| Description | Heath House, Warmfield cum Heath. High status mid 17th century house with new front c.1744 by James Paine.
'Large country house. Mid C17 refenestrated and with addition forming a new front c1744. By James Paine for the Hopkinson family. Ashlar front, hammer dressed stone to rear, Welsh blue slate and lead flat roof. Palladian Villa style. 2 1/2 storeys with cellars. 5 bay symmetrical facade. Rusticated basement; plinth, 1st floor band and window head cornice. Central 3 bays have pediment carried on 3/4 attached giant Ionic columns and 1/4 pilasters; the wider flanking bays terminate with coupled pilasters. Basement: central semi circular arched doorway, bays either side have rectangular flat arched windows, 1st bay altered mid C19 with inserted 2 light bay window, niches below corner pilasters. Piano nobile: central window has segmental pediment on consoles those to bays 2 and 4 have plain heads with same above to attic; those to bays 1 and 5 have shouldered architraves, consoles and triangular pediments, with a window with architrave above. Entablature, cornice, blocking course. Hipped roof. Rear, earlier house: 3 cell hall with projecting crosswings. Windows altered to sashes, 2 coped gables, that to right has large external stack. Returns of C18 house in same style as front, though simple. Left hand return, of earlier house, has 3 bays of sash windows with plain stone surrounds and external lateral stack between 2nd and 3rd bays. Other lateral stack to right hand return. Two other concealed stacks to north and south of stair well.
Interior: much C19 decoration to ground floor: central door opens into square entrance hall with stilted arched central doorway and doorways either side with architraves, dentil cornice. Set behind is top lit stair hall with stone cantilevered open well stair with C19 decorative cast iron balusters; doorway leads off to the left to dog leg service stair; doorway to right to large room with segmental arched recess in which is doorway with architrave with niches either side, richly moulded cornice. The original house to rear provided the service rooms and 3 rooms have stop chamfered beamed ceilings. The 1st floor of the C18 house has the principal apartments: lofty well proportioned rooms with fluted architraves, 6 panel doors, dado rails, skirtings, panelled window surrounds and casement moulded cornices. The rear rooms have panelled dados. Access to the 2nd floor is by means of the service stair only. The low rooms on this floor were bedrooms and retain original C18 fittings, moulded dados, panelled doors, shutters, window seats, and chimney pieces enriched with later Georgian paper mache decoration.
Peter Leach has noted the significance of Heath House as being James Paine's first fully unaided commission on record. Marcus Binney considers Heath House as Paine's second individual work after Serlby Hall (Nottinghamshire) c1740 and shows it to have great significance as the successful prototype facade Paine used again in Northumberland shortly after for Belford Hall and the south front of Gosforth Park. Heath House symbolises in every way the flowering C18 quality of the village, the extension and improvement of older buildings and the most expert utilisation of local raised quality stone. The house is of national importance, both historically and architecturally. Heath House appears in the 1st volume of the architect's own work: Paine, J. 1761. 'Plans, Elevations and Sections of Noblemen and Gentlemen's Houses'. Plates LXI and LXII: Leach, P. 1974. 'Public lecture to York Georgian Society February 23rd, 1974'. Paine is expertly discussed in 3 Country Life articles: Binney, M. 1969. 'The Villas of James Paine, I, II and III' in Country Life February 20th 1969, February 27th 1969, and March 6th 1969. |