EXTRACTS FROM THE BOOK: HAREWOOD HOUSE BY MARY MAUCHELINE

 

Page 29

Richard Sykes had stressed the importance of the work of an Overseer and a Carpenter or ‘Head joiner’. The estate carpenter, James Sanderson, proved himself during these four years well able to undertake the arduous and exacting work of choosing, measuring and assembling the timber required. Even more important was the Master Mason and here Lascelles’s choice was the Muschamp family, resident in Harewood and well known for their skill, which won both the older Muschamp and his son John the appreciation and respect of the two Carrs. The Muschamps contracted at cut-price rates, but even so Lascelles wrote to his steward: 'You will find Muschamp makes..,l2d p(e)r day clear out of the labor of all his Men who work Cornice, Back and Front Work. I don’t doubt making a much better Bargain for my house.'

Page 32

Apart from the Gawthorp stables and his interest in Plompton, it is likely that Lascelles carried out some minor alterations to the Old Hall at Gawthorp itself. John Carr seems to have designed a Garden House and done some work on the doorway of the Hall, where a portico, executed by Muschamp, was measured off by Carr, the usual check made by an architect or superintendent of the work before payment was made to a mason.

Page 45

Work began early in 1759. On 6th January John Wood and his partner were paid £2 13s Od for 231yd ‘of digging at East End’, the first payment by Popplewell for ‘The New House at Gawthorp’. A note signed by Muschamp records that the foundation stone was laid on 23 March, a ceremony carried out by Edwin Lascelles himself.

Page 47

In the autumn of 1763 John Muschamp’s work included the setting up of the East Wing cornice and ‘making the gutter deeper for more fall’.

Page 49/50

John Carr and John Muschamp were possibly the most able partnership of architect and master mason in the north of England at this time. Under their direction a small team of about a dozen local masons worked regularly throughout the years of building, from 1759 until 1772, and were part of the establishment of the estate. William Burland, John Cryer, Jonathan Drake, Thomas Kendall, William Lofthouse, Thomas Muschamp, Robert Pullen and Richard Waters were all living within the bounds of Harewood parish and Cryers and Kendalls had lived there since the seventeenth century.

These were craftsmen of skill and competence, working under expert guidance. In the rusticated basement, where the prominent, dressed stones or rusticks were set in recessed mortar courses, each rustick was carefully matched for colour. Thirty of them ‘work’d for the outside not being a good colour’ were set aside for the walls in Carr’s inner court on the east side of the house, where the defect would not be so obvious as on an exterior elevation. Muschamp estimated in December 1760 that the labor of reducing the length of these stones from 15 to l3 in for use in the court should employ only one of his men for no more than nine days at the usual wage of 1s 6d a day.

Page 50/51/52

All the stone work was also undertaken by contract. John Muschamp agreed to build rustick work at 6s a foot, and ashlar work at 5d. According to his ‘note of all the particulars of the masonry inside and outside the house’, the present exterior walls of Harewood House (apart from the nineteenth-century additions) were faced with stone at the prices quoted; in the base storey there were 11,740ft of rusticated work and, for the principal and attic storeys above, 56,488ft of ashlar, cut in the large blocks characteristic of north-country building. Muschamp had also contracted for the three main staircases at 8d a foot, with a reduction of 1d for the ‘plainer steps’ of a fourth staircase situated in the West Wing, and for the erection of the chimney tops, with the great arches over the Gallery which supported them. The chimneys had the ‘inside of the funnels work’d circular’. His account came to £3,570 6s 6d. There was, however, an additional charge of £240 8s 10d for alterations.

A second and quite separate ‘bill of particulars’ gives details of the masonry in the foundations. Here stonework was less important than brick and the bill was correspondingly lower. Rough walling, in which the thickness varied from 1ft 6in to 5ft 6in and the prices accordingly from 5s to 11s 9d a rood, some stones dressed on one or both sides, the arches in the cellars and the flagging of drains at 3d a rood cost in all £137 12s 2d: the account included in fact 'everything but the hewn work' in the foundations.

Muschamp's charge for the masonry of the basic structure of the house amounted, therefore, to £4,238 10s 11d. John Carr approved the work and set his neat yet florid signature to Muschamp's bill. Carr was paid his annual fee of £60 ‘for his drawings and attendance’ and a further £2 14s Od was given by Popplewell ‘for his man’s board when measuring off’. Lascelles must have considered his new house sufficiently advanced early in 1765 to warrant the customary present to the master mason ‘at the rearing’, for in the first week of February Popplewell paid 5 guineas to Muschamp ‘allowed by Edwin Lascelles Esquire, when the House was roofed’. Muschamp himself noted three separate dates for the completion of the roof, June and October of 1763 for that over the east and west wings respectively, and September 1764 for the main body of the house.

The most significant item in these ‘bills of particulars’ submitted by Dodgson and Muschamp is the reference in both to alterations. These were occasioned by the crisis of 1762 when the brickwork and masonry of the square and semicircular courts had to be taken down so that all the structure might be strengthened. A major reconstruction of the plan of the house followed.

Dodgson's bill, while stating merely that the alterations are included, stresses throughout that the thickness of the foundations was everywhere ‘reduced by contract to one and a half bricks’. Muschamp’s bill is quite explicit; his rusticated and ashlar work in the courts was taken down; 134ft of the masonry was ‘set up again’ at 2d a rood, but 6,602ft of ‘ashlar work'd circular’ was removed at an expense of 5¹/₂d a ft and there is no mention that it was reused.

The extent of the unforeseen labor involved is clear from the interim payments made to the two men during the years 1759-65. Dodgson’s payment on account for the year ending November 1762 was conspicuously higher than any other of the annual. disbursements noted by Popplewell. Muschamp received in June 1762, £240 10s Od, a figure in excess of several sums paid over to him throughout the period.

Page 67

Walker, the joiner, made ‘stretching frames for the pictures of the staircase’ in August 1772, and Muschamp erected the scaffolding so that they could be eased into place on the walls, Rothwell and his partner Henderson did both plain and decorative work. In all, Rothwell's plasterers laid about 14,000yd of flooring, in the house and wings, apart from the basement. There the floors were flagged by Muschamp with some assistance from one Josiah Craven, a local quarry owner, a churchwarden and a specialist in flagging drains and floors.

Page 83

Details of Muschamp’s ‘extra work’ on the principal storey suggest that there may in fact have been two chimney- pieces installed in the room, the second replacing the first after an interval of four years, a possible explanation for the number of designs made.

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Muschamp John II.

Page 118

Repton’s drawings and plans for the buildings in the grounds are mostly dated 1801 and remained unexecuted. His imposing Main Entrance was so altered in execution by Carr and Muschamp that Repton was deeply chagrined. He felt humiliated and said so. In 1810, seven years after the completion of the New Main Entrance, ‘Beau’ Lascelles planned a rebuilding of it in the grand manner of the early eighteenth century. His idea was drawn out by John Muschamp Junior, Clerk of the works, but never put into effect, a fortunate circumstance since it was completely out of keeping with the village, the house and the whole environment.

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