Fig. 178.—HOUGHTON. The Upper Part of Staircase.
The stately front (Fig. [179]) is some 600 ft. in extent, and is the more striking in that it is a continuous façade, and not broken up into the usual three parts, consisting of the house and two outlying wings. The memory of the old curved colonnades is preserved in the convex portions which connect the end towers with the front. The central block is not so much an adaptation as a copy of Campbell’s second design for Wanstead (“Vit. Brit.,” i. 24, 25), with the omission of the cupola and of one window in the length of the wings. It is rendered personal to the builder by the introduction of his arms in the pediment, and the Wentworth motto, “Mea gloria fides,” in the frieze. To whatever extent Flitcroft may have borrowed his materials, it cannot be denied that he has blended them together with noble results.
In the interior there is a fine saloon (Fig. [180]), which recalls Campbell’s stone hall at Houghton. Its variety of treatment is in strong contrast to the cold-looking hall which contains the staircase (Fig. [181]). Both these apartments have the defect of their qualities. There is so much architecture that there is scarcely room for those homely touches which endear a house to its occupants. The architect is more in evidence than the family. The splendour which stimulates the admiration of the stranger palls upon the eye that sees it daily; the feelings cease to answer to the stimulus. Grand rooms like these seem to demand an impossible series of grand functions, or at the least that old-fashioned custom of keeping open house which once prevailed at Wentworth Woodhouse.
Fig. 179.—WENTWORTH WOODHOUSE, Yorkshire, 1740.
Fig. 180.—WENTWORTH WOODHOUSE. The Saloon.
Fig. 181.—Wentworth Woodhouse. The Staircase Hall.
