Harewood House

En un regard

Le château en bref

Harewood House stands at Harewood, between Leeds and Harrogate, at the heart of a vast park overlooking the Wharfe valley. This great country house is one of the most remarkable of the English 18th century, the fruit of a collaboration between the architect John Carr, who designed the main block from 1759, and Robert Adam, author of the wings and most of the interiors. The ensemble combines a Palladian north front of seventeen bays, with a pediment carried by a giant Corinthian order, and a south front remodelled around 1843 by Sir Charles Barry, who also added the great Italianate terrace. The interiors retain ceilings by Adam, plasterwork by Joseph Rose, paintings by Angelica Kauffmann and Biagio Rebecca, and furniture by Thomas Chippendale. Still linked to the Lascelles family, Earls of Harewood, the house is run by the Harewood House Trust, an educational charity that opens it to the public. Its history is also inseparable from the colonial fortune of the Lascelles, drawn from West Indian plantations and the slave trade, an aspect the listing entry explicitly emphasises. The park, designed by Capability Brown, is itself listed Grade I.