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Matthew Brettingham

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   Holkham Hall. Matthew Brettingham's first notable employment was here
   as Clerk of the Works and executive architect in 1739.
   Enlarge
   Holkham Hall. Matthew Brettingham's first notable employment was here
   as Clerk of the Works and executive architect in 1739.

   Matthew Brettingham (1699–1769), sometimes called Matthew Brettingham
   the Elder, was an 18th century Englishman who rose from humble origins
   to supervise the construction of Holkham Hall, eventually becoming one
   of the country's better known architects of his generation. Much of his
   principal work is now demolished, especially his work in London where
   he revolutionised the design of the grand townhouse. As a result he is
   often overlooked today, remembered only for his Palladian remodelling
   of numerous country houses, many of which are situated in the East
   Anglian area of Britain. As the pinnacle of Brettingham's career came
   into sight, Palladianism began to fall out of fashion and neoclassicism
   was introduced, championed by a young Robert Adam.

Early life

   Brettingham was born in 1699, the son of Launcelot Brettingham, a
   bricklayer living in Norwich, the county town of Norfolk, England. His
   early life is little documented and one of the earliest recorded
   references to him is in 1719, when he and his brother Robert were
   admitted as freemen to the city of Norwich as bricklayers. A critic of
   Brettingham's at this time claimed that the work was so poor that it
   was not worth the nine shillings a week he was paid as a craftsman
   bricklayer. Whatever the quality of his bricklaying, he soon advanced
   himself and became a building contractor.

Local contractor

   During the early eighteenth century, a building contractor was far more
   responsible than the title suggests today. A contractor often designed,
   built, and oversaw all details of construction to completion.
   Architects, often called surveyors, were employed only for the grandest
   and largest of buildings. By 1730, Brettingham is referred to as a
   surveyor and as working on more important structures than cottages and
   agricultural buildings. In 1731, it is recorded he was paid £112 for
   his work on Norwich Gaol. From then, he appears to have worked
   regularly as the surveyor to the Justices (the contemporary local
   authority) on public buildings and bridges through to the 1740s. One
   project from this time was the remodelling of the Shire House in
   Norwich. Brettingham had been employed to redesign and oversee the
   project. His work on this building, which was in the gothic style and
   showed a versatility of design rare for Brettingham, was to result in a
   protracted court case that was to rumble on through a large part of his
   life, with unfounded allegations of financial discrepancies. In 1755,
   the case was eventually closed, and Brettingham was left several
   hundred pounds out of pocket, and with a stain — if only a local one —
   on his character. Transcripts of the case suggest it was Brettingham's
   brother Robert, to whom he had subcontracted, who may have been the
   cause of the allegations.

Architect

   There is no evidence that Brettingham ever formally studied
   architecture or even travelled abroad. The Dictionary of National
   Biography reports him as having made two study trips abroad. However,
   this assumption was made on the strength of an anonymous book now
   ascribed to someone else, and the other because of confusion with his
   son Matthew Brettingham the Younger.

   In 1734, Brettingham had his first great opportunity, when two of the
   foremost Palladian architects of the day, William Kent and Lord
   Burlington, were collaboratively designing a grandiose Palladian
   country palace at Holkham in Norfolk for Thomas Coke, first Earl of
   Leicester. Brettingham was appointed Clerk of Works, a position he was
   to retain until the completion of Holkham Hall in 1764. The illustrious
   architects were mostly absent; indeed Burlington was more of an
   idealist than an architect, and thus Brettingham and the patron Lord
   Leicester worked on the project together: the practical Brettingham
   interpreting the plans of the architects to Leicester's requirements.
   It was at Holkham that Brettingham first worked with the fashionable
   Palladian style, which was to be his trademark. Holkham was to be
   Brettingham's vaulting horse to fame, as it was through his association
   with it that he came to the note of other local patrons.

