1 Summerson, John, The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1986), p. 80 Google Scholar, originally appearing as ‘The Architectural Scene: Royalty, Religion and the Urban Background’, in The Eighteenth Century: Europe in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Cobban, Alfred (London, 1969), pp. 41–94 (p. 87).Google Scholar Summerson, was referring to ‘the movement towards a rational interpretation of antiquity led by Colen Campbell in England from 1715’, and (p. 10) to Campbell's explicit condemnation of Italian seventeenth-century architects in the introduction to the first volume of Vitruvius Britannicus, or The British Architect, 3 vols (London, 1715-25), 1, p. Br [1].Google Scholar Of Lord Burlington's York Assembly Rooms, Summerson wrote: ‘Its classicism — which is to say its Neo-classicism — is totally uncompromising; it owes nothing to English tradition’ (p. 82). The present article, which focuses on the specific issue of the design of Holkham, is not the place for a full discussion of more recent debates concerning the self-conscious return to the ‘Antique’ in early eighteenth-century British architecture in general, or what we might term it.

2 Brettingham, Matthew [the Elder], The Plans, Elevations and Sections, of Holkham in Norfolk (London, 1761)Google Scholar. Brettingham's name appears on all but seven of the twenty-eight images (not all plates are numbered and those that are run to 33, some comprising double spreads), including the section showing the east wall of the Library (pl . 16) and the ‘Arch Gate to the Garden’ [one of the pair of pavilions flanking the south lawn] (no pl. number), for which William Kent's drawings survive (Holkham Archives [hereafter ‘HA’], PM/5 (Library, Fig. 13 here) and 8 and 9 (two drawings of the South Lawn in which the pavilions feature). Intriguingly, in the copy of the book held by the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art at the University of Cambridge, Brettingham's name has been added by hand as architect on pls 19 (the Obelisk and Garden Seat) and 31 (the Triumphal Arch) for which Kent's drawings also exists (HA, PM/2 and 14 respectively). The pen additions are so skilfully done as not to be apparent at first glance.

3 Brettingham, Matthew [the Younger], The Plans, Elevations and Sections, of Holkham in Norfolk, 2nd edn (London, 1773), p. v.Google Scholar One complainant was Horace Walpole, who claimed he had seen Holkham ‘an hundred times in Kent's original drawings’ and called him ‘the real architect’ ( Walpole, Horace, Anecdotes of Painting in England, 2nd edn (London, 1782), IV, p. 243 Google Scholar). The plan and elevations of Holkham were published as by Kent in Woolfe, John and Gandon's, James Vitruvius Britannicus, or the British Vitruvius, v (London, 1771), pls 64–69 Google Scholar. Two years later the younger Brettingham none the less left his father's name on most of the plates of the house itself from the first edition, including the Library, and on most of the incidental structures in the park, including the Bridge and ‘Arch Gate to the Garden', which in his text (p. viii) he acknowledged as the designs of Kent (although no Kent drawing for the Bridge survives).

4 This letter, the original of which is untraced, was addressed to Revd Anthony Freston and must date between 1783, when Freston took holy orders, and the younger Brettingham's death in 1803. It was published by ‘T.W.F.’ in a short article entitled ‘Matthew Brettingham, The Architect of Holkham’, in The East Anglian, 2 (1864), pp. 131–34Google ScholarPubMed, showing that the debate about the authorship of the house's design was present in the nineteenth century as well as in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.

5 Brettingham, , Plans (1773), pls 18 and 24.Google Scholar The four Kent drawings HA, PM/7, 1, 3 and 5, which appear here as Figs 5, 6, 9 and 13, are all discussed below, as is the case of the problematic drawing HA, PM/6 (Fig. 12) and HA, PM/22 (Fig. 10), erroneously illustrated as by Kent in Wittkower, Rudolf, ‘Burlington, Lord and Kent, William’ (1946), reprinted in Palladia and English Palladianism (London, 1974), pp. 114–32 (p. 123, fig. 149).Google Scholar

6 Blomfield, Reginald, A History of Renaissance Architecture in England, 1500-1800, 2 vols (London, 1897), II, pp. 223–30Google Scholar. Blomfield only mentioned Brettingham in connection with publication of the Plans, which he took to be motivated by ‘little else than [self-]advertisement’ (p. 313).

7 Richardson, Albert, Monumental Classic Architecture in Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1914), p. 11.Google Scholar

8 Tipping, H.Avray, English Homes: Period V — Vol. I: Early Georgian, 1714-1760 (London, 1921), pp. 301–22 (p. 317)Google Scholar

9 Kimball, Fiske, ‘Burlington Architectus: Part I’, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 34 (15 October 1927), pp. 675–93; ‘Part II’ (12 November 1927), pp. 14-16 (p. 14).Google Scholar

10 Blomfield, Reginald, ‘Burlington Architectus’, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 35 (26 November 1927), pp. 45–46.Google Scholar

11 Wittkower, , ‘Lord Burlington and William Kent’, p. 115.Google Scholar In addition to mentioning Blomfield (and J. Alfred Gotch), Wittkower (pp. 211-12, n. 3) compiled the following list of British writers who had doubted Burlington's role as a designer of architecture between Kimball's 1927 intervention and his own: Nathaniel Lloyd (1931); T.D. Atkinson (1936); A. Thornton Bishop (1938); and Sacheverell Sitwell (1945).

12 Summerson, John, Architecture in Britain 1530—1830 (Harmondsworth, 1953), p. 204.Google Scholar In the most recent edition (New Haven and London, 1993), see p. 216.

