Peter Leach, ‘Harewood House: two footnotes’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xxIII, 2015, pp. 115–124
text © the authors 2015 HAREWOOD HOUSE: TWO FOOTNOTES
PETER LEACH
Edwin Lascelles’s ‘princely palace ’ in Yorkshire is . A number of visitors’ accounts are extant, but their relatively well-trodden territory as a subject for value to the historian varies. Three which include an historical research, but there remain some avenues of evaluative element can be identified. The most inquiry which have not been fully explored. Two which significant, combining shrewd assessment and some are related to some extent are discussed below. One detailed description, is that of Elizabeth Percy, first concerns the comments on the house by certain early Duchess of Northumberland, who visited Harewood visitors to it; the other the sources and what one might twice, first in , when the building work was still call the pre-history of John Carr’s design, and their in progress – the carcase completed but the internal implications for the character of the completed building. decoration only just begun – then again in ,
Fig. . Harewood House, view of the north front by Thomas Malton, .
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII HAREWOOD HOUSE : TWO FOOTNOTES which was the year that the house was first occupied. The other theme relates mainly to the impact of The others are those of the Staffordshire historian Robert Adam’s state rooms; and the reaction to these Stebbing Shaw, who visited in , and Sir Richard was mixed. The Duchess of Northumberland’s Colt Hoare of Stourhead, another man of serious description of the interior is largely neutral in tone antiquarian interests, who came as part of a tour of apart from the occasional sally, but then she northern England in . In addition, information concludes: about how some of the rooms were used was ‘The Architect seems rather to have contrived this recorded by the artist Joseph Farington in . house for Strangers to see than the Inhabitants to Two themes emerge. One is the situation of the dwell in for it is by no means convenient not a closet to house, towards the top of a south-facing slope. The put by a Close Stool or a bottle & Bason in any of the effect on the south side, with the house standing up Lodging Rooms.’ impressively and overlooking the new lake, was Sir Richard Colt Hoare was even more fortright: widely admired; but regarding the north (entrance) ‘The house has a handsome elevation; built of stone; front, facing towards the rising land, the Duchess of architects Carr and Adams. The interior may be Northumberland commented in : described in a few words: a mass of ill-judged expence, a fine suite of rooms fitted up in the most ‘The House tho entirely built from the Ground by M r gaudy and expensive style imaginable ...’ Lascelles might I criticise I would say it was placed in a very bad situation as he is forced to take away at That he was not motivated by a general dislike of immense Labour & expence a large Hill w ch rises Adam’s work is demonstrated by his comments on immediately in the front of it ...’ two of the latter’s other schemes. Of Newby Hall On this side indeed, with the basement storey near Ripon he wrote: ‘The interior of this house has hidden in a deep area, the house does appear a little been fitted up with great elegance and taste united – to be sinking into the ground; and although this not like Harewood, gaudy, expensive and tasteless.’ effect was exacerbated in the changes made by And of Kedleston Hall: Charles Barry in – , when the ground-level in ‘The house both within and without is magnificent, as front of the house was raised again and the flight of to its architecture and ornaments. The architect was steps to the front door shortened, it is evident from Adams who has varied the different shapes of the Thomas Malton’s view (Fig. ) that it was present to rooms with much taste and good judgement ... The some extent from the outset. Ironically, an effective grates, chairs etc are all done from antique models and correspond with the general taste of the apartment ... response to the challenge of a sloping site was This house in point of architecture and ornament exemplified in the design of a house just a few miles exceeds any I have yet seen.’ away which was under construction at the same time, James Paine’s Stockeld Park near Wetherby. Presumably therefore the reason for Hoare’s On the entrance front and the flanks it is the condemnation of Harewood was its uncoordinated principal floor which is treated