   Brettingham was commissioned in 1740 to redesign Langley Hall, a
   mansion standing in its own parkland in South Norfolk. Brettingham's
   resultant design was very much in the Palladian style of Holkham,
   though much smaller: a large principal central block linked to two
   flanking secondary wings by short corridors. Ironically the corner
   towers, while similar to those later designed by Brettingham at Euston
   Hall, were the work of a later owner and architect. The neoclassical
   lodges were a later addition, by Sir John Soane. Brettingham began work
   in 1745 on the construction of Hanworth Hall, Norfolk, which again is
   in the Palladian style, with a five-bay facade of brick with the centre
   three bays projected with a pediment. (similar to that at Gunton
   pictured below)
   Gunton Hall, designed by Matthew Brettingham.
   Enlarge
   Gunton Hall, designed by Matthew Brettingham.

   In 1745 Brettingham designed Gunton Hall in Norfolk for Sir William
   Harbourd, three years after the former house on the site was gutted by
   fire. The new house of brick had a principal facade like that of
   Hanworth Hall, which had five bays and a projected and pedimented
   centre. However, this larger house was seven bays deep, and had a large
   service wing on its western side.

   In 1750, now well-known, the architect received an important commission
   to remodel Euston Hall, coincidentally in East Anglia, the Norfolk
   country seat of the influential Duke of Grafton. The original house,
   built circa 1666 in the French style, was built around a central court
   with large pavilions at each corner. While keeping the original layout,
   Brettingham formalised the fenestration and imposed a more classically
   severe order whereby the pavilions were transformed to towers in the
   Palladian fashion (similar to those of Inigo Jones's at Wilton House)
   and the pavilion's domes were replaced by low pyramid roofs similar to
   those at Holkham. Brettingham also created the large service courtyard
   at Euston that now acts as the entrance court to the mansion, which
   today is only a fraction of its former size.

   The Euston commission seems to have brought Brettingham firmly to the
   notice of other wealthy patrons. In 1754, he began designing a new
   picture gallery for the Earl of Egremont at Petworth House, Suffolk,
   and continued work intermittently at Petworth for the next nine years.

The London House

   From 1747, Brettingham operated from London as well as Norwich. This
   period marks a turning point in his career, as he was now no longer
   designing country houses and farm buildings just for the local
   aristocrats and the Norfolk gentry, but for the greater aristocracy
   based in London.

   One of Brettingham's greatest solo commissions came when he was asked
   to design a town house for the Duke of Norfolk in St. James's Square,
   London. Completed in 1756, the exterior of this mansion was similar to
   those of many of the great palazzi in Italian cities: bland and
   featureless, the piano nobile distinguishable only by its tall
   pedimented windows. This arrangement, devoid of pilasters and a
   pediment giving prominence to the central bays at roof height, was
   initially too severe for the English taste, even by the fashionable
   Palladian standards of the day. Early critics declared the design
   "insipid".

   However, the interior design of Norfolk House was to define the London
   town house for the next century, with a circuit of reception rooms
   around a grand staircase, the staircase hall replacing the Italian
   traditional inner courtyard or two-storey hall. This arrangement of
   salons allowed guests at large parties to circulate, having been
   received at the head of the staircase, without doubling back on
   arriving guests. The second advantage was that while each room had
   access to the next, it also had access to the central stairs, thus
   allowing only one or two rooms to be used at a time for smaller
   functions. Previously, guests in London houses had had to reach the
   principal salon through a long enfilade of minor reception rooms. In
   this square and compact way, Brettingham came close to recreating the
   layout of an original Palladian Villa. He transformed what Palladio had
   conceived of as a country retreat into a London mansion appropriate for
   the lifestyle of the British aristocracy with its reversal of the usual
   Italian domestic pattern of a large palazzo in town, and a smaller
   villa in the country. As happened so often in Brettingham's career,
   Robert Adam later developed this design concept further, and was
   credited with the success. However, Brettingham's plan for Norfolk
   House was to serve as the prototype for many London mansions over the
   following few decades.

