page_title: Bramham Park
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Bramham Park / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: Bramham Park
context_page_description: Bramham Park is a Grade I listed 18th-century country house in Bramham, between Leeds and Wetherby, in West Yorkshire, England.
  The house, constructed of magnesian limestone ashlar with stone slate roofs in a classical style, is built to a linear plan with a main range linked by colonnades to flanking pavilions. The main block is of three storeys with a raised forecourt. The house is surrounded by a 200 ha landscaped park ornamented by a series of follies and avenues laid out in the 18th-century landscape tradition, surrounded by 500 ha of arable farmland. Bramham park is used annually for the Leeds Festival.
context_section_description: Bramham is a product of a grand tour; its creator Robert Benson, later Lord Bingley, completed his formal education with a grand tour in 1697, and whilst in Italy he began to envisage his new mansion in the Palladian manner complemented in a landscaped park, in the fashion made popular by Le Nôtre in France in the late 17th century.
  The architect of Bramham is unknown, although it is speculated that Giacomo Leoni was involved  (Leoni was responsible for the rebuilding of Lyme Park in an Italianate style in the neighbouring county of Cheshire some years later). However, Leoni did not arrive in England until several years after the completion of Bramham. Other names suggested include those of James Gibbs, Thomas Archer and James Paine. It is known that Paine designed the stables which flank the corps de logis, but the other contenders were too young. The only chronological possibility is Thomas Archer (1668–1743). The most likely scenario is that Bramham is the work of Robert Benson himself, probably working with a local draughtsman.  While it is also quite possible that Benson was inspired by drawings taken from Palladio's books, the design of the house suggests that Benson was more inspired by the restrained Baroque style then popular in France, the style in which Mansart's Versailles was constructed between 1678 and 1684. Indeed, it has been speculated that Versaille's landscape architect André le Nôtre had a hand in the design of Bramham's landscaped park.
  The architect William Talman has also been suggested as a possible architect, and he was indeed working on Chatsworth House some sixty miles away from Bramham at this time.  However, unlike Chatsworth (which is far larger), Bramham is given flanking wings more in the Palladian style, linked to the house by short colonnades. The flanking wings contained the kitchen in the south wing, and the chapel in the north, thus – as at the Baroque Blenheim Palace – balancing both spiritual and bodily needs equally. However, while Campbell's drawing of Bramham show the never-executed statuary on the roof and near-perfect proportions, the reality of the executed design suggests a less professional hand than Talman's. Two low projecting wings from the corps de logis complicate the design, while the two colonnades are not quite long enough to give the flanking wings the independence from the main house to allow their design to be fully appreciated.
caption: The Stables
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