BD Hardwick Hall_040211.pdf - Sergison Bates architects

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INSPIRATION: HARDWICK HALL, DERBYSHIRE
‘By the 1590s Elizabethans
were no longer building
houses for defence but for
the conduct of civilised life’
Stephen Bates andJonathan
Sergison explain how studying
Hardwick Hall has helped them
broaden their architectural
education
Pictures by Edward Tyler
“MORE WINDOW THAN WALL”
Stephen Bates (left) and Jonathan
Sergison outside Hardwick Hall.
The facade’s symmetry was
created by the repeated rhythm of
windows and stepped forms.
Inspiration
Hardwick Hall
Architect
Attributed to
Robert Smythson
Completed
1597
Location
Chesterfield,
Derbyshire
‘I remember
seeing its strange
reptile-like skin
glimmering
in the light’
Stephen Bates
The first reference to Hardwick
Hall I came across was in a text by
Peter Smithson, but I didn’t visit it
until 2006. It is a house of monumental
symmetry standing on the
flat top of a hill, with these great
gridiron windows that distinguish
it from all other Elizabethan
houses.
I remember seeing it in sunlight
with its strange reptile-like skin
glimmering in the light. Inside
was this labyrinth of tapestrylined
spaces, with rush matting
floors — from room to room a variety
of spatial adventures and
atmospheres. It was a memorable
experience for all of us.
Hardwick Hall was finished in
1597, 16 years before Inigo Jones
began the Queen’s House in
Greenwich, which is generally
held to be England’s first classical
building. In comparison, Hardwick
has this wonderful energy
and oddness.
A lot of things were changing in
the Elizabethan period and this led
to a moment that allowed Hardwick
to be as it was. It was a time
of English provincialism but also
the beginning of outside influence
from Europe. Palladio’s Four
Books of Architecture was available
in England in the 1560s as
was Serlio’s Treatise on Architecture,
and they were both radically
influential works. Suddenly there
was this access to European culture
— not just from Italy. In the
house one can also see the influence
from Flanders, with the use
of strapwork and vertical window
arrangements.
There are ideas at Hardwick
that inform and inspire us in our
work. We were educated within a
rather narrow modernist doctrine
and have spent much of our time
since then expanding our sources
of historical reference. How many
students really consider architectural
history? Most people’s architectural
education starts from the
1930s. We find ourselves more and
more looking further back and
encouraging our students in
Munich and Mendrisio in Switzerland
to do the same.
How the formal facade relates to
the interior is one of the fundamental
and most interesting
aspects of the house. The mismatch
between the two requires
the facade to act as a formal mask
to the variety of spaces behind.
Some of the windows are completely
false and have chimneys
behind them, others straddle
between floors or stretch across
rooms.
On the outside, you can see
this amazing symmetry created by
the repeated rhythm of windows
and stepped forms. The horizontal
entablatures that run all around
the house between each storey
reveal this kind of “upside-down”
classical order as each storey
progressively increases in height.
On the inside, however, you can
see in the plan how ideas had
evolved around social hierarchy
and influence to give a rich variety
of volumes and the external
entablatures represent this progression
towards the higher

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INSPIRATION: HARDWICK HALL, DERBYSHIRE
HIGH GREAT CHAMBER
This is the grandest of the formal rooms
at Hardwick Hall. Bess would have sat in
state under a canopy similar to this in the
Great Chamber, which leads to the
Withdrawing Chamber though a doorway
under the tapestry to the right.
A 16th century
statement of
wealth
Bess of Hardwick, the
Countess of Shrewsbury,
was the richest woman in
England in the 16th century
after Queen Elizabeth I
herself. She was the
client for Hardwick Hall,
built as a statement of her
wealth and power, writes
Pamela Buxton .
It is thought to have been
designed by Robert
Smythson, who had already
worked on grand houses at
Longleat and Wollaton Hall.