13 Hussey, Christopher, English Country Houses: Early Georgian, 1715-1760 (Feltham, 1955), p. 134.Google Scholar

14 Lees-Milne, James, Earls of Creation, 2nd edn (London, 1986), p. 229.Google Scholar Of Lees-Milne's five ‘earls of creation’ only Burlington and Henry Herbert, ninth Earl of Pembroke, justified entries in Colvin's, Howard A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, 4th edn (New Haven and London, 2008).Google Scholar Allen Bathurst, first Earl of Bathurst, and Edward Harley, second Earl of Oxford, joined Leicester among those aristocrats for whom Colvin could find no evidence of actual architectural design.

15 Schmidt, Leo, ‘Holkham Hall, Norfolk - I’, Country Life, 167 (24 January 1980), pp. 214–17 (p. 215, figs 3-5).Google Scholar The full set (London, British Library [hereafter ‘BL’], Maps K.Top.31.42.b-h) comprises seven drawings (plans of the piano nobile and attic storey, north front elevation, alternative south front elevations — one with steps to the portico, one without — and west and east elevations that differ in their proposed fenestration). They are all reproduced in colour in Schmidt, Leo et al., Holkham (Munich, Berlin, London and New York, 2005), pp. 83–87, figs 40-46.Google Scholar

16 Schmidt, , ‘Holkham Hall, Norfolk - I’, p. 215 Google Scholar, where the drawings are given to Brettingham and dated 1726. The specific link to the 1726 payment to Brettingham was concretized the same year in Schmidt, Leo, Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester: An Eighteenth-Century Amateur Architect (Freiburg, 1980), p. 5.Google Scholar

17 Schmidt, , Thomas Coke, p. 1.Google Scholar

18 Beard, Geoffrey, ‘Holkham Hall, Norfolk’, The Burlington Magazine, 122 (June 1980), pp. 447–48 (p. 448)Google Scholar; Harris, John, ‘The Case against Coke’, Country Life, 168 (7 August 1980), pp. 481–82Google Scholar; and Harris, John, ‘Coke as Architect’, The Burlington Magazine, 122 (September 1980), pp. 635–36.Google Scholar

19 Hiskey, Christine, ‘The Building of Holkham Hall: Newly Discovered Letters’, Architectural History, 40 (1997), pp. 144–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Beard, , ‘Holkham Hall’, p. 448 Google Scholar. Schmidt's thesis has been accepted, for example, in: Wilson, Michael, William Kent: Architect, Designer, Painter, Gardener, 1685-1748 (London, 1984), pp. 174–75Google Scholar; Pevsner, Nikolaus and Wilson, Bill, The Buildings of England - Norfolk 2: North-West and South (New Haven and London, 2002), p. 413 Google Scholar; Cornforth, John, Early Georgian Interiors (New Haven and London, 2004), p. 313 Google Scholar; and in Mowl, Timothy, William Kent: Architect, Designer, Opportunist (London, 2007), p. 223 Google Scholar, where it is suggested that Kent only designed the four pavilions at Holkham, adding these to Coke's 1726 scheme for the principal block. Some doubts have been expressed in Winkley, George, The Country Houses of Norfolk (Lowestoft, 1986), p. 69 Google Scholar, and in Worsley, Giles, Classical Architecture in Britain: The Heroic Age (New Haven and London, 1995), p. 319, n. 37.Google Scholar In his text, however, Worsley simply reproduced one of the British Library drawings (p. 141, fig. 162) as ‘William Kent and others’, assigning the date of 1734.

21 In Rome in spring 1714 Leicester took lessons with Giacomo Mariari for one month, for which purpose he ‘acquired instruments to learn Architecture.’ For a further six weeks in summer 1716 Leicester employed Mariari again, ‘goeing about the town with my master and laming of him architecture’ and ‘drawing cornissh’ (see Lees-Milne, Earls of Creation, pp. 209 and 211).

22 Schmidt, et al., Holkham, pp. 88–92.Google Scholar The unspecified payment to Campbell can be found in HA, A / 7, p. 309. For a concise summary of the conclusions reached in the 2005 book, see Schmidt, Leo, ‘Holkham Hall, Norfolk: The Seat of the Earl of Leicester, Country Life, 200 (6 April 2006), pp. 106–11 (p. 108).Google Scholar

23 BL, Maps K.Top.31.42.c. The watermark in the cover note bears the date 1808, providing a terminus post quern for the putting together of this topographical album (which contains images of Monmouthshire and Norfolk). The King's Library copy of the 1773 Plans remains in the British Library under the classmark 55.i.5.

24 BL, Maps K.T0P.31.42.C, the plan of the attic storey. For closely similar marks, see Heawood, Edward, Watermarks: Mainly of the 17th and 18th Centuries (Hilversum, 1950), p. 106 and pl. 256, no. 1833, dated c. 1758-59, or pl. 258, no. 1838, with a date of c. 1769Google Scholar. In sheets d and f there is a Van der Ley ‘Bend’ watermark that does not appear in Heawood, whilst sheets b and e have a common ‘IV’ watermark.

