Heath House
HEATH HOUSE, HEATH COMMON
Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places
Overview
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II*
- List Entry Number:
- 1200517
- Date first listed:
- 14-Feb-1952
- List Entry Name:
- Heath House
- Statutory Address:
- HEATH HOUSE, HEATH COMMON
Location
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Images of England Project
- Date:
- 2001-06-18
- Reference:
- IOE01/04347/19
- Rights:
- © Mrs Mavis Watkin. Source: Historic England Archive
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Discover moreOfficial list entry
- Heritage Category:
- Listed Building
- Grade:
- II*
- List Entry Number:
- 1200517
- Date first listed:
- 14-Feb-1952
- Date of most recent amendment:
- 27-Aug-1986
- List Entry Name:
- Heath House
- Statutory Address 1:
- HEATH HOUSE, HEATH COMMON
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.
Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.
For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.
The scope of legal protection for listed buildings
This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.
Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.
For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.
Location
- Statutory Address:
- HEATH HOUSE, HEATH COMMON
The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.
- District:
- Wakefield (Metropolitan Authority)
- Parish:
- Warmfield cum Heath
- National Grid Reference:
- SE 35378 20141
Details
SE 3519 and SE 3520 WARMFIELD-CUM-HEATH HEATH COMMON (west side)
6/90 Heath House (formerly 14.2.52 listed as "Heath Old Hall"
GV II*
Large country house. Mid C17 refenestrated and with addition forming a new front c1744. By James Paine for the Hopkinson family. Ashlar front, hammer- dressed stone to rear, Welsh blue-slate and lead flat roof. Palladian Villa style. 2 1/2 storeys with cellars. 5-bay symmetrical facade. Rusticated basement; plinth, 1st-floor band and window-head cornice. Central 3 bays have pediment carried on 3/4-attached giant Ionic columns and 1/4 pilasters; the wider flanking bays terminate with coupled pilasters. Basement: central semicircular- arched doorway, bays either side have rectangular flat-arched windows, 1st bay altered mid C19 with inserted 2-light bay window, niches below corner pilasters. Piano nobile: central window has segmental pediment on consoles those to bays 2 and 4 have plain heads with same above to attic; those to bays 1 and 5 have shouldered architraves, consoles and triangular pediments, with a window with architrave above. Entablature, cornice, blocking course. Hipped roof. Rear, earlier house: 3-cell hall with projecting crosswings. Windows altered to sashes, 2 coped gables, that to right has large external stack. Returns of C18 house in same style as front, though simple. Left-hand return, of earlier house, has 3 bays of sash windows with plain-stone surrounds and external lateral stack between 2nd and 3rd bays. Other lateral stack to right-hand return. Two other concealed stacks to north and south of stair-well.
Interior: much C19 decoration to ground floor: central door opens into square entrance hall with stilted-arched central doorway and doorways either side with architraves, dentil cornice. Set behind is top-lit stair-hall with stone cantilevered open-well stair with C19 decorative cast-iron balusters; doorway leads off to the left to dog-leg service-stair; doorway to right to large room with segmental-arched recess in which is doorway with architrave with niches either side, richly-moulded cornice. The original house to rear provided the service rooms and 3 rooms have stop-chamfered beamed ceilings. The 1st floor of the C18 house has the principal apartments: lofty well-proportioned rooms with fluted architraves, 6-panel doors, dado-rails, skirtings, panelled window surrounds and casement-moulded cornices. The rear rooms have panelled dados. Access to the 2nd floor is by means of the service stair only. The low rooms on this floor were bedrooms and retain original C18 fittings, moulded dados, panelled doors, shutters, window seats, and chimneypieces enriched with later Georgian paper-mache decoration.
Peter Leach has noted the significance of Heath House as being James Paine's first fully-unaided commission on record. Marcus Binney considers Heath House as Paine's second individual work after Serlby Hall (Nottinghamshire) c1740 and shows it to have great significance as the successful prototype facade Paine used again in Northumberland shortly after for Belford Hall and the south front of Gosforth Park. Heath House symbolises in every way the flowering C18 quality of the village, the extension and improvement of older buildings and the most expert utilisation of local raised quality stone. The house is of national importance, both historically and architecturally. Heath House appears in the 1st volume of the architect's own work: J. Paine, Plans, Elevations and Sections of Noblemen and Gentlemen's Houses, (1761) pl.LXI and LXII (Republished Gregg Press 1967). P. Leach, public lecture to York Georgian Society Feb. 23 1974. Paine is expertly discussed in 3 Country Life articles: M. Binney, "The Villas of James Paine, I, II and III", Country Life Feb. 20 1969, Feb. 27 1969, March 6 1969 more esp. pp406f. I. Hall, Heath (booklet) D. Linstrum, West Yorkshire Architects and Architecture (1978) p69. N. Pevsner, Yorkshire West Riding, (1974) p259.
Listing NGR: SE3537820141
Legacy
The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.
- Legacy System number:
- 342395
- Legacy System:
- LBS
Sources
Books and journals
Linstrum, D, West Yorkshire Architects and Architecture, (1978)
Hall, I, E, , Heath, ()
Paine, J, Plans Elevations and Sections of Noblemen and Gentlemen's Houses (1761), (1767)
Pevsner, N, Radcliffe, E, The Buildings of England: Yorkshire: The West Riding, (1967)
Country Life in 20 February, (1969)
Country Life in 27 February, (1969)
Country Life in 6 March, (1969), 406
Other
Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England, Part 45 West Yorkshire,
Legal
This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.
Map
This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale. This copy shows the entry on 09-Jun-2026 at 17:11:34.
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