Matthew Brettingham - Kedleston Hall

Kedleston Hall

Sir Nathaniel Curzon, later 1st Baron Scarsdale, commissioned Brettingham in 1759 to design a great country house. Thirty years before a prospective design for a new Kedleston Hall had been drawn up by James Gibbs, one of the leading architects of the day, but Curzon wanted his new house to match the style and taste of Holkham. Lord Leicester, Holkham's owner and Brettingham's employer, was a particular hero of Curzon's. Curzon was a Tory from a very old Derbyshire family, and he wished to create a showpiece to rival the nearby Chatsworth House owned by the Whig Duke of Devonshire, whose family were relative newcomers in the county, having arrived little more than two hundred years earlier. However, the Duke of Devonshire's influence, wealth, and title were far superior to Curzon's, and Curzon was unable to complete his house or to match the Devonshires' influence (William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, had been Prime Minister in the 1750s). This commission might have been the ultimate accolade Brettingham was seeking, to recreate Holkham but this time with full credit. Kedleston Hall was designed by Brettingham on a plan by Palladio for the unbuilt Villa Mocenigo. The design by Brettingham, similar to that of Holkham Hall, was for a massive principal central block flanked by four secondary wings, each a miniature country house, themselves linked by quadrant corridors. From the outset of the project, Curzon seems to have presented Brettingham with rivals. In 1759, while Brettingham was still supervising the construction of the initial phase, the northeast family block, Curzon employed architect James Paine, the most notable architect of the day, to supervise the kitchen block and quadrants. Paine also went on to supervise the construction of Brettingham's great north front. However, this was a critical moment for architecture in England. Palladianism was being challenged by a new taste for neoclassical designs, one exponent of which was Robert Adam. Curzon had met Adam as early as 1758, and had been impressed by the young architect newly returned from Rome. He employed Adam to design some garden pavilions for the new Kedleston. So impressed was Curzon by Adam's work that by April 1760 he had put Adam in sole charge of the design of the new mansion, replacing both Brettingham and Paine. Adam completed the north facade of the mansion much as Brettingham had designed it, only altering Brettingham's intended portico. The basic layout of the house remained loyal to Brettingham's original plan, although only two of the proposed four secondary wings were executed.

Brettingham moved on to other projects. In the 1760s, he was approached by his most illustrious patron, the Duke of York (brother of King George III), to design one of the greatest mansions in Pall Mall, namely York House. The rectangular mansion that Brettingham designed was built in the Palladian style on two principal floors, with the state rooms as at Norfolk House, arranged in a circuit around the central staircase hall. The house was a mere pastiche of Norfolk House, but for Brettingham it had the kudos of a royal occupant.