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Holkham Hall

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Architecture

   Holkham Hall. The severely Palladian south facade with its Ionic
   portico is devoid of arms or motif; not even a blind window is allowed
   to break the void between the windows and roof-line, while the lower
   windows are mere piercings in the stark brickwork. The only hint of
   ornamentation is from the two terminating Venetian windows.
   Enlarge
   Holkham Hall. The severely Palladian south facade with its Ionic
   portico is devoid of arms or motif; not even a blind window is allowed
   to break the void between the windows and roof-line, while the lower
   windows are mere piercings in the stark brickwork. The only hint of
   ornamentation is from the two terminating Venetian windows.

   Holkham Hall, Norfolk, England, is an eighteenth century country house
   constructed in the Palladian style for Thomas Coke^ 1st Earl of
   Leicester^ by the architect William Kent with advice from the architect
   and aristocrat Lord Burlington. Burlington's Chiswick House is the
   prototype for many of England's Palladian revival houses.

   Holkham Hall is one of England's finest examples of the Palladian
   revival style of architecture, the severity of the design being closer
   to Palladio's ideals than many of the other numerous Palladian style
   houses of the period. The Holkham estate, formerly known as Neals, had
   been purchased in 1609 by Sir Edward Coke, the founder of the family
   fortune. It remains today the ancestral home of the Coke family, Earls
   of Leicester of Holkham.

Architects and patron

   The builder of Holkham was Thomas Coke,^ later 1st Earl of Leicester,
   born in 1697. A cultivated, wealthy man, he had made the Grand Tour in
   his youth, being away from England for six years between 1712 and 1718.
   It is thought he first met Burlington, the aristocratic architect at
   the forefront of the Palladian revival movement in England, and William
   Kent in Italy in 1715; it is possible that there in the original home
   of Palladianism, the idea of a new mansion at Holkham was conceived.
   Returning to England with not only a newly acquired library but also
   art and sculpture collections with which to furnish the planned new
   mansion, Coke made disastrous investments in The South Sea Company. The
   resultant notorious losses when the South Sea Bubble burst in 1720 were
   to delay the building of Coke's planned new country estate for over ten
   years. Coke, who had been created Earl of Leicester in 1744, died in
   1759 five years before the completion of Holkham, having never fully
   recovered his financial losses.

   Although Colen Campbell was employed by Thomas Coke in the early 1720s,
   the oldest existing working and construction plans for Holkham were
   drawn by Matthew Brettingham under the supervision of Thomas Coke, in
   1726. These followed the guidelines and ideals for the house as defined
   by Kent and Burlington. The Palladian revival style chosen was at this
   time making its return in England. The style had made a brief
   appearance in England, before the Civil War, introduced by Inigo Jones,
   but following the Restoration had been replaced in popular favour by
   the Baroque style. The "Palladian revival", popular in the 18th
   century, was loosely based on the appearance of the works of the 16th
   century Italian architect Andrea Palladio. It did not, however, adhere
   to his strict rules of proportion. The style eventually evolved into
   what is generally referred to as Georgian, still popular in England
   today. It was the chosen style for numerous houses in both town and
   country. Holkham is exceptional for its severity of design, and closer
   (than most) adherence to Palladio's ideals.

   Thomas Coke, who masterminded the project, delegated the on-site
   architectural duties to the local Norfolk architect Matthew
   Brettingham, who was employed to be the on-site clerk of works.
   Brettingham also seems to have been the retained estate architect prior
   to this date. William Kent was mainly responsible for the interiors of
   the Southwest pavilion, or family wing block, particularly the Long
   Library. Kent also produced a variety of alternative exteriors,
   suggesting a far richer decoration than Thomas Coke wanted. In 1734,
   the foundations were begun, and building was to continue for thirty
   years until in 1764 the great house was completed.

The design of Holkham

   Simplified, unscaled plan of the piano nobile at Holkham, showing the
   four symmetrical wings at each corner of the principal block. 'A'
   Marble Hall; 'B' The Saloon; 'C' Statue Gallery, with circular tribunes
   at each end; 'D' Dining room (the classical apse, gives access to the
   tortuous and discreet route by which the food reached the dining room
   from the distant kitchen), 'E' The South Portico; 'F' The Library in
   the self-contained family wing.
   Enlarge
   Simplified, unscaled plan of the piano nobile at Holkham, showing the
   four symmetrical wings at each corner of the principal block. 'A'
   Marble Hall; 'B' The Saloon; 'C' Statue Gallery, with circular tribunes
   at each end; 'D' Dining room (the classical apse, gives access to the
   tortuous and discreet route by which the food reached the dining room
   from the distant kitchen), 'E' The South Portico; 'F' The Library in
   the self-contained family wing.

   The Palladian style was beloved by Whigs such as Thomas Coke, who liked
   to identify themselves with the Romans of antiquity. William Kent was
   responsible for the external appearance of Holkham. He based the design
   on Palladio’s unbuilt Villa Mocenigo, as it appears in his I Quattro
   Libri dell'Architettura, but with certain modifications. The plans for
   Holkham were of a large central block of two floors only, containing on
   the piano nobile level a series of symmetrically balanced state rooms
   situated around two courtyards. No hint of these courtyards is given
   externally; they are purely for lighting rather than recreation or
   architectural value. This great central block was in turn flanked by
   four smaller, rectangular blocks, or wings, and at each of its corners
   linked to the main house not by long colonnades as would have been the
   norm in Palladian architecture, but by short two-storey wings of only
   one bay.

