Harlaxton Manor is a Victorian country house in Harlaxton, Lincolnshire, England. The house was built for Gregory Gregory, a local squire and businessman. Gregory employed two of the leading architects of Victorian England, Anthony Salvin and William Burn and consulted a third, Edward Blore, during its construction. Its architecture, which combines elements of Jacobean and Elizabethan styles with Baroque decoration, makes it unique among England's Jacobethan houses. Harlaxton is a Grade I listed building on the National Heritage List for England, and many other structures on the estate are also listed. The surrounding park and gardens are listed Grade II* on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. It is now the British campus of the University of Evansville.

History

Harlaxton is first recorded in Domesday Book as Harleston. The current mansion is the second Harlaxton Manor. The first was built on a different site during the 14th century and was used as a hunting lodge by John of Gaunt. By 1619, Sir Daniel de Ligne purchased the manor. The original house was deserted after 1780; it was inherited by Gregory Gregory, and was torn down in 1857. The original Harlaxton Manor was an ancient building in need of repair and so Gregory did not move to the house, living at the nearby Hungerton Hall. In 1831, he commissioned the architect Anthony Salvin to build his mansion, a process which took 20 years. Unmarried, childless, with no interest in traditional country pursuits, and averse to socialising and entertaining, Gregory developed an all-consuming passion for the building of Harlaxton, and the acquisition of architectural elements, paintings, furniture and glass to fit it out. The diarist Charles Greville, visiting during the house's construction in the 1830s, recorded Gregory's obsessive approach, [see box].

In 1851, Gregory moved into the completed manor with a staff of fourteen servants including a butler, a housekeeper, three footmen, seven domestic maids and two grooms. By 1854, he was dead. The house was inherited by his cousin, George Gregory. Gregory had loathed his distant relation and attempted to bequeath Harlaxton to a friend but was unable to break the entail on the estate. George Gregory (1775–1860) had been born in London, son of Daniel Gregory (1747–1819). George did not follow his father's occupation as a merchant and instead bought an estate in Lincolnshire. In 1825 at the age of 50, he married Elizabeth Price, twenty years his junior. They moved to Harlaxton after he received his inheritance. With other owners of large houses in the area, George decided to open the house to visitors. George died in 1860 at the manor and another distant relative, John Sherwin Gregory, inherited the house.

John Sherwin Gregory (1803–1869) was born John Sherwin Longden. His father was John Longden and his mother was Charlotte Mettam. His father had inherited Bramcote Manor in Nottinghamshire. When his father died in 1818, John received the Bramcote property, changing his surname to Sherwin, becoming John Sherwin Sherwin. In 1829 he married Catherine Holden. The couple lived at Bramcote until inheriting Harlaxton in 1860, at which point Sherwin again changed his surname, becoming John Sherwin Gregory.

John died in 1869 and Catherine continued to live at Harlaxton Manor until her death in 1892 at the age of 86. Her obituary recorded that she was highly regarded as a benefactor, both of the church at Harlaxton and of the sick and poor of the parish. When she died in 1892, Thomas Sherwin Pearson, who was the second cousin and godson of John Sherwin Gregory, inherited the manor. Thomas added Gregory to his surname, becoming Thomas Sherwin Pearson Gregory (1851–1935). He was born in Barwell, Leicestershire, son of General Thomas Hooke Pearson and Francis Elizabeth Ashby Mettam. Thomas' grandfather the Reverend George Mettam was the brother of John Sherwin Gregory's mother Charlotte Mettam and was John's second cousin. Thomas was educated at Rugby and the University of Oxford, becoming a first-class cricketer. In 1885, he married Mabel Laura Payne and, in his inheritance in 1892, moved to Harlaxton with his wife and their son Philip John Sherwin Pearson-Gregory (1888–1955), who himself inherited the estate in 1935. Philip decided not to live in the house and, following an auction of the contents which lasted three days, it was sold in 1937.

20th century

Violet Van der Elst, a businesswoman and inventor, made her money from developing the first brushless shaving cream and made her name by campaigning against capital punishment. She restored the house, having renamed it Grantham Castle, and had it wired for electricity, before losing almost all of her fortune in what the writer Simon Jenkins terms "obsessive litigation". During the Second World War, Harlaxton was requisitioned by the British government as the officers' mess for RAF Harlaxton and later to house a company of the 1st Airborne Division. In 1948, Harlaxton was purchased by the Society of Jesus, who used it as a novitiate. Stanford University leased Harlaxton Manor from the Jesuits in 1965, and with only 80 students in its first year, it was the first American university in Great Britain. Stanford used the manor as part of its British study abroad programme but the relative isolation of the house made it unpopular and the programme relocated to Cliveden in Berkshire in 1969.

