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.
Gregory family Gregory Gregory (1786–1854) was born Gregory Williams, adopting the surname Gregory when he inherited his uncle's estates. His father was William Gregory Williams (1742–1814) and his mother Olivia Preston (1758–1835). In 1822, Gregory inherited Harlaxton Manor and other property from his uncle George de Ligne Gregory (1740–1822). 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
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. From 1984 to 2024, Harlaxton Manor was the site of the annual Harlaxton Medieval Symposium, an interdisciplinary symposium on medieval art, literature and architecture. This event was relocated to Madingley Hall, Cambridge, in 2024. The house and gardens are occasionally opened for public tours.
Architecture and description
Nicholas Antram, in his revised Lincolnshire volume of the Pevsner Buildings of England published in 2002, describes the approach to Harlaxton Manor as a "crescendo of effects". From the entrance gates on the A607, just outside of the village of Harlaxton, the drive descends into a valley before crossing a serpentine lake by way of a five-arch bridge. It then passes the kitchen gardens before going through an outer gatehouse. It continues past the stables before entering the cour d'honneur through a second, double, gatehouse, described by Antram as a "pyrotechnic display". The visitor is then confronted by the "towering façade" of the main house. Gregory employed three of the major architects of the Victorian era to achieve his effects; Anthony Salvin was responsible for the majority of the exterior work, Edward Blore was consulted, and William Burn undertook the conservatory and the kitchen range. There is debate among architectural historians as to who was responsible for the design of the interiors. Salvin had been dismissed by the time of their fitting out, and Burn seems unlikely. Historic England suggests that Gregory "acted largely as his own architect" and Antram and Mark Girouard agree that Gregory must have made a major contribution. But Jill Allibone, Salvin's biographer, is certain that Gregory alone could not have been responsible for the extraordinary designs.
The house cost Gregory in the region of £100,000, (£ in adjusted for inflation) a large outlay for a landowner with an annual income of £12,000, but as it had been over 30 years in the planning and as building was undertaken at a leisurely pace, the sum was affordable from his income.
Exterior Harlaxton is built to an Elizabethan E-plan. The foundation stone of the main central block was laid by Gregory in 1832 and the house was complete externally by 1837. All of this is by Anthony Salvin, with Gregory's input. The main construction materials are Ancaster stone, ashlar and brick. Salvin enhanced the drama of the entrance front by making the entry at basement level, the corresponding garden elevation behind opens directly onto a parterre. The main architectural style is that of an Elizabethan or Jacobethan prodigy house, such as nearby Burghley or Wollaton Hall in Nottinghamshire, although with notable European influences. Mark Girouard, in his 1979 study, The Victorian Country House, records that Gregory had visited "Bramshill, Hardwick, Hatfield, Knole, Burghley, Wollaton, Kirby Longleat, Temple Newsam and the Oxford and Cambridge colleges " in pursuit of Elizabethan inspiration. The uniqueness of Harlaxton, however, is the fusion of Elizabethan and Jacobean styles with the architecture and design of the Baroque. Girouard notes that this blending continues "in varying proportions all through the house" and suggests David Bryce, William Burn's chief assistant, as a possible source.
Entrance front
The entrance front consists of a central block with a two-storey oriel window flanked by three-storey towers with bay windows and topped by cupolas. The doorway is framed by two pilasters. Behind this there is a square tower, with an octagonal turret containing a clock and again finishing in a cupola. The sources for all of these elements can be traced: the overall impression is of Burghley House; the pilasters are a direct lift from a 16th-century German architectural work, the Architectura by Wendel Dietterlin, a copy of which Gregory is known to have owned; the oriel is from Hengrave Hall in Suffolk. Antram also identifies elements from Northumberland House and from Stonyhurst. Girouard writes, "the resulting impression of power, exuberance and abundance is sensational". To the left is a service wing by Burn, which is visually balanced by a gazebo to the right, drawn from Wollaton Hall.
Inner and outer gatehouses By the time Gregory came to begin the building of the entrance to the cour d'honneur, Salvin had been dismissed. The reason for this is unclear, but the consensus among architectural historians is that disagreements about Gregory's future plans for the design and decoration of his house led to an estrangement. After some consultation with Edward Blore, Gregory employed William Burn. Historic England credits Burn, his assistant David Bryce, and Gregory himself with the design of the gateway. Antram considers the lodges and screen to be unlike anything else in England of that date, and comparable only to the work of John Vanbrugh at Blenheim Palace. The central gateway is flanked by two pavilions with pierced archways and larger lodges to each side. The outer lodges are topped by "scrolled consoles [supporting] sacrophagi...the scale gargantuan".
The outer gatehouse is earlier and was designed by Salvin in a much more restrained Tudor Revival style.
Interior