Baldersby Park House

Baldersby Park House is a large house built between 1718 and 1721, with significant alterations in the 19th century and 20th centuries. It was designed by Coten Campbell for Sir William Robinson. Constructed of ashlar stone with a Westmorland slate roof, the house is an early and important example of the Palladian style.

The house comprises a five-bay square principal block, which projects forward, flanked by three-bay pavilions and connecting wings. The central three bays feature four attached giant fluted Ionic columns that support an entablature and a dentil-moulded triangular pediment adorned with scrolled foliage and deep eaves. A parapet with balustrade tops the facade, and a flat roof with gable and chimneys is present. The main entrance is a panelled double door flanked by pilasters with an entablature above a radial fanlight set within an architrave. Windows are plate glass sashes, with architraves featuring triangular pediments on the ground floor and eared, shouldered architraves on the first floor.

The left return has five bays continuing the front's style, while the left return has seven narrower bays with largely 19th and 20th-century openings, except for the central door with Ionic frosted-rusticated columns, an entablature, and a triangular pediment. The wings to the left and right of the main block each feature a colonnade of four Ionic columns; the left wing's colonnade is now glazed. Above is a balustrade and a large Diocletian window with blind outer lights on the first floor. The pavilions, each of two storeys and three bays, have central tripartite windows with triangular pediments on the ground floor, with one partly blocked and concealed by ivy.

Inside, the front room on the left side contains a marble fireplace with draped caryatids and lamps. The corresponding room on the right has a marble fireplace with Corinthian columns and a mask with vine leaves. A front room in the left wing features a heavily altered fireplace, possibly incorporating a 16th-century frieze of putti and a shield in a strapwork surround, with a marble plaque depicting Adam and Eve. Alterations include the removal of a partition wall to enlarge the front room on the left, shifting the fireplace to centralise it. 18th and 19th-century extensions extend to the rear of the house. Originally known as Newby Park, it is considered the first villa built in England in the Palladian style. George Hudson, the “Railway King,” acquired the estate from the Earl de Grey in 1845 and sold it to Viscount Downe in 1854.