionable taste used it in most of their homes. The long corridor is full of this, as is the whole Pavilion. The idea of this is that when you are outdoors in the Chinese countryside, entering the courtyard of a Chinese Temple. The purpose of the long corridor is in a big house was exercise in poor weather.(The Brighton 'season' ran from November to January.) It was also so guests could walk up and down the corridor feeling like they are outside but thay are actually inside. The corridor might almost be the equivalent of the modern conservatiory, where you can pretend to be outdoors when you are really indoors. the corridor was also used for the Prince to play card games, bord games etc. There are many examples of Trompe L'Oeil around the Pavilion e.g the double staircase at either end of the long corridor-ment to look like bamboo bridges over a stream in a garden as on the willow pattern plates, the carpets made to look like courtyard tiles and the back of some chairs appear to have leather backs with a tooled design, however the 'leather' is actually cleverly painted wood. It wasn't that the Prince couldn't afford the real thing-in fact it probably cost him more, it was just it was more fashionable to have decrption, illusion etc and the scurtain bords also used Trompe L'Oiel because they looked like thay were mande from real marble but thay were just cleverly painted again. The style was also so fashionable because everone liked the fact that it was all make belielve and that it was so good that you could loose yourself in it. It was also so fashionable because it was a big part of the Romantic Movement because it was where you could escape from the city life and have fun/relax.

The Royal Pavilinon was designed to incorporate the latest techonlogie and equipment to meet the Prince's demands for warmth, comfort and convenience. The Prince used cast iron foe the framework of the Panilion, the minarets have a core of cast iron and the staircases this was a good thing to do because the iron was not only light but strong as well. He also used gas lighting, these were used to shine light through the stained glass wingows of the music and abnqueting rooms. The Prince had to latest toilets (closets) and he used valve closets these were the more expensive one's. The Prince also used wall-to-wall carpets was a fashionable thinf to do because usually all traditionall houses had wooden floors with rugs on them. This was also fashionable because this was a new idea and people liked that.The other type of toilets were the pan toilets, if the Prince used these one's then that would of been very unfashionable because pan toilets had little water in them and were very smelly. As a result of the the Prince decided to use the valve clostes because the closets in the Pavilion had no external ventilation. This was also a fashionable thing to do because at the time all great stately homes like Chatsworth had only 3 toilets to service absolutly everyone. Many guests were intrigued by the fact that the Pvilion had over 30 toilest and all of the new techonlogie he had used. However, the Prince had an under-floor hot-air heating system installed in the Pavilion to supplement the fireplaces and stoves. Since the Pavilion had a lack of adequate ventilation caused the guests to suffer a lot of discomfort. This was the only peice of new techonlogie that the Prince installed that was unpopular with most of his guests. This was popular with people not only in England but it was also popular to people from other countries because thay haven't seen these things before so it intrigued them to the Pavilion.

Brighton was a very fashionable resort, where the rich people came to take the seawater cure. As more people wanted to take the seawater cure Brighton had to build more homes and hotels to accommodate them, thei family and their servants. Many fashionable prople were attracted to Brighton because of there was a theater, a circulating library, a racecourse etc. All of these thing contributed to the thriving social scene. The Prince Regent visited Brighton first in 1783 to take the seawater cure. As a leader of a fashionable society in England it was no suprise that he enjoyed Brighton, visiting it repeatedly in his life. He visited Brighton to escape the staid and stifling court of his father George III and enjoy a less formal lifestyle. He could also spend time with Mrs Fitzherbert (along with a number of othe mistresses.) The Pavilion was not like Windsor Castle or Buckingham Palace. It was not a place for conducting affairs of state or foe receiving foeign princes or diplomats. The whole point of the Pavilion was a place of pleasure and entertainment for the delight and enchantment of the Prince's chosen guests. It is somtime known as a 'pleasure palace'. All of this reflects very well the way of life of a small but very influential groupe of people, the 'leisured classes'. As Brightons life style was thriving with pleasures it is not hard to see why the Pvilion was built there. Also the building's location and what went on inside tells us a lot about the way of life at the time. By 1800 Brighton had become the most frequented and without exception one of the most fashionable towns in the Kingdom. From the descriptions on the rooms in the Pavilion it is clear to see that the rooms were meant for wealthy people only and the servants were not allowed in there because they had their own rooms which had much less effort put into them because they are just plain and had not decoration. This shows us that the rich people didn't care about the servants and didn't treat the with any respect. As the wealthy people were as rich as the Prince there were very strict etiquette (rules about behavior) that people in this level of society had to follow. In the 18th and early 19th centuries there were great divisions in society between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'. There was a huge gulf between the rich and the poor and the two groups never met.(The upper classes never visited factories or coal mines or went to the poorer areas of large cities.) The contrasting areas of the Pavilion and the arrangements made to keep guests and servants apart reflected the divisions in wider society very well. The Pavilion connot tell us everything about the way of life in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but it can tell us a lot about the lives of certain groups of people, particularly the so-called 'leisured classes' who were looking for pleasure and entertainment. It also shows the huge gap that existed between the rich and poor.

In conclusion, the Royal Pavilion was built to Prince Regents taste and he didn't care what other people thought of it, it also shows the way that the wealthey people lived. Also the Royal Pavilion does reflect fashionable tastes in architecture, design, attitudes and way of life because of the Indian and Chinese styles used.

By Sean Kirkpatrick 10HS.