Harewood House

Harewood House is a country house built between 1759 and 1771. The central portion was designed by John Carr, with the two lateral extensions and wings by Robert Adam. The interior, created between 1765 and 1777, was designed by Robert Adam for Edwin Lascelles, 1st Lord Harewood. The house was substantially altered and heightened in 1843 by Sir Charles Barry for the 3rd Earl of Harewood in an Anglo-Italian style. Around 1930, the interior was modernised following a scheme by Sir Herbert Baker, executed by Brierley and Rutherford of York, for the 6th Earl of Harewood and his wife Mary, Princess Royal.

Exterior

The house is built of locally quarried millstone grit dressed ashlar, with a Westmorland green slate roof. It consists of a two-storey centre range with basement and cellars, connected by single-storey links to three-storey pavilions.

The north entrance front presents a symmetrical 17-bay facade. The basement is rusticated, above an ashlar plinth and sill band. The angle pavilions, designed by Adam, feature large Venetian windows extending through two storeys, set within semi-circular arched recesses. These have heavily bracketed former eaves cornices. The third floor, added around 1843, has paired sash windows in square surrounds, topped by a balustraded parapet and four finial-like chimneys to each outer face, with lateral stacks on the inner returns.

The single-storey three-bay links connecting the pavilions to the main house have sash windows with balustrades below the sills, architraves, and triangular pediments on consoles added around 1843. They are finished with a moulded eaves cornice and the original balustraded parapet.

The central nine-bay facade is articulated by a giant hexastyle Corinthian applied order supporting a five-bay pediment with richly carved tympanum. The flanking two bays have giant Corinthian pilasters. Ground-floor windows beneath the pediment have segmental pediments, while those in the outer two bays have triangular pediments. First-floor windows are square with architraves. An entablature and bracketed eaves cornice sit below a balustraded pediment added around 1843, topped by large lantern finials. The hipped roof has two stacks to the front and rear pitches and two large ashlar lateral stacks to each return.

The south garden front, a symmetrical 15-bay facade, was extensively remodelled around 1843. The basement has six square flat-arched windows on either side of a projecting double-flight stair. The stair front has three windows articulated by projecting piers, in front of which stand statues on plinths. The stair has a balustraded parapet leading to a raised landing serving the centre three bays, which contain a doorway and flanking windows with segmental pediments. Bays 5, 6, 10 and 11, by Carr, have triangular pediments with square windows above, with giant Corinthian pilasters with entasis set between them. Around 1843, these replaced Carr's original three-bay detached giant portico. An entablature and balustraded parapet with finials, dating from around 1843, complete this elevation.

The three-bay links have semi-circular arched windows with an impost band, articulated by Ionic pilasters supporting triangular pediments to the outer windows. A balustraded parapet was added around 1843.

The pavilions feature coupled Corinthian pilasters flanking Venetian windows matching those on the north front, with balustraded balconies added around 1843. Two third-floor windows are flanked by carved consoles, beneath a cornice and parapet carved with blind ovals, topped by four chimney finials.

The left-hand return of the east wing has five bays with a projecting balustraded terrace over a projecting basement. The central Venetian window is flanked by windows with architraves and cornices, with the first floor blind. The frieze below the cornice contains five small windows, and the second floor has a square window to each floor.

Set within the angle between the wings and links to the main house is a rectangular inner court of three by two bays, with sash windows and all downspouts and drain-pipes fitted with brackets cast with heraldic crests.

Interior

Carr's Palladian plan was altered and modified by Robert Adam, who initially proposed a semicircular court but abandoned this idea in 1762. Adam decorated the house in a Neo-classical manner using specialist artists and craftsmen.

The Entrance Hall is the least altered of Carr's designs in form. It features giant Roman Doric demi-columns painted to resemble porphyry. Opposite the entrance is a deeply recessed archway flanked by niches. Stucco panels are by Collins, and medallions by Rose, one bearing a flag inscribed with 1767, the date of completion.

Opening to the west is the Great Staircase, a stone double-flight cantilevered from half-landings with a delicate iron balustrade by Maurice Tobin incorporating a honeysuckle design and a carved ramped mahogany handrail, based on Adam's drawing of around 1769. It is top-lit by an oval glazed dome.

Adam employed numerous specialist artists and craftsmen. The plasterers included Dodgson, Rothwell, William Collins, and particularly Joseph Rose with his assistant Richard Mott, who worked on the state rooms. John Devall, master mason to George III, created many of the marble chimney pieces, the finest perhaps being that in the Music Room. Mural decorators included Antonio Zucci, Angelica Kauffmann, Giovanni Borganis and Biagio Rebecca. Thomas Chippendale supplied frames for mirrors and paintings, as well as suites of furniture to both Adam's and his own designs. Together they created rooms of exceptional decorative quality.

Particularly fine is the Old Library, a well-proportioned room with Corinthian pilasters flanking arched recesses filled with bookcases and a superb fireplace. The Princess Royal's Sitting Room, originally the state bedroom, has Ionic columns distyle in antis flanking a bed recess, now reduced and filled with a fine Chippendale mirror. The Spanish Library has a fine ceiling. The Rose Drawing Room and the Music Room both have fine ceilings complemented by Adam's original carpets echoing the ceiling designs.