as the ‘rustic’, but at juxtaposition of two different types of finery, Adam’s the back, where the ground-level is lower, rustication and Chippendale’s. is confined instead to the basement below, which is Stebbing Shaw’s account is a slightly different only exposed on this elevation. Carr, however, never proposition because he was writing for publication, developed that degree of creative flexibility, and at a and he appears to have chosen his words with care. later house of his, Denton Hall near Ilkley, which is His description of the rooms proceeds in a also built on a slope, something of the same sinking conventionally hyperbolic style but with a slight feeling is again present on the uphill-facing side. edge to it, and then when he reaches the final room
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII HAREWOOD HOUSE : TWO FOOTNOTES in his circuit, the second of the two drawing rooms, rooms, one after the other? So the verdicts of the his tone changes: duchess and Shaw taken together suggest a twofold ‘The apartments are very numerous and large, and criticism: an over-supply of state accommodation finished in the highest taste of elegance and fashion ... and a deficiency in the private. The reasons for that All the rooms are equally elegant and costly, state of affairs are considered in the second footnote. particularly the state apartments; but the large gallery and great drawing room present such a shew of . Over fifty years ago Sir John Summerson magnificence and art, as eye hath scarce seen, and words cannot describe ... We lastly went into the characterised Harewood as a compressed version of adjoining lesser drawing-room, hung and ornamented Colen Campbell’s third design for Wanstead House in a most singular manner: here, as if fancy and art had (Fig. ), but this analysis is incomplete in two exhausted all their choice treasures, are exhibited respects. The first is that the end features of colours and mixtures most odd and disagreeable.’ Wanstead III take the form of two pairs of corner towers, whereas at Harewood they are continuous It is as if he also had found it all too much, and not ranges running from front to back. It might therefore just the intensity of the magnificence but the extent be more accurate to describe the latter as a of it: why, after all, were there two state drawing compressed version of Wanstead II, with the
Fig. . Wanstead House, second and third designs from Vitruvius Britannicus i ( ) and iii ( ).
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Fig. .Harewood House, plan from Vitruvius Britannicus v ( ).
extremities of each front articulated in a manner apartments. The evident source for this arrangement reminiscent of Wanstead III. was another of the great Palladian exemplars of earlier The second, and more important point is that it is in the century, the Earl of Leicester’s Holkham Hall only the external form of the house which was derived (Fig. ) – which is unsurprising since Leicester had from Wanstead: the interior arrangement was not. advised Lascelles on the design of his house, and at Wanstead was an example of the type of formal early one point during its gestation Carr had planned to eighteenth-century great house in which hierarchically visit Holkham himself. conceived apartments, each consisting of several The similarities between Harewood and rooms, extended symmetrically to each side of the Holkham’s central block are visible in specific details central entrance hall and saloon; but that type of plan as well as the general conception, notably in the would have been very old-fashioned by the s, and positions of the gallery, occupying the whole of the that adopted at Harewood is quite different (Fig. ). west range in both, and the dining room, next to it on The entrance hall and saloon remain, but now as the the north side; and in the shape of the latter, with a meeting point of two sequences of rooms which semicircular recess in the back wall. So Harewood is a encircle the back courtyards to left and right – the west hybrid, the product as it were of fitting the flesh of one a circuit of state reception rooms, the east consisting of beast into the carapace of another; and the problems some further state rooms including a state regarding the accommodation referred to above can bedchamber, and beyond them two smaller family be traced back to this characteristic. On the one hand,
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Fig. . Holkham Hall, plan from M. Brettingham, The Plans, Elevations and Sections of Holkham ( ).