25 Carlisle, Cumbria Archive Centre [hereafter ‘CAC’], DLONS L/11/2/i8isa proof print of the plan of the Holkham piano nobile from Brettingham's Plans (1761), but annotated by Brettingham by hand. DLONS L11/2/19 shows the ‘North Front of the Earl of Leicester's House at Holkham’ and is virtually identical to the British Library equivalent (Fig. 3 here) but for the inclusion of the wings and a slightly smaller scale. The paper is Van der Ley, not with the ‘Bend’ watermark but with what appears to be the same fleur-de-lis as BL, Maps K.T0P.31.42.C. That watermark is certainly present in DLONS L/11/4/11, the south elevation of Holkham, but the scale there is smaller still than in the British Library equivalents (perhaps because of the omission of the attic windows or of the need to accommodate the wings on the sheets).

26 CAC, DLONS L11/4/22 (Fig. 4 here) and BL, Maps K.Top.3i.42.h (see Schmidt, et al., Holkham, p. 87, fig. 45Google Scholar). The Carlisle sheet has a scarcely legible ‘GR’ watermark; the British Library sibling has none. In both drawings the height of the house to the roofline is 10.9 cm and the width (excluding the portico on the latter) 22 cm. The only significant difference between them lies in the lateral Venetian windows, which are shown with all three lights glazed on the drawing in Carlisle whereas only the central light is open on the British Library version. The near identicality of these two drawings was noted in Colvin, Howard, Crook, J. Mordaunt and Friedman, Terry, Architectural Drawings from Lowther Castle Westmorland, Architectural Monographs, 11 (London, 1980), pp. 31–32, cat. 71.Google Scholar

27 BL, Maps K.Top.31.42.e (see Schmidt, et al., Holkham, p. 86, fig. 43Google Scholar). Colvin et al. associated Fig. 4 with the side of one of Brettingham's plans for a new Lowther Hall (Architectural Drawings cat. 48, which should read cat. 47, illustrated as pl. 13). That Lowther plan did not, however, have Venetian windows with three open lights on the gallery front (or the opposite side either), so it is more likely that the drawing represents the ‘missing’ version of the west front of Holkham imagined without wings, with the fully glazed lateral Venetian windows either a draughting error or intentional variant. Neither the Carlisle nor the British Library drawings show the west front of Holkham as built, where the central Venetian window was placed in a relieving arch (as is shown on CAC, DLONS L11/4/12).

28 See Colvin, et al., Architectural Drawings, p. 29 Google Scholar, cats 46-48 and pls 12 and 13 (the scheme of late summer 1759 for a house comprising a central block based on Holkham, linked by quadrants to two quite separate service wings) and p. 31, cats 61-66 and pls 15-17 the scheme of c. 1763 for Lowther as a version of Holkham with or without a portico and with four wings, either attached in a manner identical to Holkham or with quadrants to the four pavilions.

29 Compare, for example, the way the word ‘Attick’ is written on the plan of Holkham CAC, DLONS L11/2/ 21 and on BL, Maps K.T0P.31.42.C (see Schmidt, , Holkham, p. 84, fig. 41Google Scholar), where the loopy letter ‘d’ and the annotations ‘by’ and ‘Sq.’ are also identical to how they appear on CAC, DLONS L111\l13 (see Colvin, et al., Architectural Drawings, pl. 12 Google Scholar). This evidence reinforces the conclusion reached in Colvin, et al., Architectural Drawings, p. 29 Google Scholar, and by Harris, John ‘The Case against Coke’, p. 482 Google Scholar, and ‘Coke as Architect’, pp. 635-36.Google Scholar Schmidt's defence (‘The Case against Coke’, Country Life, 168 (21 August 1980), p. 642) was to suggest of the Lowther drawings that Brettingham must have ‘deliberately imitated [the late] Coke's handwriting […] for reasons as yet unknown'.

30 See Schmidt, Thomas Coke, pp. 10-13, 19 and cats/figs 41, 42, 46 and 57, especially comparing them with CAC, DLONS L11/4/13 ( Colvin, et al., Architectural Drawings, pl. 12 Google Scholar), and noting, in addition to the handwriting, the hatching for solid walls and a thin line to indicate the glass within window openings.

31 Brettingham, , Plans (1773), p. viii.Google Scholar See Palladio, Andrea, I quattro libri dell'architettura (Venice, 1570), II, p. 60.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., pp. vii-viii and Palladio, J quattro libri, II, p. 66 (correctly p. 78). It has commonly been inferred that the Villa Mocenigo solution was definitely suggested for Holkham (see, for example, Wilson, William Kent, p. 175, and Mowl, William Kent, p. 223).

33 Brettingham, , Plans (1773), p. vi.Google Scholar

34 Kent's elevation of the south front (Fig. 5 here) served as the basis for a print published by Paul Fourdrinier (reproduced in Schmidt et al., Holkham, p. 95, fig. 56) that will be discussed below. The print makes clearer than does the drawing the round or oval windows of the attic storey, surrounded by the frieze decoration.

35 Wittkower, Rudolf, ‘Pseudo-Palladian Elements in English Neoclassicism’ (1943), reprinted in Palladio and English Palladianism (London, 1974), pp. 154–74 (pp. 163-67).Google Scholar Wittkower erroneously attributed the Palladio Villa Valmarana or Gazzotti drawing to Vincenzo Scamozzi. See also Hewlings, Richard, ‘Chiswick House and Gardens: Appearance and Meaning’, in Lord Burlington: Architecture, Art and Life, ed. Barnard, Toby and Clark, Jane (London and Rio Grande, 1995), pp. 1–129 (PP- 8 and 10, figs 3a and 3b).Google Scholar The single Venetian window under a relieving arch was used elsewhere by Palladio and first appears in Burlington's work in the garden front of General Wade's house (1723). The form seems to derive from Palladio's reconstructions of Roman thermae, in which the motif of an arch over alternate entablatures in a colonnade appears framed by a taller arch.

