Henry Holland (20 July 1745from the family bible, page 15, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life – 17 June 1806) was an architect to the English nobility.
He was born in Fulham, London, where his father, also Henry, ran a building firmpage 15, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life constructing several of Capability Brown's designs. His younger brother was Richard Holland, who later changed his surname to Bateman-Robson and became an MP. Although Henry would learn a lot from his father about the practicalities of construction, it was under Capability Brown that he would learn about architectural design.
Brown and Holland formed a partnership in 1771 and Henry Holland married Brown's daughter Bridget on 11 February 1773 at St George's, Hanover Square.page 36, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life In 1772 Sir John Soanepage 12, Gillian Darley, John Soane An Accidental Romantic, 1999, Yale University Press joined Holland's practice in order to further his education, leaving in 1778 to study in Rome. Holland paid a visit to Paris in 1787page 73, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life which is thought to have been in connection with his design of the interiors at Carlton House. From this moment on his interior work owed less to the Adam style and more to contemporary French taste.
Holland was a founder member in 1791 of the Architects' Club,page 135, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life which included Thomas Hardwick as a signatory. In the 1790s he translated into English A.M. Cointereaux's Traite sur la construction des Manufactures, et des Maisons de Champagne. Holland was feeling unwell in the early summer of 1806,page 151, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life on 13 June he had a seizure and his son Lancelot made this entry in his diary on 17 June, "My poor father breathed his last about 7 o'clock in the morning. He had got out of bed shortly before and inquired what the hour was. Being told he said it was too early to rise and got into bed again. He immediately fell into a fit. I was sent for, and a minute after I came to his bedside he breathed his last.". He was buried at All Saints Church, Fulham,page 152, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life in a simple tomb, a few yards from the house in which he had been born. Bridget Holland his wife lived for another 17 years and was the main beneficiary of her husband's will.
Children Of his sons, the elder Henry Jr (1775–1855) remained a bachelor. The younger son, Colonel Lancelot Holland (1781–1859), married Charlotte Mary Peters (1788–1876) and they had fifteen children. Of Holland's five daughters, two married two brothers, Bridget (1774–1844) to Daniel Craufurd (lost at sea 1810) and Mary Frances Holland (1776–1842) to Major-General Robert Craufurd (1764–1812), commander of the Light Division during the Peninsular War. Bridget later remarried to Sir Robert Wilmot of Chaddesden. The remaining daughters, Harriet (1778–1814), Charlotte (1785–1824) and Caroline (1786–1871) never married.
Early work
Holland began his practice by designing Claremont House for Robert Clive, with his future father-in-law in 1771page 32, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life and their partnership lasted until Brown's death twelve years later. Claremont is of nine by five bays, of white brick with stone dressings. The main feature on the entrance front is the tetrastyle Corinthian pedimented portico. This leads to the entrance hall with red scagliola columns, these are arranged in an oval with the rectangular room. The drawing room has a fine plaster ceiling and marble fireplace with two caryatids. There is a fine staircase.
In 1771 he took a lease from Charles Cadogan, 2nd Baron Cadogan on his Chelsea estatepage 578, The Buildings of England, London 3: North West, Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner, 1991, Penguin Books, and began the Hans Town (named after an earlier owner Hans Sloane) development on 89 acres (360,000 m2) of open field and marsh. There he laid out parts of Knightsbridge and Chelsea, including Sloane Street and Sloane Square, and Hans Place, Street and Crescent and Cadogan Place. The buildings were typical Georgian, terraced houses, they were three or four floors in height plus an attic and basement and two or three windows wide, of brick, decoration was minimal, occasionally the ground floor was decorated with stucco rustication. These developments quickly became some of the most fashionable areas in greater London. Construction was slow, the start of the American war of independence in 1776 being one of the factors (Lord Cadogan also died that year). Sloane Square was virtually complete by 1780.page 45, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life Apart from a few houses on the east side Sloane Street was not developed before 1790.page 47, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life By 1789 Holland was living in a house designed by himself, called Sloane Place,page 46, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life it was to the south of Hans Place. The house was large 114 feet in length, to the north the octagonal entrance hall had a black and white marble floor the south front had a one-storey ionic loggia across the central five bays with an iron balcony above in front of the main bedrooms, the rooms on the ground floor south front were the drawing room, dining room, lobby, library and music room. As the area was developed on ninety-nine year leases Holland's houses were almost entirely rebuilt from the 1870s onwards. A few houses survive in Hans Place, Nos. 12 and 33–34.page 579, The Buildings of England, London 3: North West, Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner, 1991, Penguin Books, Cadogan Square was laid out from 1879 onwards in part over the gardens of Sloane Place.
