Nuneham House

Nuneham House is a country house, now a conference centre, in Nuneham Courtenay. It was built in 1757 by the architect Stiff Leadbetter for the 1st Earl Harcourt, with interiors designed by James Stuart. The building was substantially altered in 1781 by Lancelot Brown and Henry Holland for the 2nd Earl, and extended in 1832 by Sir Robert Smirke for Archbishop Harcourt.

The house is constructed in limestone ashlar with Welsh-slate roofs and ashlar stacks. It comprises a double-depth main block with quadrant links connecting to pavilions, with the south pavilion enlarged. The composition rises to 3 storeys plus an attic, with the pavilions also reaching 3 storeys.

The south front presents a symmetrical facade of 7 windows, with the middle 3 bays breaking forward beneath a triangular pediment enclosing an oculus, now flanked by a balustraded parapet added in 1904. The original cornice survives. Second-floor windows have moulded architraves and appear to have been enlarged. The ground-floor openings were destroyed by a 2-storey projecting extension of 1904, built above Smirke's rusticated 3-bay entrance arcade. The hipped roof has dormers added at its sides.

The 2-storey quadrant links feature an arcaded ground floor. The pavilions, each of 3 by 3 bays, have plain storey bands at first-floor level with moulded sill bands and moulded architraves; the upper floor and cornice were added by Brown, and the plain parapets by Smirke. The left pavilion is extended. A 5-window return wall to the right of the main block displays 2 floors of architraved sashes above a projecting arcaded ground floor added by Brown. The 3-window left return wall features a similar terrace with a Venetian window flanked by arched sashes, originally shown as square-headed.

The garden front has a projecting middle section with sashes in canted sides and 3 Venetian windows in the central and flanking bays. These windows have arches breaking through the frieze and cornice in the manner of Hadrian's Aqueduct at Athens, with Greek-Ionic columns—described as "the first direct quote from Ancient Greece in English architecture" and the first use of that order. The extended south pavilion's 9-window garden front breaks forward twice in a 4:1:3:1 arrangement, with a triangular pediment above the 3-bay section, which also features cornices on its first-floor architraves.

The interior contains Holland's outstanding oval 3-storey staircase, which has a cantilevered stone stair with a wrought-iron balustrade, plaster-panelled walls with fruit-and-flower drops, and a ceiling with large festoons in the cove and an oval domelight. This staircase was built to provide access to the piano nobile after the removal of Leadbetter's external double staircase.

Stuart's Great Drawing Room retains a compartmented ceiling modelled on the Banqueting House, with fluted Ionic columns and pilasters to the windows. The marble fireplace, traditionally attributed to Paul Sandby but recently attributed to Stuart, displays a frieze of medallions and festoons matching the room's decoration.

The Octagonal Salon, with its high coved ceiling, also displays rich decoration by Stuart, later embellished by Holland. It contains a 18th-century fireplace added recently.

The Dining Room, remodelled and enlarged by Holland, retains Stuart's fine marble fireplace featuring an eared egg-and-dart architrave, a large dentil cornice supported on lion-mask consoles, and a deep frieze with medallions and crossed torches. The compartmented ceiling has lost Holland's festoons from the cove. The room's extension is marked by 2 scagliola Composite columns in antis.

Many other rooms, including Smirke's extension, contain fine doorcases, fireplaces, and coved ceilings. Leadbetter's design was illustrated in Vitrivius Britannicus. The house, conceived as a villa in a Classical setting, became the focal point of one of Lancelot Brown's earliest landscape designs. Nuneham Park is registered as a Grade I garden in the HBMC County Register of Gardens.