36 See Spence, R.T., ‘Chiswick House and its Gardens, 1726-1732’, The Burlington Magazine, 135 (August 1993), pp. 525–31Google Scholar. The design of Chiswick, probably begun after fire damaged the old house in 1725, was only completed in spring 1726. Another feature, found in the British Library Holkham drawings but apparently not deployed by Campbell, is the use of a horizontal sliver of cornice over the attic windows. This device appears in a design by Inigo Jones owned by Burlington but cannot have been widely known outside his circle until Kent published it in The Designs of lnigo Jones, 2 vols (London, 1727), II, pl. 13 (see Leach, Peter, James Paine (London, 1988), p. 43 Google Scholar). I am grateful to Richard Hewlings for drawing this point to my attention.

37 See Kingsbury, Pamela, Lord Burlington's Town Architecture (London, 1995), pp. 59–72.Google Scholar

38 Sicca, Cirtzia, ‘On William Kent's Roman Sources’, Architectural History, 29 (1986), pp. 134–47 (P. 134)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 In iterations of this riverfront ‘Conference’ room, made during 1739, Kent introduced internal columns. For these and for further detail on the respects in which Kent redeployed his experience of the design of Holkham in his public architecture, see Salmon, Frank, ‘Public Commissions’, in William Kent, 1686-1748: Designing Georgian Britain, ed. Weber, Susan (New Haven and London, forthcoming 2013).Google Scholar

40 Hiskey, , ‘The Building of Holkham’, p. 153.Google Scholar

41 London, Royal Institute of British Architects Drawings Collection, SC 58/67 (House of Lords, illustrated in John Harris, The Palladians [London, 1981], col. pl. 1); Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 147/197 (Queen Caroline's Library).

42 It should noted that the British Library set ‘idealizes’ the Holkham plan, in that the piano nobile (Fig. 2 here) does not incorporate the changes to the dining room that Leicester and Brettingham made in 1753, nor those they made to the marble hall in 1757 — where Kent's original scheme which had remained current since the mid-1730S (see Fig. 9) is preferred.

43 Perhaps, however, Campbell's work of 1725-26 was connected to Leicester's early idea for a house on the model of Palladio's Villa Trissino — a design linked, as was Burlington's nascent Chiswick, to the centralized Villa Rotonda (source for Campbell's own Mereworth Castle, c. 1720-25). In this connection it is worth noting Campbell's inclusion, in the third volume of Vitruvius Britannicus (1725), pl. 53, of a design modelled on the Villa Trissino for the Duke of Richmond's Goodwood. Campbell had worked at Goodwood in 1724 and Leicester and Richmond were friends (see n. 105 below). Alternatively (or additionally), the Villa Trissino scheme could have related to the ‘Plan of a New House’ Brettingham drew in 1726, if that plan was for Holkham at all and not, say, for the new London home Leicester evidently desired to replace Thanet House.

44 See Strangways, Giles, Earl of Ilchester, Lord Hervey and his Friends (London, 1950), p. 73.Google Scholar

45 Hiskey, , ‘The Building of Holkham Hall’, p. 148.Google Scholar

46 Ibid., pp. 146-47.

47 Brettingham, , Plans (1773), pp. vi–vii.Google Scholar

48 Richard Hewlings has pointed out ('Chiswick House and Gardens', p. 24), that what appear to be identical steps had been added to High Meadow in Gloucestershire by the time that house appeared in the second volume of Vitruvius Britannicus in 1717 (pl. 40), speculating that the design of the steps there might have been by Campbell himself. However, it would be uncharacteristic of Campbell not to claim credit for this in his accompanying description — and a further problem concerns the steps as shown on the ground plan (pl. 39), which do not correspond with the elevation. Fourdrinier's engraved version of the south front of Holkham (see n. 34 above) makes clearer that the arrangement was a replica of that at Chiswick than does Kent's elevation (Fig. 5 here), which proposed a variant of curved steps on the left side of the portico.

49 Worsley, Giles, ‘Taking the Ancients Literally: Archaeological Neoclassicism in Mid Eighteenth Century Britain’, in New Light on English Palladianism: Papers Given at the Georgian Group Symposium 1988, ed. Hind, Charles (1990), pp. 64–80, (pp. 73 and 74).Google Scholar See Scamozzi, Vincenzo, L’idea della architettura universale (Venice, 1615), p. 284.Google Scholar Another possible source for the pyramidally-roofed turrets, however, would have been Palladio's Villa Pisani at Bagnolo (see I quattro libri, II, p. 47).

50 Brettingham, , Plans (1773), p. vi.Google Scholar See Barbaro, Daniele, I died libri dell'architettura di M. Vitruvio (Venice, 1556), pp. 132–33.Google Scholar Leicester's copy of the 1556 first edition folio was included in a library sale of 1851; the copy now at Holkham is of the 1567 quarto edition (Holkham BN 137) (see below n. 52).

