Harewood House
Harewood House is a country house in Harewood near Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Designed by architects John Carr and Robert Adam, it was built, between 1759 and 1771, for Edwin Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood, a wealthy West Indian plantation and slave-owner. The landscape was designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown and spans at Harewood.
Still home to the Lascelles family, Harewood House is a member of the Treasure Houses of England, a marketing consortium for ten of the foremost historic homes in the country. The house is a Grade I listed building and a number of features in the grounds and courtyard have been listed as Grade I, II and II*.
History
Early history
The Harewood estate was created in its present size by the merging of two adjacent estates, the Harewood Castle estate based on Harewood Castle and the Gawthorpe estate based on the Gawthorpe Hall manor house. The properties were combined when the Wentworths of Gawthorpe, who had inherited that estate from the Gascoignes, bought the neighbouring Harewood estate from the Ryther family. The combined estate was subsequently sold to the London merchant Sir John Cutler in 1696, after whose death it passed to the Boulter family. They in turn sold it to the Lascelles in 1721.The Lascelles family
In the late seventeenth century members of the Lascelles family purchased plantations in the West Indies, and the income generated allowed Henry Lascelles to purchase the estate in 1738; his son, Edwin Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood, who was a wealthy plantation and slave owner, built the house between 1759 and 1771 to replace Gawthorpe Hall, the original manor house on the estate.Edwin initially employed the services of John Carr, an architect practising in the north of England and previously employed by a number of prominent Yorkshire families to design their new country houses. The foundations were laid in 1759, with the house being largely complete by 1765. The fashionable Robert Adam submitted designs for the interiors, which were approved in 1765. Adam made a number of minor alterations to Carr's designs for the exterior of the building, including internal courtyards. The house remained largely untouched until the 1840s when Sir Charles Barry was employed by Henry Lascelles, 3rd Earl of Harewood, the father of thirteen children, to increase the accommodation. Barry added second storeys to each of the flanking wings to provide extra bedrooms, removed the south portico and created formal parterres and terraces.
20th century
In 1922, Henry Lascelles, Viscount Lascelles married Mary, Princess Royal, the only daughter of George V. Initially living in the nearby Goldsborough Hall, the couple moved permanently into Harewood House at the death of Henry's father in 1929.During the Second World War, the house acted as a resident convalescent hospital but by the late 1940s, the Princess Royal and her family had moved permanently back to Harewood, where the house and gardens were regularly opened to the public and regularly holding concerts connected with musical establishments including the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra and the Leeds Musical Festival, the latter of which the Princess was patron. On 28 March 1965, Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood was walking the grounds of Harewood with her son when she suffered a fatal heart attack. Her elder son, Lord Harewood, the 7th earl, succeeded his father in 1947, and resided at Harewood. He was director of the Royal Opera House and later of the English National Opera; nearer to Harewood, he was a member of the Leeds Music Festival's Executive Committee and a patron of the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra's concerts.
21st century
The house is the family seat of the Lascelles family, and home of David Lascelles, the eighth Earl. The house and grounds have been transferred into a trust ownership structure managed by Harewood House Trust and are open to the public for most of the year. Harewood won a Large Visitor Attraction of the Year award in the 2009 national Excellence in England awards.Harewood houses a collection of paintings by masters of the Italian Renaissance, family portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Hoppner and Sir Thomas Lawrence, and modern art collected by the 7th Earl and Countess. Changing temporary exhibitions are held each season in the Terrace Gallery. Catering facilities in the house include Michelin-starred fine dining.
As well as tours of the house and grounds, Harewood has more than of gardens, including a Himalayan garden and its stupa, an educational bird garden, an adventure playground and the historic All Saints' Church with its alabaster tombs. From May 2007 to October 2008 the grounds contained Yorkshire's first planetarium, the Yorkshire Planetarium.
The Leeds Country Way passes through the Harewood Estate, to the south of the house and lake, as does the route of The White Rose Way.
Popular culture
Artist J. M. W. Turner visited the house and painted the outdoor landscape in watercolour. Rock musician Elton John has performed a concert on the grounds. The house was used as a filming location for the 1991 comedy film King Ralph. Since 1996, part of the estate has been developed as the village in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale, which had been based in two different Yorkshire villages since its inception 24 years earlier. The popular show Victoria from ITV starring Jenna Coleman and Tom Hughes has filmed at Harewood House. On 1 July 2006, Irish vocal pop band Westlife held a concert for their Face to Face Tour supporting their album Face to Face. Harewood House was used as a filming location for the 2019 Downton Abbey film in November 2018. The house was the location for BBC's Mary Berry's Country House at Christmas with Mary Berry, broadcast on Christmas Day 2018.Harewood Bird Garden & Farm Experience
The Bird Garden at Harewood House has a small collection of exotic bird species, of which more than 5 are listed as vulnerable or endangered by the IUCN. It is a member of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums.Birds that can be seen in the garden include Humboldt penguins, Chilean flamingos, Duyvenbode's lories and macaws.