Another joint work was Benham Parkpage 161, Buildings of England: Berkshire, Geoffrey Tyack, Simon Bradley, Nikolaus Pevsner, 2010 2nd Edition, Yale University Press, 1774–75 designed for William Craven, 6th Baron Craven, three stories high, nine bays wide, in a plain neoclassical style, of stone, with a tetrastyle Ionic portico, the building was altered in 1914, the pediment on the portico was replaced by a balustrade and the roof lowered and hidden behind a balustrade. The interiors have also been altered. Though the Circular Hall in the centre of the building, with its large niches and fine plasterwork, is probably as designed by Holland, it has an opening in the ceiling rising to the galleried floor above and a glazed dome. The principal staircase is also original.
Brown had been designing the landscape of Trentham Hall since 1768, for the owner Earl Gower, when it was decided to remodel the house, this took from 1775 to 1778,page 40, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life it was enlarged from nine to fifteen bays, the pilasters and other features were in stone, but the walls were of brick covered in stucco to imitate stonework. The building was remodelled and extended by Sir Charles Barry in 1834–1840 and largely demolished in 1910.
John Stuart, 1st Marquess of Bute commissioned Holland and Brown to restore Cardiff Castlepage 194, The Buildings of Wales Glamorgan, John Newman, 1995, Penguin Books, (1778–80), Holland's interiors were swept away when the castle was remodelled and extended by William Burges in the 1860s. The east front of the main apartments retain Holland's work a rare example of him using Gothic Revival architecture and the neoclassical style Drawing Room being the only significant interior to survive more or less as Holland designed it.
In 1776 Holland designedpage 51, Dorothy Stroud, Henry Holland His Life and Architecture, 1966, Country Life Brooks's club in St James's Street, Westminster. Build of yellow brick and Portland stone in a Palladian style similar to his early country houses. The main suite of rooms on the first floor consisted of the Great Subscription Room, Small Drawing Room and the Card Room, Brook's was known for its gambling on card games, the Prince of Wales being a member. The interiors are in neoclassical style, the Great Subscription Room having a segmental barrel vault ceiling.
From 1778 to 1781 for Thomas Harley, Holland designed and built Berrington Hall,pages 72-74, The Building of England Herefordshire, Nikolaus Pevsner, 1963, Penguin Books Herefordshire, one of his purest exercises in the Neoclassical style, the exterior is largely devoid of decoration, the main feature is the tetrastyle Ionic portico. The interior are equally fine, the most impressive being the staircase at the centre of the building, with its glazed dome and the upper floor is surrounded by scagliola Corinthian columns. The main rooms have fine plaster ceilings and marble chimneypieces, these are the library, dining and drawings rooms. The small boudoir has a shallow apse screened by two Ionic columns of Scagliola imitating Lapis lazuli. Holland also designed the service yard behind the house with the laundry, dairy and stables as well as the entrance lodge to the estate in the form of a Triumphal arch.
In 1788 Holland continued the remodelling of Broadlands in Hampshirepages 144-145, The Buildings of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Nikolaus Pevsner and David Lloyd, 1967, Penguin Books for Henry Temple, 2nd Viscount Palmerston started by Brown. The exterior was re-clad in yellow brick and a three-bay recessed Ionic portico added on the north front, a tetrastyle Ionic portico was added on the south front, within he added the octagonal domed lobby, also by Holland are the ground floor rooms on the south front library (Wedgwood room), saloon and drawing room, and on the east front the dining room, all in the Adam style.
Carlton House