Glass was a luxury in the
16th century yet Hardwick’s
main feature is its six great
towers and its exceptionally
large and numerous
windows. This led to the
saying “Hardwick Hall, more
glass than wall”.
LONG GALLERY
Portraits and tapestries adorn the second floor Long Gallery, which measures 51m long x 8m high x 6.7m wide.
MAIN STAIRCASE
The broad, stone stairs lead up to a lofty vestibule to the High
Great Chamber on the second floor.
Ahead of its time
Hardwick, situated between
Chesterfield and Mansfield,
was one of the first English
grand houses to interpret
Renaissance architecture,
with Smythson perhaps
influenced by Palladio and
Serlio in his incorporation of
colonnades between the
tower at the back and front
of the house.
It was also the first time
that the great hall was built
on an axis through the
centre of the house rather
than at right angles to the
entrance. The state rooms
are on the second floor,
including one of the largest
and more ceremonial rooms.
The alignment of the central
hall was completely new, as the
earlier medieval hall had been
positioned lengthways through
the house. This is indicative of
how the central room ofl arge
houses was changing from being
the principal gathering space to a
more ceremonial one. At this
point, the Elizabethans were no
longer building houses for defence
but for the conduct of civilised life.
Rather than following the convention
of the time, when the principal
staircase was an object, made
from wood like a piece off urniture,
at Hardwick we encounter a
wide stone stairway. I particularly
like this stairway, which is experienced
as a beautiful sequence of
spaces, rising through compressed
tall spaces with straight tapered
flights that change direction and
re-orientate the visitor until they
arrive at a vestibule on the second
floor, small in plan but extraordinarily
high. This opens on to the
High Great Chamber — the equivalent
in volume to a modern day
five-bedroom house.
Hardwick predates the enfilade,
the sequence of connecting rooms
with aligned doorways, and has a
more discontinuous and elaborate
arrangement, with doors sometimes
positioned diagonally across
space. A plan ofi nterconnected
rooms, without corridors, is a constant
reference for us in our work.
Here there is a sense ofi ntrigue
and a degree of surprise and
drama to the experience of moving
through the house, no more so
than when you come across the
magnificent Long Gallery via a
small door in the corner, partially
covered by a looped tapestry!
TURRET ROOMS
One of the turret rooms, where
select guests would eat
sweetmeats.
I find it inspiring that the plan
clearly supports a particular way
ofl ife and is not generalised or
ordered in an abstract way. Bess’s
private rooms were on the first
floor, but the most important state
rooms were on the second floor.
She received her visitors in the
Great Chamber and would lead
favoured guests into an adjacent
room through a side door. Select
friends would eat sweetmeats or
meet intimately in dining rooms in
each of the towers, accessed by
walking across the roof.
‘Hardwick wasn’t
refined. There’s a
roughness in the
plasterwork, and
in the junction
of elements’
It’s highly evocative to imagine
that the house would have been
occupied by up to 60 people at any
one time, providing for both Bess’s
household and that of her daughter’s.
The atmosphere must have
been one of great conviviality and
hustle and bustle. There wasn’t
this hierarchical Upstairs-Downstairs
separation of masters and
servants — servants would sleep
on straw mattresses pulled out
from underneath the mistress’s
bed or on the landings of the stairway.
Rooms like the dining room
would have been used by both
high servants and the family at different
times of the day.
The elaborate plaster ceilings
and friezes were designed for
candlelight. The strapwork and
pendants would have been alive
with constantly moving shadows.
Ceilings were designed to interrupt
and diversify the varying
light, to “use” not to eliminate
shadows, as so many modern ceilings
do.
Hardwick wasn’t refined.
There’s a roughness and directness
in the plasterwork, and in the
junction of elements, between
beam and column or balustrade
and stairway, for example. It is a
sensibility that I feel is important
to work with as an architect. I am
interested in a “carefully careless”
attitude. The design is still highly
considered, but there is a controlled
looseness.
I look forward to coming back
to Hardwick again. I will be here
in the spring with my students
from the TU in Munich, as we will
be making a tour of English country
houses — mainly early classical-influenced
ones — including
Hardwick.
