Heath Hall

Heath Hall is a large country house of c.1709, significantly extended and altered between 1754 and 1780 by the architect John Carr for John Smyth. Further alterations were made c.1834 by Anthony Salvin, who added a billiard-room and south porch and built up the wings. The building is constructed in ashlar with a lead roof and comprises 2½ storeys with basement and cellars.

The front elevation is an 11-bay symmetrical facade. The central 3-bay block, which represents the original house, features 4 attached giant Ionic columns supporting a pediment with carved tympanum bearing an achievement of arms, and a porch with consoles and open pediment. The central 5 bays contain windows with eared architraves and cornices. The outer 3 bays on each side are canted, with swept-shouldered architraves, consoles, cornices, and plainer architraves above, topped by balustraded parapets. An attic storey with balustraded parapet runs across the facade and is pierced by windows with architraves. The roof has 2 stacks centrally placed and 2 end stacks to the left, with one end stack to the right.

The rear elevation has similar fenestration, with the central 3 bays breaking forward. These lack columns but have raised quoins and a central doorway with consoles and cornice; the windows are set in raised architraves, those to the first floor being eared. The left-hand return comprises 4 bays, including 2 bays of blind windows. Attached to this return is a single-storey flat-roofed billiard-room, now used as a kitchen.

The interior contains a series of exceptionally fine rooms. The entrance hall has diamond-set flags, 4 doorways with architraves, and a fireplace with eared surround decorated with egg-and-dart moulding and a cornice with guttae. The dining room to the left is a balanced room with an apsidal end, round-headed windows with eared architraves, richly decorated cornice, panelled dado, and walls with applied carved mouldings. A fireplace features Greek-key ornament and a carved surround. The stairhall to the right contains an open-well wooden stair slung on iron girders with 3 barley-sugar twist balusters to each riser and a wreathed-and-ramped handrail; Rococo-carved brackets support the tread ends. A band at first-floor level is decorated with modified Greek-key ornament interspersed with foliage, and a modillioned ceiling cornice is present.

An archway on consoles leads to the saloon, a long well-proportioned room with apsidal ends and 3 bays of arches, with a fireplace facing the doorway. The walls and ceiling display fine Rococo plasterwork, thought to be by Joseph Rose the Elder and Thomas Perritt, whilst the woodwork is by Daniel Shillito. This decoration is considered unsurpassed among Carr's many houses. The library dates to c.1778-80 and shows Adam influence following Carr's work at Harewood House; it is a long rectangular room with a marble fireplace flanked by doors with carved architraves and a ceiling cornice decorated with anthemion. The study is a circular room with curved fittings, a door with architrave, pulvinated frieze and cornice, and a stone fireplace with false keystone. The first floor contains other finely decorated rooms, notably the saloon chamber, which has an apsidal bay with eared architraves to 3 windows, a carved dado, and 3 doorways with good carved bolection-moulded friezes. One room retains Queen Anne decoration from the original 1709 house, with large raised panelling, a bolection-moulded fireplace, and a fine doorway. A dog-leg back-stair, possibly reused from the 1709 house, has turned balusters and leads to an attic with a range of 12 rooms opening off a central corridor, dating from Salvin's alterations, for which he was paid £6,500 in 1834.

Heath Hall, with its pavilions to left and right and entrance gate-piers, forms a magnificent composition at the top of Heath Common. Historically, the house represents a highly successful 18th-century enlargement and remodelling by John Carr and ranks among his finest works.