whereas at Holkham the family and guest lodgings are had passed through a quite tortuous process of mainly housed in separate wings, at Harewood they evolution. The first reference to a design by Carr are all fitted into the east range and the attic. On the comes in a letter of his to Lascelles’s steward Samuel other, the principal elevations of Harewood are over Popplewell, datable to , in which he also alludes fifty feet longer than those of the main block at to a plan by one of his potential rivals for the Holkham, which translates into at least two additional commission, the East India Company’s surveyor rooms along each front. In the east part of the house William Jones: this was doubtless an advantage, but in the west it was ‘... You will be pleased to represent mine [to Mr less so. On the north side the extra room is the music Lascelles] as a rough sketch I made about a month ago room, which in effect is not unlike yet another drawing not intending to show it till I had made my room, while on the south the eventual outcome was improvements upon it the Dimensions of the rooms are the succession of two drawing rooms, but there had all figured & an easy access to every Room, the Area of my Plan is not greater than Mr Jones Dimension you been some uncertainty as to what function the second gave me nor so big I think & I am pretty sure I have as room should serve: the Duchess of Northumberland little waste Room consequently must have as Good in referred to it as a second dining room and it Rooms, I get into the Gallery Bedchamber & Dressing was still described as the ‘south dining room’ as late as Room without going through any other Room which on the plate in Vitruvius Britannicus . seldom can be in such a large house & have two spacious Back Stairs of feet Diam r.’ Before it reached that stage however the design
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Fig. . Kirby Hall, Little Ouseburn, elevation and plan. ( British Library )
The salient feature of this discussion is that the pattern which was built by him c. – to the design of of internal communication described by Carr is not Roger Morris and Lord Burlington, and Heath compatible with a plan at all like Harewood’s or those Hall near Wakefield (Fig. ), which he remodelled of either of its antecedents. If one assumes that his and enlarged from c. on. What they have in point of departure was one of the rooms of the central common is a plan-form in which the body of the axis – the hall or the saloon – then to reach the gallery it house is embraced by a pair of lateral ranges running would be necessary to pass through two intermediate from front to back and attached directly to its flanks rooms at Harewood and one at Holkham, and to reach – these are Carr’s additions at Heath Hall – the right- any of the bedchambers at least one. hand one of which, when facing the entrance, is Is it then possible to reconstruct the plan occupied by a gallery or gallery-like reception room. referred to here? A starting point may be provided At Kirby Hall the left-hand range was occupied by by two houses with which Carr was associated two bedrooms and a dressing room, and at Heath before : Kirby Hall at Little Ouseburn (Fig. ), Hall the interiors of both ranges can be reached
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII HAREWOOD HOUSE : TWO FOOTNOTES directly from the entrance hall or the staircase hall. (iii) The ends of the ranges articulated either by single On this basis one might posit the following: plain bays as at Kirby Hall, or two, as in effect in Wanstead II, or by canted bays as at Heath Hall, or by (i) A central block similar to that shown in the earliest Serlianas, as in Wanstead III and at Holkham and the surviving plan which relates to the house as built, executed house. Robert Adam’s of (Fig. ) showing his proposed modifications to a pre-existing one by Carr, with One feature which calls for particular comment is the central entrance hall and saloon, library and dining persistence of the gallery, in the west range, given room flanking the hall, and parlour and drawing room the saloon, but with Carr’s circular back stairs in the that the principal purpose of the gallery at Holkham middle of each side, opening off the hall was the display of Leicester’s collection of sculpture whereas Lascelles possessed no such collection. (ii) Lateral ranges running front-to-back against each But there was a well-established alternative use for flank, the right-hand (west) occupied by a gallery, the such spaces. Joseph Farington in described the left-hand by two bedrooms and two dressing rooms, and reached from the entrance hall through the Harewood gallery as ‘for breakfast and balls’; and staircase halls not only was the holding of dances a subsidiary
