Details
SE 3519 and SE 3520 WARMFIELD-CUM-HEATH HEATH COMMON
(north side)
6/60 Heath Hall
14.2.52
GV I
Large country house. c1709 extended and altered 1754-1780 by John Carr for
John Smyth; the wings built up, billiard-room and south porch added c1834 by
Salvin. Ashlar, lead roof. 2 1/2 storeys with basement and cellars. 11-bay
symmetrical facade. 3-bay central block, the original house, has 4 attached
giant Ionic columns and a pediment, the tympanum carved with an achievement of
arms. Porch with consoles and open pediment. Central 5 bays have windows with
eared architraves and cornices. Outer 3 bays are canted and have swept-shouldered
architraves, consoles and cornices with plainer architraves above, and balustraded
parapets. Attic storey has balustraded parapet carried across the facade and
pierced by windows with architraves. 2 stacks to roof, 2 end stacks to left, one
end stack to right. Rear: similarly fenestrated, central 3 bays break forward,
lacking columns, and have raised quoins, central doorway with consoles and cornice
and windows in raised architraves, those to 1st floor eared. Left-hand return:
4 bays; 2 bays of blind windows; attached is single-storey flat-roofed billiard-room
(now kitchen).
Interior: Entrance hall: diamond-set flags; 4 doorways with architraves; fireplace
with eared surround decorated with egg-and-dart moulding; cornice with guttae.
To left, Dining room: beautiful balanced room with apsidal end, round-headed windows
with eared architraves, richly-decorated cornice, panelled dado, walls with applied
carved mouldings, 2 doorways, fireplace with Greek-key ornament and carved surround.
To right, Stairhall: open-well wooden stair slung on iron-girders has 3 barley-sugar
twist balusters to each riser, wreathed-and-ramped handrail, Rococo-carved brackets
to tread ends. 1st-floor band decorated with modified Greek-key ornament interspersed
with foliage. Modillioned ceiling cornice. Archway on consoles to Saloon: a long
well-proportioned room with apsidal ends and 3 bays of arches with fireplace facing
doorway illustrated and authoritively discussed by I. Hall (p16-18). The walls and
ceiling decorated with fine Rococo plasterwork, thought to be by Joseph Rose (the
elder) and Thomas Perritt, the woodwork by Daniel Shillito, and is unsurpassed in
the many houses Carr did (Linstrum, p75). Library: c1778-80, the decoration
influenced by Adam after Carr's work at Harewood House; a long rectangular room,
marble fireplace flanked by doors with carved architraves; ceiling cornice decorated
with anthemion. Study: circular room with curved fittings and door with architrave,
pulvinated frieze and cornice; stone fireplace with false keystone. 1st floor has
other finely decorated rooms particularly the Saloon Chamber: apsidal bay with
eared architraves to 3 windows, carved dado, 3 doorways with good carved bolection-
moulded friezes. One room retains Queen Anne decoration from 1709 house: large
raised panelling, bolection-moulded fireplace and good doorway. Dog-leg back-stair,
possibly reused from 1709 house, has turned balusters and leads to attic with a
range of 12 rooms leading off a central corridor dating from Salvin's alterations
for which he was paid £6,500 in 1834.
Heath Hall, with its pavilions to left and right of the house, forms, with the entrance
gate-piers, a magnificent composition at the top of Heath Common. Historically the
house is extremely interesting as a highly successful C18 enlargement and remodelling
by John Carr and stands as one of his finest houses.
I. Hall ed. Samuel Buck's Yorkshire Sketchbook (facsimile 1979) p142, 143.
I. and E. Hall, Heath (booklet). D. Linstrum, West Yorkshire Architects and
Architecture, (1978) p72-75. N. Pevsner, Yorkshire West Riding (1974) p259.
Listing NGR: SE3555820186
