Temple Newsam House

Temple Newsam House is a country house now used as a decorative arts museum, located in Leeds. It was built in the early sixteenth century and substantially altered in 1630, 1792–96, and the late nineteenth century.

The house was originally built for Thomas, Lord Darcy. It was altered and extended in 1630 by Sir Arthur Ingram. The south wing was remodelled in 1792–96 for Frances Gibson, widow of the 9th Viscount Irwin, to designs by architect William Johnson. Spectacular antiquarian improvements were carried out for Emily Meynell Ingram in 1877 by GF Bodley and in 1889 by CE Kemp.

The building is constructed with stone foundations and red brick, mainly in Flemish bond with some irregular header bond and decorative brickwork of sixteenth-century date, stone dressings, and slate hipped roofs. It is built around three sides of a square courtyard and rises to two and three storeys with basements. The windows are mostly wide canted bays and narrow straight-sided full-height bays with stone mullions and transoms.

The north wing has a north front of three storeys and seven bays. The central bay, a projecting nineteenth-century entrance, has a moulded four-centred arch, a four-light window, and a shield with motto above. The first floor has a five-light mullioned and transomed window.

The west front, facing the garden, is three storeys and nine bays. The central five bays are the earliest part of the house and feature diaper-pattern brickwork and a central canted bay window. The outer two bays are seventeenth-century work. Lead downpipes with heraldic emblems are present.

The south wing's garden front represents the late eighteenth-century rebuild in the style of earlier work, though details differ. The tall windows have finely carved recessed cusped panels to the mullions. The lintels have a fluted frieze with paterae on an entablature with moulded cornice. A plaque on the central bay records the rebuilding. A terrace with stone balustrade, steps, and urns is present.

The courtyard side of the south wing has a projecting main entrance bay at the centre. The lower two stages, dating to around 1625, are built in ashlar with rusticated quoins, a keyed round arch, flanking paired fluted columns, an entablature and dentilled cornice, a carved coat of arms, and a broken pediment with bust. The late eighteenth-century upper storey has a six-light mullioned and transomed window with king mullion.

The courtyard facades are unified by the roof balustrade. Stone lettering dating from 1628, replaced in metal in 1788, runs along this feature bearing the inscription: "ALL GLORY AND PRAISE BE GIVEN TO GOD THE FATHER THE SON AND HOLY GHOST ON HIGH PEACE ON EARTH GOOD WILL TOWARDS MEN HONOUR AND TRUE ALLEGIANCE TO OUR GRACIOUS KING LOVING AFFECTION AMONGST HIS SUBJECTS HEALTH AND PLENTY BE WITHIN THIS HOUSE".

The interior has undergone substantial alterations. Mid-eighteenth-century Rococo-style changes were made to designs by Henry Ingram, 7th Viscount Irwin, and further significant work was undertaken in the late nineteenth century.

The north wing entrance occupies the site of the Tudor gatehouse and now houses the public entrance and shop. The first-floor picture gallery was originally the Jacobean Long Gallery. It was altered in 1738–45 to designs by Daniel Garrett and retains furniture, plasterwork, and fireplaces of this period.

The west wing preserves Tudor timberwork, including carved mouldings and spandrels to lintel beams above the bay windows, a Tudor arched niche and doorway, and a plaster ceiling probably of seventeenth-century date. Further remains are obscured by later work.

Ground-floor service rooms in the west wing include a document safe, a butler's pantry with steel-lined plate safe with a locking mechanism worked from the floor above.

The south wing contains a seventeenth-century porch with double doors in eighteenth-century Gothick style with glazed tracery and similar solid inner doors. These open into the Great Hall, which features nineteenth-century Jacobean-style decoration and woodwork, recently restored.

Other significant interior features include a Chinese Drawing Room redecorated in 1827–28, an oak staircase by CE Kempe dating to 1894–97, and a Palladian library of 1738–45 built into the end of the Jacobean Long Gallery. This library was converted to a chapel in 1877 by GF Bodley and reconverted in 1974.

The house was purchased from the Honourable Edward Wood for £30,000 in 1922 by Leeds Corporation. In 1938 it became part of the City Art Gallery. Much nineteenth-century work was removed in the late 1930s and is now being replaced. The building and its contents are extensively recorded in the Leeds Arts Calendar, the in-house magazine of the Leeds Art Collections Fund.