Fig. . Heath House near Wakefield, plan
Fig. . Harewood House, plan by Robert Adam, . (Sir John Soane’s Museum )
THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIII HAREWOOD HOUSE : TWO FOOTNOTES function of Holkham’s, but at Wanstead also at an retained on the east; and the change made as late as early date a gallery-like ballroom had been created in in which the semicircular courtyard shape was the same respective position in the house, out of the wholly abandoned and the two additional state end rooms of two of the principal apartments. rooms introduced – or rather, it appears, The move from the form of plan suggested here reintroduced – as a consequence. So while the to the footprint of the executed house would Holkham formula was probably first conceived of as nevertheless represent a substantial enhancement in being all of a piece, it was actually realised only the ambition of the project, and the revision did not incrementally, not to say rather chaotically, and in its take place immediately. In February Popplewell complete form very much at the last minute, well reported to Lascelles that ‘Old Mr Carr’ – that is, after the building of the house had been begun. Carr’s father – ‘seems to hint that what is to be answered will require a good deal of time & y t What, if any, more general conclusions can be drawn everything will be to draw out at large’, but two years from this discussion? One might be that, by later, in January , Carr senior told Popplewell Alexander Pope’s rigorous standards at any rate, as that ‘My Son has a mind to make another plan’; and a patron of the arts Edwin Lascelles fell a little short it was presumably this latter that Robert Adam – more of a Timon than a Bathurst or a Burlington ‘tickled up’ in the summer of that year. Something of perhaps. James Adam’s extraordinarily its character can be deduced from Adam’s version contemptuous remark about his brother having and his comments on it; and it appears that both ‘tickled up’ Carr’s design ‘so as to dazzle the Eyes of the Wanstead-style outline and the Holkham form of the Squire’ suggests that he anyway was of that interior plan had now made their appearance but opinion; and the apparent absence of direct that only the former was regarded as fixed. The communication between Lascelles and Carr evolution of the design thereafter is relatively throughout the course of the work, everything being familiar: Adam’s proposal that the ‘back courts’ done via Samuel Popplewell, was hardly a recipe should be semicircular – which subverted the for success. As to Carr himself, any perceived Holkham concept entirely, the end ranges being shortcomings in his design evidently did his linked to the body of the house only by corridors subsequent career no harm at all – which in turn may instead of through the intermediate rooms of the tell us something about the creative and intellectual circuits; the compromise design drawn out by Carr levels at which the designing of country houses in c. , in which this scheme was adopted for the general was conducted in England during the mid state room (west) side but the Holkham form and late eighteenth century. But that is another story.
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ENDNOTES . Built – . See J. Paine, Plans, Elevations and . S. Shaw, A Tour, in , from London, to the Sections of Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Houses I Western Highlands of Scotland, including excursions (London, ), pp. – , plates –; P. Leach, to the lakes of Westmorland and Cumberland James Paine (London ), pp. – , . (London ), p. . . See Wragg, Carr, pp. –; P. Leach & N. Pevsner, . See in particular C. Hussey, English Country The Buildings of England, Yorkshire West Riding: Houses, Mid Georgian – (London ), Leeds, Bradford and the North (New Haven & pp. –; M. Mauchline, Harewood House (Newton London, ), pp. –. Abbot ); B. Wragg, The Life and Work of John . Eg., of the east side, ‘here also is a Back Stairs, Carr of York (York ), pp. – , –; passages innumerable & a water closet w ch stinks all E. Harris, The Genius of Robert Adam, his Interiors over the house’ (Alnwick Castle, DNP: MS / (New Haven & London, ), pp. – . p. ). . The Archives of the Duke of Northumberland at . Alnwick Castle, DNP: MS / p. . Alnwick Castle, DNP: MSS / pp. –, / . The Journeys of Sir Richard Colt Hoare , p. . pp. – , / p. ; Shaw, Tour from London , . Ibid ., p. . pp. – ; The Journeys of Sir Richard Colt Hoare . Ibid ., p. . through Wales and England ‒ , ed. M. W. . Shaw, Tour from London , pp. – . Thompson (Gloucester, ), p. ; The Diary of . J. Summerson, ‘The Classical Country House in Joseph Farington , ed. K. Garlick & A. Macintyre