Chute (John, architect and connoisseur of the arts and literature, friend of Horace Walpole & the Rev. James Austen (father of Jane Austen), of The Vyne, Sherborne, near Basingstoke, Hampshire, 1701-76) Indenture agreement, "John Chute of the Vine" leases to Thomas ffiges "All those four several pieces or parcels of meadow or pasture ground called... Starry ffrith" [Romsey] for a year, D.s. "John Chute" & "John Aldridge Servt. to John Chute Esq.", manuscript on vellum, large remains of red wax seal, folds, slightly browned, 340 x 515mm., 9th October 1770.

⁂ Signed in a shaky hand by the increasingly frail and near sighted John Chute. "Chute's activity as an architect was confined to a small number of projects only but in them he established a distinct contribution in two different directions: one was as a significant figure in the early Gothic revival, the other as a classical designer of marked independence. As a member of Walpole's 'committee of taste' he played a leading role in the creation of the latter's celebrated Gothic villa of Strawberry Hill. Walpole later described him as 'an able geometrician and an exquisite architect, and of the purest taste both in the Grecian and Gothic styles' (Walpole, Corr., 21.263), and as 'my oracle in taste, the standard to whom I submitted my trifles, the genius that presided over poor Strawberry!' (Walpole, Corr., 24.209). Chute... Like Walpole... was a vivid and witty correspondent and conversationalist and a discriminating connoisseur of literature and the arts." - Oxford DNB.