Clive Wainwright

This excerpt from the history of Harlaxton Manor, its construction, interiors and inhabitants, is reproduced from the Harlaxton Manor Guide Book (©Harlaxton College 1984).

The order in which the interiors at Harlaxton were decorated and furnished is as yet unknown, as indeed are the dates of the completion of each room. But as described elsewhere the work of building the house went on for a number of years under a series of architects. In 1838 in his Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour in the Northern Counties of England and Scotland, that eccentric bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin remarked while passing Harlaxton on his way to Belvoir Castle: 'It is built in the Tudor plan of architecture; and no cost is spared for its continuance and completion in the most correct and splendid manner.... Mr Gregory has the rare merit of being chiefly his own architect, with a thorough knowledge of the business in hand. Now and then Mr Blore whispers in his ear.' Blore was certainly consulted though Salvin, Burn and Bryce were far more involved.

One frequently finds in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the owners of great houses are described as being their own architects even when there is irrefutable evidence to the contrary. This was merely a form of flattery by their contemporaries to demonstrate what men of taste such owners were. There are, however, numerous cases where the client played a creative role along with his architects, builders and interior decorators, in some cases taking the place of one or all of them. I would suggest that Dibdin was probably right and that the unifying and driving force at Harlaxton was, in fact, Gregory himself. With the proliferation of architects at Harlaxton and the protracted building campaign only Gregory himself could have sustained the required momentum and provided the aesthetic continuity. It is interesting to note that twenty years before Dibdin made his observation Sir Walter Scott was also consulting Blore along with several other architects over the design of Abbotsford and in that case Scott like Gregory at Harlaxton was the final arbiter.

It is also important to consider the character of the interiors within a house. The traditional way of furnishing them was to match, under the control of the architect, all aspects of their decoration and furnishing to the over-all style of the house. This might be Gothic or Classical or as in the case of Harlaxton, English Renaissance; then the textiles, panelling, furniture, light fittings and so on would be designed and made in the appropriate style. But there were during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a number of houses where the whole character of the interiors was defined by furnishing them with ancient objects and architectural fragments. These are known as 'Antiquarian Interiors' and medieval armour, French Renaissance tapestries, Tudor furniture or Classical Greek sculpture could, for instance, all be used to create them. Objects of one historical style or period were often used together, but in some cases a more eclectic approach was taken. The rooms at Harlaxton were just such interiors. In the case of interiors where all the decoration and furnishings were new, once the designs were drawn up the objects could be supplied and the decoration carried out as quickly as the craftsmen could create them and the architect could oversee the whole process. But where it was a question of buying in antique shops and auction rooms the appropriate furnishings the time scale naturally lengthened and someone had to exercise aesthetic and financial control over what was purchased. This role and that of searching out the appropriate shops was usually taken by the house-owner, though often helped by fellow collectors and the dealers themselves. Thus Gregory in taking on this role was following in the footsteps of Horace Walpole, William Beckford and Sir Walter Scott or, indeed, most relevant of all the Duke of Rutland, the creator of nearby Belvoir Castle.

There are further parallels between Harlaxton and Belvoir: though the former is Gothic in style and the latter Renaissance they both contain ancient continental Baroque and Rococo panelling and indeed, as we shall shortly see, both houses contained ancient furniture in these styles. The Elizabethan Saloon at Belvoir is of the mid 1820s and incorporates actual French eighteenth-century Rococo panelling while the Gold Drawing Room and the Ante-room at Harlaxton though obviously created some years later incorporate very similar panelling. There are a number of similar rooms of the 1830s and 1840s in other houses, the style being known at that time as 'Louis Quatorze'. Harlaxton has incorporated into it various architectural fragments, though because they are decorated to fit in with new work of the 1830s and 1840s they are often difficult to detect. Some are I suspect German or Austrian, others certainly French and Italian, but such stylistic attributions without supporting documentation are difficult to substantiate. As early as the 1820s Christies the auctioneers were holding sales of continental architectural fragments in both wood and stone. For instance the Duke of Devonshire in the 1830s purchased a whole German Baroque room of carved wood at auction in London, it may still be seen in situ at Chatsworth.

It was also common to incorporate ancient stained glass in an 'Antiquarian Interior' and there was certainly some at Harlaxton, though it seems not to have survived. Thomas Willement the celebrated antiquary, heraldic artist, designer and painter of stained glass who supplied the important heraldic window in the Great Hall restored ancient glass for Harlaxton. In September 1843 he recorded, 'One new coat of arms within an old circle of stained glass, making good and re-leading £4.16s' and in January 1844, 'Repair old light adding new inscription white on ruby £2.0.0.' Neither of these panels survive at Harlaxton.

We have no illustrations of the interiors in Gregory's time nor any documentation on where he purchased the furniture. It is not that such information rarely survives for houses of this date, on the contrary it frequently does. For instance, for Pugin's great house Scarisbrick Hall which is exactly contemporary with Harlaxton, the precise bills for the furniture and carvings survive which detail the London dealers from whom they were purchased. Fortunately there still exists the Catalogue of the Gregory Heirlooms consisting of Pictures, Sculpture, Tapestry, Silver Plate, Old French Decorative of the time of Louis XIII, XIV, XV and XVI ... being a portion of the collection formed by the late Gregory Gregory Esq.... The sale took place on 17 June 1878 and was handled by Christies.

The house must have contained far more than the 172 lots described here, for the Catalogue talks of 'a portion' and, for instance, only fourteen paintings were included. Luckily the prices reached and the buyers' names are recorded which should allow some of the objects to be traced. Most of the buyers were, as one might expect, well-known London dealers such as Annoot, Durlacher, and Wertheimer. The sale realised the sum of £18,465 1s 4d. The highest price was the £5,100 Durlacher paid for Lots 112 to 116 which were French eighteenth century Beauvais tapestries depicting Classical scenes one being signed 'F. Boucher' and measuring 11 feet 10 inches by 9 feet 2 inches. Other remarkable objects were Lot 99, a rock-crystal chandelier, for which Wertheimer paid £567 and Lot 78, a 'Pair of Louis XVI Or-molu altar shaped candelabra', for which he paid £609. Annoot paid £315 for Lot 95, a 'Louis XV Library Table' and Taylor £420 for Lot 52, 'An old French State Bedstead . . . covered with old silk tapestry with Diana and Endymion'.

None of the furniture, sculpture, metalwork or tapestries described in the Catalogue are either Tudor, Elizabethan, Jacobean or, indeed, English as one might have expected in a house of this date and style. It should, however, be borne in mind that this follows the pattern at nearby Belvoir and, indeed, the contents of Harlaxton seem to have had much the character of those which furnished that other great English Renaissance house of the same date, namely Mentmore whose contents were so recently and so tragically dispersed. Perhaps further documentation will emerge to alter and expand the brief description of the interiors and furnishings of this remarkable house, but even with the information we now possess we can form some idea of their original grandeur.

Clive Wainwright