The climax of the house is the Long Gallery, which fills the west angle pavilion. It is lit by Venetian windows on three sides. Between the windows are large mirrors with ovals above painted by Kauffmann, and carved wooden window valances designed to resemble blue taffeta by Chippendale. The superb ceiling with alternating ovals and octagons has a border containing 18 paintings by Rebecca. In 1989-90, the pillars and pilasters framing the windows and the original fireplace, all of which had been removed by Barry, were replaced.

Barry's most successful alteration is the Saloon, which he converted into the main Library, filling Adam's apsidal recesses with mahogany bookcases. It has fine chimney-pieces by Van Gelder with pedimented overmantels holding circular medallions by Collins, and a superb coved ceiling.

Less successful is Barry's alteration to the Dining Room, where Adam's original room and ceiling were destroyed and replaced with an unimaginative pedestrian design featuring a coved ceiling incorporating the monogram 'H.H.', decorated by John Wagget. Barry also installed new kitchens and domestic offices in the basement.

In the 1930s, Sir Herbert Baker created a charming pastiche of the Adam style in the Princess Royal's Dressing Room, with plaster decoration.

Subsidiary Features

The main gateway, lodges and linking walls on Harrogate Road, the stables built by Carr to the south-west of the house, the bridge over the roadway between the stables, the double terrace built by Barry to the south front of the house, the dolphin fountain to the west of the house, and the terrace cottage to the south-west of the house are all separately listed.

History

Harewood House was built by Edwin Lascelles (1713-1795) using a fortune inherited from his father, Henry Lascelles (1690-1753). Henry's immense wealth had been accumulated through business connected with the West Indies. He was the fifth son of a Yorkshire landowner—both his father and grandfather had been Members of Parliament for Northallerton—but Henry made his own fortune.

Having arrived in Barbados by 1712 to work as a merchant, he married the daughter of a local merchant and slave trader. He prospered as a Barbadian customs collector between 1715 and 1734, despite being accused of corruption, and was employed to supply troops stationed in the Caribbean during the Wars of Jenkins' Ear (1739-1742) and the Austrian Succession (1742-1748). He established a London business importing sugar and loaning money to West India planters. With a partner, he formed a syndicate of merchants to establish a fleet of vessels permanently moored off the Guinea coast to receive slaves for shipment to the Caribbean. He owned one plantation, the Guinea Estate in Barbados, bought in 1738 and sold in 1758.

After 1732, he conducted his business from England, where he invested in land and served as Member of Parliament for Northallerton from 1745 to 1752. Henry Lascelles established his second son, Daniel, as inheritor of his business, assigning to him vast West Indian loans. By 1748, his eldest son Edwin had been installed as lord of the manors of Gawthorpe and Harewood, bought in 1739. Henry Lascelles's mercantile activity in the Caribbean had provided the income on which the transformation of his family into one of Yorkshire's principal aristocratic dynasties was founded.

In 1784, Daniel Lascelles died childless, and Edwin inherited an immense portfolio of West Indian property as planters defaulted on loans and were forced to surrender their plantations. Between 1773 and 1787, Edwin acquired more than 27,000 acres in Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica and Tobago, together with 2,947 slaves. When Edwin died, also childless, in 1795, Harewood was inherited by a Barbadian-born cousin, Edward Lascelles (1740-1820), later 1st Earl of Harewood.

The owners of Harewood gradually reduced their interests in the Caribbean, although in 1833, the year of the Slavery Abolition Act, Henry Lascelles (1767-1841), who had become 2nd Earl in 1820, owned six plantations and 1,277 slaves, for the loss of whom he received £23,309 in compensation.

Henry Lascelles was Member of Parliament for Yorkshire with William Wilberforce from 1796 to 1806. In the election of 1807, fought shortly after the passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, Wilberforce was returned but Lascelles was beaten. One of several issues on which the election was fought was candidates' attitudes to slavery, and Lascelles was known to be a plantation owner. He later spoke strongly against the emancipation of slaves. Nevertheless, his relations with Wilberforce were, at least at one time, amicable. The great abolitionist accompanied the slave-owner to inspect sugar-cane growing in the Harewood kitchen garden, and in 1799 Wilberforce's famous singing voice was heard at a concert of sacred music in the Harewood Music Room.

Harewood House is designated at Grade I as an outstanding country house displaying the talents of three architects of stature: John Carr, Robert Adam, and Sir Charles Barry. It contains an exceptional series of neo-classical interiors designed by Robert Adam, with decoration and furnishings by Antonio Zucci, Angelica Kauffmann, Biagio Rebecca and Thomas Chippendale. The house is of particular historical interest in view of its well-documented connection with the slave trade; its existence is due largely to the fortune amassed by the Lascelles family in the West Indies. This listing description was written in 2007, the bicentenary year of the 1807 Abolition Act. The house also has group value with a number of subsidiary buildings and structures, including Carr's stable block, Barry's southern terrace, and the main gateway and lodges.