High House

High House is a country house of mid-18th-century date, visited by Mrs Lybbe Powys in 1756. It stands on the Holkham estate and may occupy the site of a 17th-century manor house belonging to the Spelman family.

The house was substantially refaced and internally altered from 1823 onwards as part of ambitious Greek Revival schemes. The principal work was undertaken around 1829 by the architect W.J. Donthorn for Anthony Hamond. The building is constructed of high-quality Holkham estate gault brick with stucco dressings and pantiled roofs.

The plan is U-shaped with a Greek Revival centre and Palladian north ranges. The south front is arranged as a two-storey elevation with basement and piano nobile, while the lateral north wings rise to three storeys. The U-plan centre has five central bays with single-bay returned wings. The ground floor contains two central windows and flanking single windows to the piano nobile, all sashes with glazing bars. The piano nobile has central tripartite windows and flanking single windows. Abstract brick pilaster articulation between the piano nobile openings features Greek Doric capitals and entablature in stucco. A central porch has angle pilasters, a flat parapet roof, and a six-panel raised and fielded door with pilastered architrave surround.

The returned wings have single ground-floor windows and tripartite piano nobile windows with pilaster divisions and margin lights, all sashes with glazing bars set under flat rubbed brick arches. These details replaced mid-18th-century Venetian windows and an external staircase with a piano nobile Gibbs-surround door, recorded in a print of 1820. A first-floor plat-band and mid-18th-century crenellated parapet run around the entire house. The east and west returns of the centre each have one large circa-1829 sash window lighting an internal piano nobile gallery, comprising two plate glass sashes and one blocked painted sash. The plan has a U-shaped hipped roof.

To the rear, on the line of the original rear range, are two mid-18th-century lateral three-storey three-bay wings, all with sashes and glazing bars and central Gibbs-surround windows, battlemented parapets, and double-pile hipped roofs. A 13-bay north range follows, with a three-bay basement and piano nobile centre containing three large sashes with glazing bars and hipped roof, flanked by two two-storey link wings with hipped roofs and three-storey end wings, all featuring sashes with glazing bars.

The interior retains a mid-18th-century piano nobile villa-like arrangement on the south front, reworked by Donthorn with an internal staircase rising from the ground-floor entrance to a first-floor gallery. The staircase has four bays with pilaster articulation and a segmental coffered ceiling, with a landing screen of three Delos Ionic columns in antis with two antae, surmounted by a coat of arms with scroll work. The piano nobile gallery comprises five cubes each measuring 18 feet, as described in 1756, recast as an extremely abstract Greek Revival trabiated interior. The internal north wall elevation has two Delos Ionic half-columns with flanking piers on the axis of the staircase screen, and two fireplace bays framed with abstract pilaster strips (the fireplaces themselves replaced in the 20th century). East and west windows are framed by Delos Ionic antae. The wings to the south retain mid-18th-century rooms to the north and circa-1829 pilastered compartment-ceiling rooms to the south, with fine mahogany doors throughout. The entire piano nobile is floored with hexagonal Ketton stone flags, supported on ground-floor vaults.

On axis with the staircase is a central three-bay Dining Room, a fine mid-18th-century interior described in 1756, featuring a pulvinated and coved Rococo frieze and central rose with a head of Medusa in a wreath and Greek lettering reading "Solonos". The room has a mid-18th-century marble fireplace with lugged angles. The east and west wings contain mid-18th-century staircases.