   Lord Egremont, for whom Brettingham was working in the country at
   Petworth, gave Brettingham another opportunity to design a grandiose
   London mansion — the Egremont family's town house. Begun in 1759, this
   Palladian palace, known at the time as Egremont House or more modestly
   as 94 Piccadilly, is one of the few of the great London town houses
   still standing. It later came to be known as Cambridge House and was
   the home of Lord Palmerston, then The Naval & Military Club; as of
   2005, it is in the process of conversion to a luxury hotel.

Kedleston Hall

   Kedleston Hall was Brettingham's opportunity to prove himself capable
   of designing a house to rival Holkham Hall. The chance was snatched
   from him by Robert Adam, who completed the North front (above) much as
   Brettingham designed it but with a more dramatic portico.
   Enlarge
   Kedleston Hall was Brettingham's opportunity to prove himself capable
   of designing a house to rival Holkham Hall. The chance was snatched
   from him by Robert Adam, who completed the North front (above) much as
   Brettingham designed it but with a more dramatic portico.

   Sir Nathaniel Curzon, later 1st Baron Scarsdale, having refused a
   prospective design by James Gibbs, one of the leading architects of the
   day, commissioned Brettingham in 1759 to design a great country house
   to equal Holkham Hall. (Lord Leicester, Holkham's owner and
   Brettingham's employer, was a particular hero of Curzon.) 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 he managed neither to complete his house nor to match the
   Devonshire’s influence the William Cavendish, fourth 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 Andrea 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. While Brettingham was still in 1759 supervising the
   construction of the initial phase, the northeast family block, Curzon
   employed the 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 fashion for neoclassical
   designs, one exponent of which was Robert Adam. Curzon had met Adam as
   early as 1758, had been impressed by the young architect newly returned
   from Rome, and 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 octagonal portico to a more dramatic
   six-columned 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's self-confidence may have been restored when, 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.

Legacy

   Its royal occupant may very well have made York House the pinnacle of
   Brettingham's career. Built during the 1760s, it was one of his last
   grand houses. Brettingham died in 1769. This spared him the humiliation
   of witnessing Adam's remodelling of the house in 1780. Throughout his
   long career, Brettingham did much to popularise the Palladian movement.
   His client list included a Royal Duke and at least twenty-one assorted
   peers and peeresses. He is not a household name today largely because
   his provincial work was heavily influenced by Kent and Burlington, and
   unlike his contemporary Giacomo Leoni he did not develop, or was not
   given the opportunity to develop, a strong personal stamp to his work
   on country houses. Ultimately, he and many of his contemporary
   architects were eclipsed by the designs of Robert Adam. Following the
   debacle at Kedleston Hall, Adam went on to replace the unfortunate
   James Paine as architect at Nostell Priory, Alnwick Castle, and Syon
   House. In spite of this, Adam and Paine remained great friends;
   Brettingham's relationships with his fellow architects are unrecorded.

   Brettingham's principal contribution to architecture is perhaps the
   design of the grand town house, unremarkable for its exterior but with
   a circulating plan for reception rooms suitable for entertaining within
   on a forgotten scale of lavishness. Many of these anachronistic palaces
   are now long demolished or have been transformed to other uses and are
   denied to public view. Hence, what little remains in London of his
   unique work is unknown to the general public. Of Brettingham's work,
   only the buildings he remodelled have survived, and for this reason
   Brettingham nowadays tends to be thought of as an "improver" rather
   than an architect of country houses.

   That he enjoyed success in his own lifetime is beyond doubt — Robert
   Adam calculated that when Brettingham sent his son, also Matthew, on
   the Grand Tour, he went with a sum of money in his pocket of around
   £15,000, an enormous amount at the time. However, part of this sum was
   probably used to acquire the statuary in Italy (documented as supplied
   by Matthew Brettingham the Younger) for the nearly completed Holkham
   Hall. Ironically, while the design of that great monumental house,
   which still stands, cannot truly be accredited to him, it is the
   building for which Brettingham is best remembered.
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