Espolio Ovila

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Model by Dr. Margaret Burke

SANTA MARIA DE OVILA
ITS HISTORY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY IN SPAIN AND CALIFORNIA By MARGARET BURKE

In 1931 William Randolph Hearst purchased the Cistercian monastery buildings
of Santa Maria de Ovila, located in the province of Guadalajara in Spain. Ovila had existed for over seven hundred years, isolated from centers of population andfrom well-traveled roads. Founded in the late twelfth century by King Alfonso VIII of Castile, the monastery was one of the establishments which the king promoted along the border of the country he had recently re-conquered from the Moors -- a place which would attract needed settlers and which might serve as a refuge in case of attack or raid. The small monastic community at Ovila thrived and knewits greatest prosperity in the thirteenth and early fourteenth century, but thereafter its fortunes declined. Though the church was rebuilt in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and ambitious constructions were begun again in the seventeenth century, the success of attempts to revitalize the community was short-lived. Finally, in 1835, when the inhabitants had dwindled to four monks and onelay brother, the monastery was "secularized." The properties fell to private owners, who sold the roof tiles and other removable parts. The major buildings where still standing when the sale to Mr. Hearst was arranged by an expatriate American art dealer, Arthur Byne, who lived in Madrid and conducted a profitable business of selling Spanish works of art and architecture to collectors.

At thetime Mr. Hearst envisioned the construction of a private castle in forested country in northern California. This project, unlike his palatial residence at San Simeon, would be a single large building with towers and turrets, built around a central courtyard. It was to be located at a place called Wyntoon, on the McCloud River near Mount Shasta, and would replace a house built there for his motherPhoebe Apperson Hearst by architect Bernard Maybeck, which had recently burned. Mrs. Hearst's house had been called Wyntoon Castle. Although it was simply a summer residence. The new Wyntoon Castle would indeed be a castle, in appearance as well as in size and to provide a proper setting Hearst increased the size of his mother's modest property to 66,000 acres. Miss Julia

Morgan, Hearst'sarchitect for San Simeon, would provide the necessary technical knowledge for her client's visions of Wyntoon. Byne was commissioned to find architectural treasures in Spain to be incorporated into the major rooms of the castle. Arthur Byne had wide connections in Spain and many influential friends. Among them was a wealthy director of the Bank of Spain who not long before had purchased the monastery andfarmlands of Santa Maria de Ovila. Byne thought that the venerable buildings might well suit his client, as they included fine, vaulted structures dating from the twelfth to the seventeenth century. Fortuitously the new owner -- the most recent of a series of politician-proprietors -- was interested in selling the monastery buildings, then in a ruinous state with bushes and small trees growingfrom the vaulting, the roof tiles having long since been removed and sold. All wooden appurtenances such as doors and window frames had been carried away and at least one of the massive walls seemed about to collapse. In December 1930 Arthur Byne drove to the monastery, in mountainous country about ninety miles from Madrid. With the temperature near zero and the snow swirling around he quickly drewa plan of the church and made photographs and sketches of the other major buildings. These he sent to Mr. Hearst who -following Julia Morgan's enthusiastic recommendation -- agreed to take parts of the monastery that Byne considered usable in the castle project. These consisted mainly of columns, capitals, vault ribs, door frames, and window embrasures. From those buildings whose masonry was of...