th-century England’, Journal of the Royal Society (New Haven & London, ) V, pp. – . of Arts ( ), p. . For Wanstead House see The house was also visited by the antiquary also C. Campbell, Vitruvius Britannicus I (London, William Bray in (W. Bray, Sketches of a Tour ), plates –, and III (London, ), plates into Derbyshire and Yorkshire (nd edition, – ; H. E. Stutchbury, The Architecture of Colen London, ), p. ); John Wesley in (The Campbell (Manchester, ), pp. – and passim. Journal and Diaries of John Wesley VI, ed. W. R. . See M. Girouard, Life in the English Country House Ward & R. P. Heitzenrater (Nashville, ), (New Haven & London, ), pp. – . The p. ); the poet Anna Seward c. (see W. apartments at Wanstead are described in J. Macky, Wheater, Some Historic Mansions of Yorkshire and A Journey through England (th edition, London, their Associations I (Leeds, ), p. ); and ) I, pp. – . . J. Woolfe & J. Gandon, Vitruvius Britannicus V William Gilpin’s disciple Richard Warner in (London, ), plate . (R. Warner, A Tour through the Northern Counties . For Holkham Hall see inter alia M. Brettingham, of England and the Borders of Scotland (Bath, ) The Plans, Elevations and Sections of Holkham in I, pp. –; but Bray provides no insights and the Norfolk (London, , nd edition ). essentially negative reactions of the other three . Mauchline, Harewood House , pp. , , ; Harris, were evidently the result of a lack of affinity for Adam , pp. –. Leicester died in , but the monumental domestic architecture in general Holkham-like elements of the plan had probably rather than a dislike of Harewood House in been proposed by then. particular. It is unfortunate that one of the sharpest- . Wragg, Carr , p. . Whether the visit actually took eyed of late eighteenth-century tourists, the Hon. place is not known. John Byng, missed the house: writing in York in . Alnwick Castle, DNP: MS / p. ; Woolfe & , he observed that ‘Coming here, I have gain’d Gandon, Vitruvius Britannicus V, plate . a city and a Cathedral; but have miss’d a large . Alnwick Castle, DNP: MS / p. ; Woolfe & manufacturing town, a play; Kirkstal Abbey, Gandon, Vitruvius Britannicus V, plate . Once Harewood House and Castle; so that, I believe, the again there was a parallel with Holkham Hall balance is weighty against me.’ (J. Byng, The although there the second dining room is in the Torrington Diaries , ed. C. B. Andrews (London, south-east quarter of the block, not the south-west. ) III, p. ). The inscriptions identifying two of Adam’s ceiling . Alnwick Castle, DNP: MS / p. . designs, of and , as for the ‘second drawing . Mauchline, Harewood House , p. . room’ were evidently added some years after the
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drawings were made (Harris, Adam , pp. –, . Stutchbury, Campbell , pp. – . n. ). The room in question was actually the first, . West Yorkshire Archive Service, Harewood Papers or ‘great’ drawing room as described by Shaw. SC/ // , SC/ //, Steward’s Correspondence, . See H. M. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of Samuel Popplewell to Edwin Lascelles, February British Architects ‒ (th edition, New (copy), and Robert Carr to Samuel Popplewell, Haven & London, ), pp. –. Lascelles’s January . Carr’s visit to Holkham, if it took father had been a director of the East India place, followed this resolution, in the spring of Company (Harris, Adam , p. ). (Wragg, Carr , p. ). . West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds, Harewood . Sir John Soane’s Museum, Adam drawings :; Papers SC/ // , Steward’s Correspondence, John Scottish Record Office, Adam Papers GD / , Carr to Samuel Popplewell, . Robert Adam to James Adam, June ; . British Library, King’s Topographical Collection Mauchline, Harewood House , pp. – ; Harris, xlv, /, engraving of Kirby Hall, James Basire Adam , pp. –. sculpt.; Wragg, Carr , pp. –, –. . Mauchline, Harewood House , pp. – ; Harris, . I. & E. Hall, Heath, an Architectural Description Adam , pp. –. (Heath, ), pp. , – ; Wragg, Carr , pp. –. . The Poems of Alexander Pope , ed. F. W. Bateson . Sir John Soane’s Museum, Adam drawings :; (nd edition, New Haven & London ) III, Mauchline, Harewood House , pp. – ; Harris, part , pp. – . Adam , pp. –. . Scottish Record Office, Adam Papers GD / , . Even so at one stage, c. , Adam proposed to James Adam to Robert Adam, June ; finish it as a sculpture gallery (Sir John Soane’s Mauchline, Harewood House , pp. . Museum, Adam drawings : . See Harris, Adam , . West Yorkshire Archive Service, Harewood Papers pp. –. SC, Steward’s Correspondence, passim . . Diary of Joseph Farington V, p. . . The Diary of Sylas Neville , ed. B. Cozens-Hardy (Oxford, ), pp. – .
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