1716–18 Eastbury, Dorset, for Bubb Dodington (the old seat was pulled down by Earl Temple); and about the same time Oulton Hall in Cheshire (see Ormerod, Cheshire, ii. 118).
Vanbrugh was reappointed to the post of comptroller to the board of works by George I in January 1715, and about a year later the interest of his numerous friends at court procured him the post of architect to Greenwich Hospital at a salary of 200l. a year. Pressure had been applied to make Wren resign this post, on the ground that he could not give the palace his constant supervision; but no increased rate of progress followed Vanbrugh's appointment, and the brickwork of the southern range of the west front, which is often assigned to Sir John, was for the most part the work of his coadjutor, Hawksmoor (cf. Gent. Mag. 1815, ii. 494; L'Estrange, Greenwich Chronicles, 1886, ii. 85 sq.). The architect's chief memorials in this neighbourhood are the two houses which he built for himself at Blackheath, and which are still standing. One, the ‘Bastille’ on Maze Hill, known latterly as Vanbrugh Castle, passed from Lady Vanbrugh to Lord Tyrawley, and has now been for many years a boarding school for girls; the other, in ‘Vanbrugh Fields,’ was called ‘Mince-pie House’ (Hasted, 1886, i. 78), but is now known as Vanbrugh House.
In 1718 Vanbrugh built Floors, near Kelso, for the Duke of Roxburghe; but this ‘severely plain building’ was transformed into a Tudor edifice in 1849 (Hindes Groome, Gazett. of Scotland, ii. 32). In the following year, in strict accordance with the rococo taste of the day, he planned the famous gardens of Stowe in Buckinghamshire, where a pyramid sixty feet high was erected in his honour and inscribed ‘Inter plurima hortorum horum ædificia a Johanne Vanbrugh equite designata hanc pyramidem ad illius memoriam sacram voluit Cobham’ (Bickham, Beauties of Stowe, 1769, p. 6). ‘Immensity and Van Brugh appear in the whole and in every part,’ wrote the Earl of Peterborough. The details of his next house, Seaton Delaval in Northumberland (1720–21), show a marked improvement upon his earlier design; but his alterations at Audley End, where in 1721 he removed three sides of the old quadrangle and erected lodges at the north and south end of the west front, have not been deemed successful (Lord Braybrooke, Hist. of Audley End, pp. 92, 99). The latest of his more important works was Grimsthorpe, Lincolnshire, built for the Duke of Ancaster (1722–4), and including the ‘biggest entrance-hall in the kingdom’ (see Notes and Queries, 7th ser. iv. 47). Here, though ‘he could not shake himself free of his gigantic rusticated columns, 3½ ft. in diameter, and of certain enormous key-blocks, the front is a fine, unaffected, and almost reasonable design. Had Vanbrugh lived longer, it seems that he might have become a really great architect’ (Blomfield, ii. 199).
Simultaneously with the Brobdingnagian mansions in which he delighted, Vanbrugh was building for himself between Scotland Yard and the Banqueting House, ‘out of the ruins of Whitehall,’ a modest town house, which was also to be his official residence as comptroller (a drawing is at South Kensington; cf. Gent. Mag. 1815, i. 423). The house was not remarkable in any way, but it elicited from Swift the clever satiric verses in which it was likened to a goose-pie. The ‘goose-pie’ survived for two hundred years, being known in its declining days as the ‘pill-box,’ was occupied for some years by the United Service Institution, and was finally demolished on 1 Oct. 1898. To Swift, who disliked ‘Brother Van’ for his whiggism, his popularity with the great, and his lack of veneration for the cloth, has often been attributed, but wrongly, the well-known epitaph, ‘Lie heavy on him earth …’ which appears to have emanated from Abel Evans [q. v.] (cf. Nichols, Select Collection of Poems, 1780, iii. 161). After Vanbrugh's death Swift joined with Pope (who had also had his fling at the architect) in expressing regret that their raillery, ‘though ever so tender, had ever been indulged’ against Sir John, ‘a man of wit and honour’ (joint preface to ‘Prose Miscellanies’ of 1727).
In April 1718 John Anstis the younger [q. v.] had established his right (by a reversionary patent dated 2 April 1714) to the office of Garter, and Vanbrugh was disappointed of holding permanently the post which he had temporarily filled (1715–18). On 14 Jan. 1719 he married, at St. Lawrence's Church, York, Henrietta Maria, eldest child of James Yarburgh, colonel of the foot guards, of Snaith Hall, Yorkshire, by Ann, daughter and coheir of Thomas Hesketh of Heslington. Writing from Castle Howard on Christmas day 1718 to the Duke of Newcastle, he had remarked, after cursing the coldness of the winter: ‘I have almost a mind to marry to keep myself warm.’ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu gives a vivacious, if somewhat spiteful, account of the wooing. Henceforth Vanbrugh spent an increasing portion of his time at Blackheath. Some of his later letters to Carlisle give a pleasant picture of his family life. On 9 Feb. 1726 he disposed of his tabard for two thousand