NORTH ELEVATION
Bess’s monogram ES is incorporated frequently into the house, most notably in the tower parapets.
Jonathan Sergison
I have been aware of Hardwick
Hall as a project for a long time, as
it appears in Summerson’s history
of British Architecture, was
referred to by the Smithsons and,
more recently, by Mark Girouard
in his Life in the English Country
House. But my interest really
found focus through Stephen’s
enthusiasm.
There are a number of strands
that we find relevant. The proportions
employed in the organisation
of the facade are very particular,
‘It’s an example of
what an English
architecture
might be’
they subvert the language of the
classical order by placing the most
significant rooms on the top floor,
rather than on the first, the piano
nobile. This leads to an upside
down feeling which is disquieting
and wonderful.
The project was known to me
for the way it uses glass, an expression
of enormous luxury for its
time. You can imagine the difficulty
transporting this material
presented in 1590. The attention
Walter Gropius’s Fagus factory of
1911 received gives us an idea of
how unprecedented this was. And
you can imagine what it might
have been like to be travelling
through England at the end of the
16th century and encounter this
building.
Nothing ever compensates for
really seeing a project as a physical
entity. What is not communicated
in the plans, sections and
photographs of this building is the
manner in which this house sits in
the landscape, the way it commands
its immediate environment.
It is in no way demure, but
is brash and imposing, a character
clearly attributable to the woman
it was built for.
We can only speculate on the
way it was developed as a project.
Clearly, it has ideas that can be
connected to Robert Smythson’s
earlier body of built work, but
there is much that must be due,
one suspects, to a somewhat
charged relationship between
client and master mason.
Above all, Hardwick Hall offers
an example of what an English
architecture might be. It is a little
irreverent, certainly in relation to
the canon of classicism, and proportion
is used in a personal rather
than correct manner. There is a
level of slackness in the way things
are put together: parts of the
building have junctions that are
wonderfully relaxed, like the way
a volume meets a beam on the
staircase, or where beams run into
window heads.
We enjoy the looseness between
the expression of the facade and
the way the section is really
arranged. This is far from being
pure. And the organisation of the
sequence of spaces in the house is
rich and elaborate. It is unpredictable
and leads to a complex
matrix of social possibilities.
These are ideas that we hold in
high regard, and it is interesting
that they are embodied in a work
that is more than 400 years old.
Stephen Bates and Jonathan
Sergison were speaking to
Pamela Buxton.
SECOND FLOOR
8
FIRST FLOOR
GROUND FLOOR
7
7
5
6
8
6
5
1
4
1
5
1
2
2
4
3 2
4
3
3
1 Long Gallery
2 Upper landing
3 High Great
Chamber
4 Withdrawing
Chamber
5 Green velvet
6 Mary Queen
of Scot’s room
7 Blue room
8 North
staircase
1 Upper portion
of hall
2 Landing
3 Bedchambers
4 Drawing room
5 Gallery
6 Dining room
7 Cut velvet
bedroom
8 Chapel
1 Great Hall
2 Main staircase
3 William
Cavendish’s
chamber
4 Duke’s room
5 Kitchen
N
Bess of Hardwick.
long galleries in any English
country home, and a great
chamber with a frieze of
hunting scenes that
incorporates real timber for
the trees. The gallery is
covered in tapestries bought
second hand by Bess and
overworked with her own
coat of arms.
Malfoy Manor
The house became the
secondary residence of the
Dukes of Devonshire, who
lived nearby at Chatsworth
and as a result has been little
altered, with many of the
current contents traceable to
an inventory of 1601.
It has been a National
Trust property since 1959,
and has undergone lengthy
repairs. Architects Rodney
Melville & Partners are
working on a renovation and
extension of the nearby
stableyard buildings to
provide a new shop and
restaurant. Hardwick Hall
recently featured as Malfoy
Manor in the latest Harry
Potter film.