The Menagerie

THE MENAGERIE

Garden building. Late 1750s, attributed to Thomas Wright, built for the 2nd Earl of Halifax. Restored 1975–1979 and 1980–1982 when extended.

Constructed of local limestone ashlar with better quality limestone dressings, possibly Ketton stone, slate roofs, and a brick end stack to the rear. The building comprises a central block with two end pavilions linked by screen walls, arranged as a single-storey 13-bay range.

The central block breaks forward slightly and displays an open pediment with a canted bay beneath, originally roofed in lead with raised vermiculated panels and now reproduced in fibreglass. This bay contains a central part-panelled and glazed door with a round-arched head and frostwork keyblock, flanked by sash windows with similar heads and keyblocks to the canted sides. The centre is approached by a grass mound. To either side are lower bays with half-pediments and lean-to roofs, each containing a 12-pane sash with blocked surrounds and heads, vermiculated keyblocks, blank balustrades to bases and pedestals. A moulded plinth, sill band, and band at the level and springing of bay and door heads run across the elevation, with a base moulding of half-pediments carried across the centre as a string course, continued across the canted bay at the base of the blocking cornice. The central pediment features a blank panel with feet.

The three-bay screen walls on either side have round-arched gateways flanked by niches with frostwork keyblocks. The gateway bays break forward slightly, with raised and blocked surrounds displaying vermiculation, frostwork and dropped keyblocks. The end pavilions have small square windows with oversized blocked surrounds, frostwork to the base panel and blocking, and pyramidal roofs crowned with ball-and-spear finials.

Extensions one room deep have been built behind the screen walls, whose archways are now glazed. The pavilions have been duplicated in rendered brick to the rear. The rear elevation of the main block is constructed of red brick in English bond. The side bays project forward on this elevation with hipped roofs and frame a terrace approached by steps, with further steps down to the basement. The centre has a pair of round-headed niches at terrace level. The bays either side were originally windowless with doorways to the terrace on their inner return sides, but sash windows were inserted around 1980. Trellis screens to the new wings date from the same period.

The interior saloon features fine plasterwork probably by Thomas Roberts of Oxford, restored by Christopher Hobbs and Leonard Stead and Son of Bradford. The saloon has "aisles" with openings to the main space framed by fluted Roman Doric columns supporting a full entablature to the lintels, which display a triglyph frieze and martial emblems to the metopes. The openings are flanked by niches which originally held four great urns representing the animals of the four parts of the world, made of plaster and painted to resemble bronze (as recorded by Horace Walpole). These have been recreated. Bas-relief panels above the niches display trophies of weapons appropriate to each of the Four Continents. The dado features egg-and-dart ornament to its base, continued around the base of the columns, and a wave pattern to the rail. The cornice of the entablature to the columns is carried around the room below a deep cove adorned with medallions hung by bows bearing symbols of the Zodiac, framed by sprays matched to each symbol. The summer signs are positioned over the window wall, whilst the midwinter sign is placed over the chimneypiece.

The ceiling depicts Father Time with a scythe holding the symbol of Eternity, with the Four Winds at each corner. Apollo's head in a sunburst ornaments the ceiling of the bay. Acanthus scrolls and cornucopia decorate the angles of the cove. The chimneypiece is of hard plaster painted to resemble porphyry, with a central panel bearing a laurel wreath and a pedimented overmantel framing glass. The opposite bay has garlands over the windows and door with musical instruments depicted on pendant drops either side. Side-rooms have rosettes to the ceilings of vestibule alcoves leading to terrace doors. Central doors have been pierced in walls facing the saloon openings, where sideboards may originally have stood.

The saloon was originally used as a banqueting room, with music probably played in the bay. The basement, where food was originally prepared, retains a brick groin vault beneath the main room below the saloon.

The building was designed both as a banqueting house and as an eyecatcher for Horton House (now demolished). The menagerie itself was housed behind the building in a circular enclosure just over 2 acres in extent, described by Horace Walpole in 1763 as "a little wood, prettily disposed with many basons of gold fish". Four of these circular ponds survive, and a garden in the manner of Thomas Wright has been laid out on the site.

The Menagerie has been attributed in the past to Daniel Garrett, but can confidently be ascribed to Wright, who received payments from Lord Halifax in 1754, 1756 and 1757.