Tres testimonivm dant: Resurrecting the Hawkfield Lodge at Rushton as Part of Sir Thomas Tresham's Architectural Testament

The Hawkfield Lodge was one of three emblematic buildings that Sir Thomas Tresham (1543–1605) erected as visible signs of the invisible tenets of his Catholic faith. Tresham was not only a wealthy Elizabethan landowner, with several productive manors and estates in Northamptonshire, but also a prominent Catholic recusant. Construction of all three lodges on two of his estates at Rushton and Lyveden began following his release, in 1593, from a twelve-year period spent primarily at his house in Hoxton, a period in effect an exile from his two family seats that had resulted from his recusancy. The Hawkfield Lodge at Rushton, however, no longer exists, unlike the Warrener's Lodge there (known today as the Triangular Lodge) and the New Bield at Lyveden. Its absence would be of little consequence if the two extant lodges were without the richly emblematic form and ornamentation that have been studied in detail. But it appears to have been a building of a very similar kind, and its construction is well documented. That the masons completed it at least to the level of the roof is clear from the careful reading of the interwoven building accounts that were produced for both the Warrener's and Hawkfield lodges by Tresham's steward at Rushton, George Levens, which include descriptions of the building work, and the payments made for it, and constitute a full volume of the Tresham Papers held at the British Library. Focusing on various details given in these accounts, this article reconstructs the Hawkfield Lodge and presents architectural drawings of its hexagonal ground plan (Fig. 1) and of its reflected ceiling plan or, in other words, the arrangement as seen from below of its elaborate ceiling (Fig. 2). By comparing the plan to those of the two extant lodges (Figs 3 and 4), it also makes clear their symbolic relationships.