51 See Worsley, , Classical Architecture, pp. 139–40Google Scholar and fig. 161 (and Barbaro, , I died libri, p. 167 Google Scholar). Schmidt et al., Holkham, pp. 94 and 97, figs 58 and 59, used the same source to conjecture a double-apsed saloon at Holkham with three windows to the south portico, as seen in Kent's elevation (Fig. 5 here). As built, the saloon is rectangular and has five windows to the portico. It is worth noting that the British Library elevations of the south front also have five windows to the south front (Schmidt et al., Holkham, pp. 85-86, figs 42 and 43), further suggesting that they were not drawn before the mid-i730S, since it is more likely that they simply show the windows as existing rather than as a design feature that was first there, then removed, then resumed. Kent, moreover, reused the arrangement of three windows flanked by two niches for the River Thames portico of one of his 1739 designs for a new Parliament House (see National Archives, Work 29/3358, no. 4, illustrated in Salmon, ‘Public Commissions', fig. 33).

52 The only architectural drawing Leicester certainly produced is a tiny sketch in one of his letters to Brettingham, from which no assumptions can be made about his competence as a draughtsman (see Hiskey, , ‘The Building of Holkham Hall’, p. 148 Google Scholar). The architectural books from his library are in general unmarked, although there are some small pencil additions that could be his in the copy of Kent's 1727 Designs of Jones, I, pls 55 and 60 (Holkham BN 2268).

53 See Watkin, David, The Classical Country House (London, 2010), p. 57 Google Scholar, where it is also suggested of the marble hall that ‘Kent's imaginative genius […] translated Coke's ideas into an exciting three-dimensional space’.

54 See Schmidt, et al., Holkham, p. 95, fig. 56.Google Scholar The print is inscribed to Leicester as ‘Lord Lovell’ and must therefore postdate 1728.

55 A copy of the print of the Treasury in the Guildhall Library (London Metropolitan Archives) can be viewed online in the City of London's ‘Collage’ database (http://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk/collage/app (accessed on 24 April 2013)), where it is item 29146. The attributional inscription there reads ‘Gulielmus Kent Archit: et Pict: Invenit et Delin.', the only difference with the Holkham print inscription therefore being the substitution of a colons for stops.

56 See, for example, the illustration of General Wade's House and the note on the Bagnio at Chiswick published by Campbell, in the third volume of Vitruvius Britannicus (London, 1725), pp. 7–8 and pl. 10Google Scholar, and the illustrations annotated ‘Burlington Architectus’ included by Kent in Designs of Inigo Jones, I, pls 70-73 (Chiswick), and II, pls 10-12 (house designs), 51 (Westminster Dormitory), 52-53 (Sevenoaks Almshouse).

57 See Schmidt, et al., Holkham, pp. 110–11, fig. 68.Google Scholar Schmidt took the comment ‘all by Kent’ to refer only to the grounds, even though its position — directly on top of the body of the house — actually separates it from the comments on the landscape features that follow below.

58 See Warburton James, Charles, Chief Justice Coke: His Family and Descendants at Holkham (London, 1929), p. 255.Google Scholar The letter appears to date from 1751.

59 Raynham, the Great Townshend Archive, RAS C2/7. I am very grateful to the Marquess of Townshend for permission to quote from this letter.

60 Schmidt, et al., Holkham, pp. 114–26.Google Scholar

61 It is often stated that the attic storey was removed from the central block of Kent's initial design for Holkham (Fig. 5) but, in fact, the house as built does have the attic rooms on the east side (now known as the 'Nelson Wing’). These are lit by windows in the external face of the east front (overlooking the stable yard) and by discreet windows opening into the eastern inner courtyard. (The equivalent attic spaces on the west side of the central block were encroached upon by the double height of the dining room and gallery tribune domes, and were therefore left as voids with no windows.) The situation on the south front thus simply came to emulate that on the north (see Figs 3 and 6), where the attic storey, although present, was never expressed externally on the facade.

62 Wittkower, , ‘Lord Burlington and William Kent’, p. 123, fig. 149.Google Scholar The drawing is one of a pair with HA, PM/21, which shows the north front without rustication at all above the podium (see Jourdain, Margaret, The Work of William Kent (London, 1948), p. 97, fig. 8Google Scholar). The Coke crest appears pencilled in to the pediment but without detail to suggest whether the drawing pre- or post-dates Leicester's earldom in 1744.

63 As in Kent's elevation of the south front (see Fig. 5), only three windows to the saloon were proposed in this elevation (see n. 51 above).

64 We do not have drawings that show the progression from Figure 10 to the final south front design. HA, PM/34 and 35 is a pair of elevations showing the house as built, perhaps prepared for engraving. The Marble Hall plan that appears below the elevation on PM/35 shows the changes that were effected in 1757 and thus gives a terminus post quern.

65 See Kent, , Designs of Inigo Jones, I, pl. 25 Google Scholar, and, for a drawing in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, of the great east front door of Houghton attributed to Kent, , Moore, Andrew, Houghton Hall: The Prime Minister, the Empress and the Heritage (London, 1996), p. 24, fig. 10.Google Scholar For Colen Campbell and the use of this type of window (the so called ‘Gibbs Surround’), see Hewlings, Richard, ‘The Belvedere, Waldershare Park, Kent’, Georgian Group Journal, 15 (2006), pp. 229–80 (pp. 236-37).Google Scholar

66 Hiskey, , ‘The Building of Holkham’, p. 150.Google Scholar

67 See Bryant, Julius, ‘Country Houses’, in William Kent, 1686-1748: Designing Georgian Britain (forthcoming 2013)Google Scholar, and Mowl, , William Kent, p. 224 Google Scholar, who both consider that the removal of the rustication was a consequence of the decision to build in brick. The younger Brettingham famously accounted for Leicester's rationalization of the use of brick, which corresponded more closely with Vitruvius's praise for the durability and firmness of the material. He also described how the bricks produced from Holkham clay bore a remarkable resemblance to an actual Roman brick inadvertently left in a packing case in which sculpture had been transported from Italy to Norfolk ( Brettingham, , Plans (1773), pp. ix–x Google Scholar).