University of Evansville

thumb|upright=1.4|Harlaxton College, side view

Harlaxton is now owned by the University of Evansville, operating as Harlaxton College, and is the base for their study-abroad programme. A number of other American universities also use the estate. Evansville began using the property in 1971 as its British campus, but it was bought personally by William Ridgway, a trustee of the university, and held by him until he donated it to the university in 1986. Immediately after the purchase the university began renovating the entire facility.

The house was technologically advanced; a miniature railway, originally used to transport brick from Gregory's kilns to the house, and subsequently used to move coal, was run into the house on a viaduct and continued into the roof spaces to supply the internal coal bunkers.

Great hall

Entry to the house is through Salvin's entrance hall, set at basement level. Stairs rise to the first floor where the great hall is entered through a stone screens passage. The main inspiration for what Gregory called the Barons' hall, is that at Audley End House in Essex, but the design and decoration has decidedly Baroque elements such as the "muscular atlantes" supporting the roof trusses. Other decorative elements are more traditional, the stained glass in the window is by Thomas Willement and depicts Gregory's heraldry and ancestry. The chandelier is a later introduction, bought by Mrs Van Elst, when its transportation to the intended destination, a palace in Madrid, was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War.

Gold drawing room

Louis XV style in decoration, as are most of the state rooms, this drawing room may have been created to emulate the Elizabeth saloon at nearby Belvoir Castle. The decoration may be by John Crace.

Cedar staircase

thumb|right|upright=1.4|The Cedar Staircase

The Cedar staircase is placed within a tower that is invisible externally. It appears to rise three full storeys in what Michael Hall, in his 2009 study, The Victorian Country House calls an, "astonishingly theatrical tour de force". This is in fact a trompe-l'œil illusion, as the upper storey is merely a decorative device and leads nowhere, culminating in a fake sky. The decoration is entirely Baroque; "swagged curtains interlaced with thriving putti blowing trumpets and supporting huge scallop shells". Franklin notes that the style would amaze in a German church but is extraordinary in an English country house. The plasterwork, here and elsewhere in the house, is possibly by the firm of Bernasconi, a London-based firm of Italian origin. An alternative theory is that Salvin, who is known to have visited Bavaria in 1835, brought back local German craftsmen to undertake the work, but architectural historians favour the former suggestion. The Bernasconi Company certainly had the necessary experience, having been employed at both Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.

Listing designations

The manor is listed at Grade I To the north-west of Harlaxton Manor, the bridge 800 metres from the house is listed Grade II*, as is the gatehouse 400 metres away and its attached boundary walls. The gateway and screen wall 1,200 metres north-west of the manor are listed Grade II. The statue at the head of the ornamental garden steps 50 metres south-west of the manor and the twelve stone benches in the garden to the south-west of the forecourt are both listed Grade II. The ornamental garden steps 50 metres south-west of the manor are listed Grade II*.

To the south of Harlaxton Manor, the garden loggia and the loggia's steps and trough 90 metres to the south of the house are listed Grade II. The gazebo 80 metres south of the manor is listed Grade II*. The steps to the east and the west of the gazebo 80 metres south of the manor are listed Grade II. The Baroque terrace fountain and statues 25 metres south-east of the manor are listed Grade II*.

<gallery widths="180px" heights="180px">

ExpoLight-Harlaxton-Manor-0009C (Sample Proof-Photography.jpg|Entrance gate, frontage

Harlaxton Manor Forecourt (geograph 4596122).jpg|The inner gates onto the forecourt

Gateway lodge on road to Harlaxton College (geograph 6279044).jpg|Salvin's Tudor outer gatehouse

Harlaxton Manor, The Cedar Staircase (26061813217).jpg|The Cedar Staircase

Harlaxton Manor, Father Time (27063837848).jpg|Father Time, at the top of the Cedar Stair, holding a plan of Harlaxton

Harlaxton Manor ceiling (27064127588).jpg|Ceiling to the Gold Drawing Room

Harlaxton Manor, Ceiling of Ante Room (26061801407).jpg|Ceiling to the Ante Room

Harlaxton Manor, south west panorama (26062059087).jpg|The garden front

Conservatory from the south west (geograph 3595801).jpg|Burn's conservatory

Service viaduct - geograph.org.uk - 2005453.jpg|The service viaduct which carries the miniature railway into the house

Lion portrait - 3 (geograph 3595793).jpg|One of the "Harlaxton lions" - introduced by Violet Van der Elst

Harlaxton Manor at sunset.jpg|Harlaxton Manor at sunset

</gallery>

Notes

References

Sources

  • Harlaxton College website
  • Archive newsreel of Harlaxton Manor interior and exterior – 1939
  • Flickr photos tagged Harlaxton Manor
  • Photos of Harlaxton Manor and surrounding area on geograph
  • History and Heritage
  • Harlaxton Medieval Symposium