External appearance

   The external appearance of Holkham can best be described as a huge
   Roman palace. However, as with most architectural designs, it is never
   quite that simple. Holkham is a Palladian house, and yet even by
   Palladian standards the external appearance of Holkham is austere and
   devoid of ornament (see illustration). The reasons for this can almost
   certainly be traced to Coke himself. The on-site, supervising architect
   of Holkham, Matthew Brettingham, related that Coke required and
   demanded "commodiousness", which can be interpreted as comfort. Hence
   rooms that were adequately lit by one window, had only one, as a second
   may have improved the external appearance but would have made a room
   cold or draughty. As a result the few windows on the piano nobile,
   although symmetrically placed and balanced, appear lost in a sea of
   brickwork; albeit these yellow bricks were cast as exact replicas of
   ancient Roman bricks expressly for Holkham. Above the windows of the
   piano nobile, where on a true Palladian structure the windows of a
   mezzanine would be, there is nothing. The reason for this is the double
   height of the state rooms on the piano nobile; however, not even a
   blind window is permitted to alleviate the severity of the facade. On
   the ground floor, the rusticated walls are pierced by small windows
   more reminiscent of a prison than a grand house. One architectural
   commentator, Nigel Nicolson, has described the house as appearing as
   functional as a Prussian riding school.
   Holkham Hall. Foreground right: One of the four identical secondary
   wings.
   Enlarge
   Holkham Hall. Foreground right: One of the four identical secondary
   wings.

   The principal, or South facade, is 344  feet (104.9  m) in length (from
   each of the flanking wings to the other), its austerity relieved on the
   piano nobile level only by a great six- columned portico. Each end of
   the central block is terminated by a slight projection, containing a
   Venetian window surmounted by a single storey square tower and capped
   roof, similar to those employed by Inigo Jones at Wilton House nearly a
   century earlier. Interestingly, a near identical portico was designed
   by Inigo Jones and Isaac de Caus for the Palladian front at Wilton, but
   this was never executed.

   The flanking wings (illustrated right), containing service and
   secondary rooms, are externally identical: three bays, each separated
   from the other by a narrow recess in the elevation. Each of the three
   bays is surmounted by an unadorned pediment. The composition of stone,
   recesses, pediments and chimneys of the four blocks is almost
   reminiscent of the English Baroque style in favour ten years earlier,
   employed by Sir John Vanbrugh at Seaton Delaval Hall. One of these
   wings, as at the later Kedleston Hall, was a self-contained country
   house to accommodate the family when the state rooms and central block
   were not in use.

Interior

   Inside the house, the Palladian form reaches a height and grandeur
   seldom seen in any other house in England—a deliberate contrast to the
   austere facades. What is remarkable is that this unique grandeur is
   obtained with an absence of excessive ornament. The house is entered
   through the "Marble" Hall (the chief building fabric is in fact
   Derbyshire alabaster), modelled by Kent on a Roman basilica. The room
   is 50 feet (15.2 m) from floor to ceiling and is dominated by the broad
   white marble flight of steps leading to the surrounding gallery, or
   peristyle: here alabaster Ionic columns support the gilded roof and
   ceiling, copied from a design by Inigo Jones, inspired by the Pantheon
   in Rome. The fluted columns are thought to be replicas of those in the
   Temple of Fortuna Virilis, also in Rome. Around the hall are statues in
   niches; these are predominantly plaster copies of ancient classical
   deities.

   The hall's flight of steps lead to the piano nobile and state rooms.
   The grandest, the saloon, is situated immediately behind the great
   portico, with its walls lined with Genoa velvet and a coffered, gilded
   ceiling. In this room hangs Rubens's Return from Egypt. On his Grand
   Tour, the 1st Earl acquired a collection of Greek and Roman sculpture
   which is contained in the massive "Statue Gallery", which runs the full
   length of the house north to south. The North Dining Room, a cube room
   of 27 feet (8.2 m) contains an Axminster carpet that perfectly mirrors
   the pattern of the ceiling above. A bust of Aelius Verus, set in a
   niche in the wall of this room, was found during the restoration at
   Nettuno. A classical apse gives the room an almost temple air. The apse
   in fact contains concealed access to the labyrinth of corridors and
   narrow stairs that lead to the distant kitchens and service areas of
   the house. Each corner of the east side of the principal block contains
   a square salon lit by a huge Venetian window, one of them — the
   Landscape Room — hung with paintings by Claude Lorrain and Nicolas
   Poussin. Much of the furniture in the state rooms was also designed by
   William Kent, in a stately classicising baroque manner.

   So restrained is the interior decoration of the state rooms, or in the
   words of James Lees-Milne, "chaste", that the smaller, more intimate
   rooms in the family's private south-west wing were decorated in similar
   vein, without being overpowering. The long library running the full
   length of the wing still contains the collection of books acquired by
   Thomas Coke on his Grand Tour through Italy, where he saw for the first
   time the Palladian villas which were to inspire Holkham.

Holkham today

   The Coke Monument. In the grounds of Holkham Hall, pictured in 1999.
   Enlarge
   The Coke Monument. In the grounds of Holkham Hall, pictured in 1999.

   The cost of the construction of Holkham is thought to have been in the
   region of £90,000 (allowing for inflation, approximately £8m in 2006).
   This vast cost nearly ruined the heirs of the 1st Earl, but had the
   result that they were financially unable to alter the house to suit the
   whims of taste. Thus, the house has remained almost untouched since its
   completion in 1764. Today this perfect, if severe, example of
   Palladianism is a thriving private estate. Though open to the public
   for tours, it is still the family home of the Earls of Leicester of
   Holkham.
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