Bayfordbury

Country house built between 1759 and 1762 for Sir William Baker, a wealthy London merchant. The house was substantially altered and remodelled between 1809 and 1812 for William Baker II MP, to designs by architect Francis Aldhouse. The building was subsequently leased to Dr. Barnardo's after the death of Admiral Sir Lewis Clinton-Baker in 1940, then sold to the John Innes Horticultural Institute in 1945. It was purchased by Hertfordshire County Council in 1967 and used by Hatfield Polytechnic, with the property offered for sale in 1985.

The original construction comprised a red brick house with two separate service pavilions. Between 1809 and 1812 the gaps between these buildings were infilled and the entire house was refaced in stucco (Parker's cement), with Portland stone porticos and string courses added. Low pitched hipped slate roofs in graduated courses are hidden behind parapets, while Mansard roofs on each pavilion rise above, their upper slopes covered in copper.

The house is an exceptionally long Neo-Classical composition set in parkland on elevated ground, facing north. The centre section of the original house is seven windows wide, comprising two storeys over a basement and attics. This is flanked by symmetrical single-storey links, each four windows wide and raised on basements, which project slightly forward and are taller than the five-window pavilions that terminate each end, set back from the north front. The plan is of double-pile construction to the centre, with corner rooms and a central projection from the entrance hall extending to the stair hall, flanked by axial passages running east and west. The south front features a large saloon with a canted projection, echoed in its north wall. The service pavilions originally contained stables to the west and kitchens to the east.

The 1812 alterations infilled the west link with a Great Library facing south, two small rooms facing north, and an arcaded top-lit domed passage between them. A similar passage was inserted in the east link, with a new Dining Room facing south, specifically designed to display the Kit Kat Club portraits (now in the National Portrait Gallery, London) in two rows, with two small rooms to the north. The west stable pavilion was converted to domestic use, with a new stable block constructed further to the west.

The architectural transformation is striking. The symmetrical north front features alternating projections and recesses. The seven-window central block has a slight three-window central projection repeated in the high blocking course, which is pierced by three windows set within wide segmental recesses. The lower five-window end pavilions, set back, feature slight three-window central projections topped with triangular pediments and cupolas (the east pavilion carries a bell in the cupola and clock face in the pediment; the west has a wind-vane with wind-dial in the pediment). The infill blocks step up towards the centre, projecting slightly forward of the main house and continuing its base. A cornice runs at the level of the outer pavilions, continuing across the main house at first floor level and breaking forward as a deep single-storey pedimented tetrastyle Greek Doric portico, approached by ten steps, with fluted columns and paired columns flanking the centre. The infill blocks are treated in a tripartite triumphal arch motif, each centre section comprising a tetrastyle Greek Doric screen in antis with a wide segmental opening above (set with a bust) and a central round-headed niche in a recessed wall, flanked by windows. The outer elements are wide niches with windows set within them. Recessed sash windows throughout have square heads and six-over-six panes generally, reducing to three-over-three in the end pavilions.

The garden front is simpler, with the same wide segmental recesses at attic level in the main house echoed in shallow segmental recesses at the centre of each three-window infill block. A segmental full-height bay projects from the middle of the main house, and a single-storey hexastyle Ionic portico with a central flight of eight steps extends across, with an upper level continued by a railed balcony on short iron columns along the front of the Great Library and Dining Room, terminating in swept stairs descending to the garden. The pavilion rears are unemphasised. The garden front is extended by a colonnaded conservatory to the east and blind colonnading screening the service yard to the west.

Original 18th-century interiors survive in the entrance hall, which features a vigorous plaster ceiling and carved stone chimneypiece in baroque taste, with a diagonal chequered floor of black and white marble, and in a small north-east room with a deep coved ceiling decorated with vigorous plasterwork. Heavy mahogany doors throughout the main house are enriched with egg-and-dart carving around six fielded panels, while doors of the 1812 work feature simpler moulded panelling. A cantilevered wooden semi-circular staircase with ironwork balustrade rises through a top-lit domed cylindrical shaft to the upper landing. Fixed in the west end of the saloon is a large pietra dura table with foliate gilt supports and mirror below. Enriched plaster cornices, moulded architraves, skirtings and dados are throughout, with polished hardwood plank floors.

The Great Library contains an Egyptian-style chimneypiece in red granite, presented to William Baker II by Robert Fagan, British Consul in Palermo, following his daughter's marriage to Baker's son. The chimneypiece displays a wings motif on its crosspiece and features two standing male ancient Egyptian figures as caryatids supporting the moulded shelf.

Also retained are: a large marble classical plaque depicting a warrior reclining on a couch with shield, a seated female leaning over to kiss his arm, and a male figure turning away in the background; a plaster copy of this plaque; two marble stands that originally supported busts in the Great Library; and two carved stone tripods of differing heights. Enriched moulded window shutters have been reused on the north front at basement level. A collection of small oval relief plaques is set within the walls of the passage backing the Great Library, arranged within a tripartite composition of grey scaglioli columns (unfluted Greek Doric) with a central segmental arch.