68 Sicca, , ‘On William Kent's Roman Sources’, p. 145 and fig. 19.Google Scholar It is possible that the annotation ‘this side’ on the left option for the Venetian Window is in Leicester's hand.

69 The frieze detailing suggests the south front (see Fig. 5) rather than the north, although there Kent's elevation includes 25 courses of masonry as opposed to the 16 shown on Figure 12, which also lacks the mezzanine stringcourse linking the tops of the windows. Conceivably Kent intended this drawing as purely indicative of the detail and did not have to hand any of his actual elevations for the house. Alternatively, the drawing might not relate the house at all, perhaps showing a proposed garden structure. It is certain that at least one garden structure designed during Leicester's lifetime remained unbuilt. This was ‘A Building intended on the Chalk Cliff Church Wood’ (see Brettingham, , Plans (1761), pl. 21 Google Scholar). A version of this plate in the archives at Holkham has the pen annotation ‘Junior Invt.’ after the name ‘Brettingham', showing that it was the son who took credit for the design.

70 Hiskey, , ‘The Building of Holkham Hall’, pp. 150–51.Google Scholar From the September 1734 letter it can be deduced that it was Kent who designed the thermal windows at attic level on the east and west sides of the Family Pavilion (and thus in identical positions on the other three pavilions). These elements, which can only be seen from limited angles, are seldom commented on as present at Holkham, although they are, of course, a classic feature of English Palladianism. In another letter, probably written in March 1736, Leicester encouraged Brettingham to collect, whilst in London, ‘your book of Ld. Burlingtons', presumably Fabbriche antiche in which the ‘thermal' language, by then well known to Kent, was first published ( Hiskey, , ‘The Building of Holkham’, p. 151 Google Scholar).

71 See James, , Chief Justice Coke, p. 228: ‘I shall wait upon you with my Portfeuille & make the Signor [Kent] scold, for now we must think of the inside of the rooms’.Google Scholar

72 Hiskey, , ‘The Building of Holkham Hall’, pp. 152–53.Google Scholar On the piano nobile of the family wing Kent designed the ceilings of all six rooms (including that of the library, modelled on the library of the convent of S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, which he and Leicester had visited together). He also designed the chimneypieces of the library and both dressing rooms, the overmantle of the bedchamber and a set of furniture for Lady Leicester's dressing room (see Brettingham, , Plans (1773), pp. 12–14 Google Scholar; Pls 26,27 [28-31] for the ceilings and, for the library chimneypiece, pl. 48).

73 Brettingham, , Plans (1773): Principal Block, pl. 22 Google Scholar (the state bedchamber ceiling); Strangers’ Wing, p. 16 (the chimneypiece and overmantle in the green damask dressing room, and the dove marble chimneypiece in the blue and yellow bedchamber, ‘an idea of Mr Kent's done by Pickford’); New Wing, pls 31 (the blue and the red closet ceilings), 50 (the chimneypieces in the green and the tapestry bedchambers), 51 (the chimneypieces in the yellow and blue and in the red and yellow bedchambers).

74 Schmidt, et al., Holkham, p. 114.Google Scholar In 1749 Stephen Wright was paid £40 for 48 of Kent's drawings relating to the design of the Parliament House and Horse Guards (National Archives, Kew, Work 4/10, letter filed between meetings of 5 and 12 December 1749). The payment of 20 guineas to Brettingham therefore suggests that he had (and considered his property) some 20 to 30 drawings for Holkham by Kent.

75 Norwich, Norfolk Record Office: BL/CS/3/11 and 12, letters of 9 and 17 December 1745 from William Ingram to Charles Case, Mayor of King's Lynn. These letters were recently discovered by Catherine Arbuthnott, who has very kindly shared them with me. Ingram claimed that Brettingham owed him £11 1s. 9d. for drawings made.

76 ‘T.W.F.’, ‘Matthew Brettingham', p. 132. The younger Matthew Brettingham was born in 1725.

77 Hiskey, , ‘The Building of Holkham Hall’, p. 151.Google Scholar Richmond House, Whitehall, was designed by Burlington and built 1733-36.

78 See Brettingham, , Plans (1773), pl. 21 Google Scholar, and Ware, Isaac, Designs oflnigo Jones and Others (London, 1743 [1731]), pl. 20.Google Scholar The Drawing Room ceiling at Holkham (Brettingham, pl. 20), is similarly based on Ware (pl. 13), but with the addition of a frieze from Desgodetz. This book survives in two forms in the Library at Holkham: a pristine 1743 copy (Holkham BN 551) and an unbound collection of the plates (BN 5345) — suggesting that the actual production of designs (tracing, enlarging, adapting) took place from working copies of books in Brettingham's quarters, not from those on the shelves of Leicester's Library.

79 Hiskey, , ‘The Building of Holkham Hall’, p. 154.Google Scholar Wilson, , William Kent, p. 178 Google Scholar, has pointed out that the painting on cloth could have been for Thanet House, Leicester's London home, rather than for Holkham, but the Bedchamber ceiling was certainly for Norfolk.

