Jilly's Blog: Rushton Triangular Lodge

The Triangular Lodge is a folly, designed and constructed between 1593 and 1597 by Sir Thomas Tresham (father of one of the Gunpowder Plotters) near Rushton (not Rusden!), Northamptonshire. It is now in the care of English Heritage.

It is a testament to Tresham's Roman Catholicism: the number three, symbolising the Holy Trinity, is apparent everywhere. There are three floors, trefoil windows and three triangular gables on each side. On the entrance front is the inscription 'Tres Testimonium Dant' ('there are three that give witness'), a Biblical quotation from St John's Gospel referring to the Trinity. It is also a pun on Tresham's name; his wife called him 'Good Tres' in her letters. The stone used for the construction was alternating bands of dark and light limestone.

Tresham was a Roman Catholic and was imprisoned for a total of fifteen years in the late 16th century for refusing to become a Protestant. On his release in 1593, he designed the Lodge as a protestation of his faith. His belief in the Holy Trinity is represented everywhere in the Lodge by the number three: it has three walls 33 feet long, each with three triangular windows and surmounted by three gargoyles. The building has three floors, upon a basement, and a triangular chimney. A Latin text 33 letters long runs around the building on each facade. These quotations are:-

Aperiatur terra & germinet salvatorem.
Quis seperabit nos a charitate Christi.
Consideravi opera tua domine at expavi.

The windows on each floor are of a different equally ornate design. The largest are those on the first floor, in the form of a trefoil, which was the emblem of the Tresham family. The basement windows are small trefoils with a triangular pane at their centre. The slightly raised ground floor has an entrance in the south-east facade, above the door "5555" (There is speculation this may once have been "3333"). The windows on this floor are of a lozenge design. The principal room on each floor is a hexagon, thus leaving the three corner spaces triangular, one of these spaces contains a spiral staircase, the remaining two are small rooms.

The building is crowned, above the quotations on each facade by three steep gables, each surmounted by a three-sided obelisk at the apex. Among the emblems carved on the gables is the, highly symbolic, seven-branched candelabrum representing the seven eyes of God. A pelican emblem, a symbol of Christ and the Eucharist, is also carved. The triangular chimney is adorned with the holy monogram "IHS", a lamb and cross, and a chalice.

While the lodge is indisputably a testament to the faith of Tresham, it is also an example of the Elizabethan love of allegory. Carved in the gables are the unexplained numbers "3509" and "3898". Among the dates carved on the building are 1580, thought to be the date of Tresham's conversion, but also the (future at the time of their carving) dates 1626 and 1641 - to what do they refer? The broken inscriptions inscribed on each gable combine to read "Respicite non mihi laboravi".

The Lodge was the only building Tresham designed which he saw completed before his death in 1605. Nikolaus Pevsner, in his famed "Buildings of Northamptonshire" states: "as a testament of faith this building must be viewed with respect". He also considered the lodge so architecturally important that he chose its photograph for the front cover of the first edition of his book.

The triangular Lodge is really fascinating a well worth a visit........ if you can find it!!!