We are delighted to have commissioned Catriona Robertson to create our first site-responsive artwork for the estate.

Robertson’s work explores the idea of the façade, drawing inspiration from the 17th-century red brick wall constructed to conceal an older timber framed manor house. The title A Glorious Sham takes inspiration from Bamber Gascoigne’s playful description of the red brick facade at West Horsley Place, which conceals the older timber-framed manor house behind it. The sculpture reimagines fragments of the site’s architecture as a future remnant: a free-standing portal embedded within the landscape, where past, present, and speculative futures converge. Layered strata within the sculpture evokes geological time, tracing the site’s histories while imagining future sedimentary layers shaped by human activity and environmental change.

Influenced by the surrounding gardens, lichens and plant life, the sculpture incorporates vivid colours suggestive of both natural growth and synthetic contamination. At a moment of increasing ecological awareness, Robertson’s sculpture reflects on biodiversity, regeneration and the urgent question of how we might become good ancestors for the future.

This has been made possible by Lottery Players and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Thank you!