80 Cornforth, John, Early Georgian Interiors (New Haven and London, 2004), pp. 168 and 317.Google Scholar See also Watkin, , Classical Country House, p. 57,Google Scholar where the interiors are described as ‘probably representing Coke's chaste classical taste'. Cornforth (p. 157) noted that, at Houghton, Walpole had insisted on grisaille for Kent's ceiling painting in the saloon so that the pictures on the room's walls below were not overwhelmed (I am grateful to Jeremy Musson for drawing this to my attention). It is quite possible that Leicester felt equally — or more strongly — that his pictures should not be overpowered by painted decoration on ceilings.

81 Schmidt, et al., Holkham, pp. 114–56.Google Scholar

82 ’T.W.F', ‘Matthew Brettingham', pp. 132-33. The younger Brettingham returned from Italy in 1754. The critical working plan at Holkham is PM/26 (partly reproduced in Schmidt et al., Holkham, p. 117, fig. 77, with further details on p. 125, fig. 81, and p. 178, figs 126 and 127). A set of three sections by Brettingham (HA, PM/18-20 — see Schmidt et al., Holkham, p. 116, fig. 75 for a detail of 20) also belongs to this time. The order in the Hall has been changed from Corinthian to Ionic, but Kent's steps and Jupiter figure are still present and the enrichment of the hall (and saloon) ceilings is not yet shown. It appears that the final form of the dining room ceiling was not yet set.

83 A copy of Roland Fréart de Chambray's Parallèle de I ‘architecture antique et de la moderne (1702) at Holkham (BN 286) has, on the plate showing the order of the Temple of ‘Fortuna Virilis', the words ‘1st Antichamber' written in a hand said to be Leicester's (see Schmidt, Thomas Coke, cat./fig. 18).

84 Brettingham, , Plans (1773), pls 12–13 and 18.Google Scholar

85 Ibid., p. vi.

86 In addition, a study of Kent's Neo-Roman symbolism in the Treasury Building, linking design ideas in Palladian public works with coeval country houses (though not specifically with Holkham), can be found in Dodsworth, Francis, ‘ Virtus on Whitehall: The Politics of Palladianism in William Kent's Treasury Building, 1733-6’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 18 (2005), pp. 282–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Ayres, Philip, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 128–29Google Scholar for an account of Holkham as the ‘most important’ example of ‘pure neo-Classicism in neo-Palladianism'.

87 Schmidt, et al., Holkham, pp. 100–03.Google Scholar

88 See Curl, James Stevens, Freemasonry and the Enlightenment: Architecture, Symbols, & Influences (London, 2011), p. 309.Google Scholar

89 Schmidt, et al, Holkham, p. 100.Google Scholar

90 Kent also necessarily used the compasses on the four columns that ring the apse, which do not play a part in Schmidt's notional square of 34.8 feet.

91 Wittkower, , ‘Lord Burlington and William Kent’, p. 128 Google Scholar; Palladio, , I quattro libri, Book II, p. 41 Google Scholar (see Vitruvius, De architectura, VI, 3,9). On a Brettingham section across the north front of Holkham (HA, PM /18) the column diameter is given as 2 feet 2 inches and the intercolumniation/ width of the aisle as 4 feet 4 inches. These measurements correspond with the dimensions given on Kent's drawing (Fig. 9), if a total discrepancy of 8 inches can be accounted for (the fluting of the columns to 2-inch depth may already have been envisaged).

92 Schmidt, et al., Holkham, p. 124.Google Scholar

93 The elder Brettingham was a member of a Masonic Lodge in Norwich and of the Grand Lodge — but introduced to the latter by ‘the Duke of Norfolk (his Patron)', not by Leicester (see ‘T.W.F.', ‘Matthew Brettingham', p. 132).

94 See Brettingham, , Plans (1761), pls 1 and 10–11 Google Scholar, and Brettingham, , Plans (1773), p. 2 Google Scholar. See also Figure 2 here, where the dimension is simply given as ‘46 Sq. to the Arch'. None of the supposed Solomonic dimensions are indicated on any of Brettingham's drawings that survive at Holkham either.

95 Victoria and Albert Museum, Word and Image Department, 3436.199, reproduced in Barkley, Harold, ‘A Kent-Vardy Collaboration’, Country Life, 128 (13 October 1960), p. 791.Google Scholar

96 For a concise account of the programme of the marble hall sculptures, see Angelicoussis, Elizabeth in Schmidt, et al., Holkham, pp. 166 and 168.Google Scholar Kent had already foreseen sculptures in niches along the side walls (see the two faintly pencilled in niches on the east wall in Fig. 9). His drawing (and also a section by Brettingham, HA, PM/18) shows a lithe figure of Jupiter, not the muscular torso and bearded head Coke had purchased in Rome 1717. This was likely because the actual statue was kept in a London warehouse until its removal to Holkham in the 1750s. Joseph Wilton added the arms after 1755 (see Angelicoussis, Elizabeth, The Holkham Collection of Classical Sculpture (Mainz, 2001), pp. 25, 26, n. 36, and 115-16Google Scholar).

97 Curl, , Freemasonry, p. 144.Google Scholar

98 The suggestion that Leicester may also have been a member of Royal Arch Freemasonry and that the saloon at Holkham encodes Jacobite meanings (see Clark, Jane, ‘Palladianism and the Divine Right of Kings: Jacobite Iconography’, Apollo, 135 (April 1992), pp. 224–26Google Scholar) is based on tenuous and anachronistic interpretation of iconography, and has rightly been dismissed by Schmidt, et al. in Holkham, pp. 36–37 Google Scholar.

