Between Chaos and Light

Susan Owens

Fountains Hall keeps the story of its origins close. At first glance its glorious array of windows proclaims it to be a late Elizabethan or Jacobean prodigy house, built to astonish and delight with outrageously expensive square yards of glittering glass. But look more closely: it has none of the strict symmetry demanded by the architectural fashion of the day. Go inside, and although the Hall was complete by 1604, telltale arrangements suggest that the eastern wing was constructed decades earlier. Wall junctions and marks of successive alterations tell contradictory stories of the building’s history that refuse to be teased out.

The Hall stands on a fault line caused by the English Reformation, a period of such violent upheaval that it divides time into a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. Some of the sandstone with which it was constructed was even salvaged from the abbey’s ruins. Built at the beginning of the modern age, when developments in science, philosophy and global trade were poised to overturn old ways of thinking, Fountains Hall is nevertheless haunted by the ghosts of its past. If ever there was a place in which the old world and the new rub together and generate sparks, then it is this.

Stephen Proctor (1562-1619) bought the Fountains estate in 1597 and built – or remodelled – the Hall. In a Jacobean masque, this disputatious man could have personified Rift without having to change his clothes. For one thing, he fell out with nearly everyone with whom he came into contact; he was vexatious in his official role of Collector of Fines and a relentless persecutor of any neighbour he suspected of recusancy. One suspects that his acquisition of the Fountains estate was itself a belligerent squaring-up to the Catholic past. For another, Proctor was a minerals speculator with lead mines and an iron business: cracking open the earth to exploit the riches within was the source of his wealth. He dressed up his interests with allusions to ancient Roman gods, placing statues of Saturn and Mars – associated with lead and iron respectively – on either side of the Hall’s entrance. Rifts, rows, belligerence: do these things fade with time – or do they continue to resonate here, in the ancient stones of Fountains Hall?

Ed Kluz has long been fascinated by the ways in which the past occupies the present. He is drawn to historical buildings because of the stories they accumulate and the traces of lives lived that are inscribed into their wood and stone. Kluz was naturally drawn to the stage-set extravagance of Fountains Hall and its historical mysteries. Within, he has focused on the Great Chamber, sometimes called the Justice Room because it was used by Proctor as a courtroom. A vast chimneypiece dominates the space: what first catches the eye is a carved panel in which stumpy men and women enact the Judgement of Solomon. Below this are other, less ponderous figures: grotesque faces, wild people and finned or fishtailed merfolk stare out like players in an exuberant procession, turned to stone in the act of striking a pose. Two different worlds, Old Testament and mythical, uneasily inhabit the same space. It is another symbolic rift at the heart of a distinctly unstable environment.

The history of Fountains Hall and the carvings in the Great Chamber both prompted Ed Kluz to ask: is there a creative force inherent in these spiritual and psychological tensions? What might arise from the hairline crack in time that appears when a new world parts from an old? Is enchantment still possible? His response to these questions is Between Chaos and Light, a work in which an ancient, pagan presence erupts into the here-and-now, taking control with the authority of a Prospero and the dazzling inventiveness of a Jacobean masquerader. It takes the form of a large classical mask, or mascaron – disquieting, yet benevolent. Through its open mouth stream words of wisdom and solace spoken in both male and female voices, and ripples of melody and song such as one might hear in a dream. The room fills with life and movement: swaying dancers, fire, wind, sky, waves, patterns of foam on the sea’s surface. These elemental images fill the Great Chamber, offering sights, sounds and sensations as old as time and as fresh as the dawn.

Ancient presence

The ancient presence is a protective genius loci, a spiritual force more ancient than Christianity itself. Although it may have been conjured up by a violent break with tradition, the words it speaks, on the very spot where Stephen Proctor once dispensed summary justice, are of healing and resolution. They are necessary and of the moment: the earth is at a crisis point caused by modern-day Proctors exploiting it for fossil fuels. The Industrial Revolution was the first major change since the Reformation itself to separate a ‘before’ from an ‘after’. A further revolution that would bring a decisive move to renewable sources of energy is far from assured: what our new ‘after’ will look like is an uncertain prospect.

‘The night of time far surpasseth the day,’ wrote the 17th-century physician and writer Thomas Browne, ‘and who knows when was the Equinox?’ Ed Kluz’s subtle perception of history – of its layers and shadows, its fissures and magic – reaches to the heart of Fountain Hall’s mystery by connecting time past with time to come. His ancient genius loci enchants the fragile present and lays out courage and hope for the future.