99 The library at Holkham does contain a subscriber's copy of Coustos, John, The Sufferings of John Coustosfor Freemasonry and for his Refusal to Turn Roman (1746).Google Scholar However, the subscriber was not Leicester himself but his son, Edward, a member of the Union Lodge.

100 According to Smith, William in The Freemason's Pocket Companion (London, 1736), p. 16 Google Scholar, the pre-qualification for becoming Grand Master was having ‘pass'd the Part of Fellow-Craft’ and being ‘nobly born, or a Gentleman of the best fashion', or a notable scholar, architect or artist ‘descended of honest parents'. The first four Grand Masters were commoners, but from 1721 they were all aristocrats (five of them dukes) before Leicester took on the role.

101 See Mortlock, D.P., Aristocratic Splendour: Money and the World of Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester (Stroud, 2007), pp. 108–09.Google Scholar

102 Songhurst, William John (ed.), ‘The Minutes of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of England, 1723-1739’, Quatuor Coronatorum Antigrapha: Masonic Reprints of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, London, 10 (1913), pp. 144 and 203.Google Scholar

103 HA, A/24, 4th Quarter of 1731, fol. 11. The servants were Abraham Thomas (Secretary and Accountant), Mr Lafrance (Valet) and Philip Bender (Footman).

104 See Anderson, James, The New Book of Constitutions of the Antient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons, 2nd edn (London, 1738), p. 129.Google Scholar See also Clark, Jane, ‘Lord Burlington is Here’, in Lord Burlington: Architecture, Art and Life, ed. Barnard, and Clark, , pp. 251–310 (pp. 307-08).Google Scholar Clark follows an earlier twentieth- century writer, Gilbert Daynes, in transforming what Anderson simply described as an ‘Occasional’ Lodge into an ‘emergency’ Lodge.

105 Mortlock, , Aristocratic Splendour, pp. 108–09Google Scholar, is the first to include it. For another recent study offering some grounds for thinking Leicester was involved further in Freemasonic activity in the 1720s, see Berman, Ric, The Foundations of Modern Freemasonry: The Grand Architects — Political Change and the Scientific Enlightenment 1714-1740 (Brighton, 2012), pp. 158–59.Google Scholar Berman suggests that Leicester was perhaps the ‘Thomas Cook’ who was Warden of the Lodge that met at King Henry VIII's Head, Seven Dials, and that he may have belonged to a Masonic ‘sect’ run by the Duke of Richmond, since he stayed at Goodwood in 1728 — and accompanied Richmond and Montagu on an inspection of the docks at Portsmouth. Berman also points out that newspaper reports of Leicester's year as Grand Master suggest that he continued to support Masonically linked plays and musical evenings.

106 Kent, it is true, is said to have had a book collection ‘rich in many esoteric works, especially theatrical titles’ ( Harris, John, The Palladian Revival: Lord Burlington, His Villa and Garden at Chiswick (New Haven and London, 1994), p. 270 Google Scholar), but the evidence for his even having been a Freemason rests on a single reference in a list of names given Smith's, Freemason's Pocket Companion, p. 11 Google Scholar, praising ‘that great architect, the Earl of Burlington, Mr Kent, the ingenious Mr Flitcroft […] with many other excellent Architects now living, using their unwearied Endeavours for the improvement of Masonry and Ornament in the Kingdom.’ Schmidt, et al., Holkham, p. 102 Google Scholar, suggest that the palm room at Spencer House, designed c. 1757 by Kent's assistant John Vardy (on the basis of a design for the bedroom of Charles II and Greenwich that Vardy and Kent published in 1744 as a design of Inigo Jones — in fact, it is by John Webb) shows Kent's preparedness to deploy ideas about the Tabernacle taken from Villalpando in modern secular architecture. Webb's idea, however, seems to have originated in a design by Jones for the masque ‘The Fortunate Isles and their Union', of c. 1624. Given that the palm is often used as a symbol of victory, harmony and also of marital love and fertility, its use in the house of the recently married Spencers has a much more obvious symbolic import (see Friedman, Joseph, Spencer House: Chronicle of a Great London Mansion (London, 1993), p. 119 Google Scholar). For an exposition of the constantly shifting meaning of the palm symbol in architecture, see Watkin, David, ‘The Migration of the Palm: A Case-Study of Architectural Ornament as a Vehicle of Meaning’, Apollo, 131 (February 1990), pp. 78–84.Google Scholar

107 Campbell, , Vitruvius Britannicus, III, p. 8.Google Scholar

108 See Mortlock, Aristocratic Splendour, figs 1 and 2 for Zincke's portraits of Leicester and his wife and the suggestion that they were painted in 1725, occasioned by Leicester's being made a Knight of the Bath. See also Schmidt, et al., Holkham, p. 32 Google Scholar, fig. 13 for Zincke's portrait of their son who however, born in 1719, looks to be aged between 10 and 15 rather than 6, and also seems to be wearing a wig of later fashion than his father's.

109 See, for example, ‘A Lady at Haymaking’ and ‘Palemon and Lavinia', both published in 1780 and viewable online in the British Museum's collection, respective registration numbers 1873,0809.330 and 2010,7081.2227.

110 See Colvin, , Biographical Dictionary, p. 155.Google Scholar The painting is reproduced in cropped form in Schmidt, et al., Holkham, p. 88, fig. 47.Google Scholar

111 Brettingham, , Plans (1773), pls 12–13.Google Scholar