Pitzhanger and Cranbury
Of Dance's design for additions to Pitzhanger Manor only survey drawings, made by Soane's office in 1800, as well as C. J. Richardson's watercolours of the Eating and Drawing Rooms, 1832 (SM vol.87, ff.4-5) are in the Soane Museum though there are two preliminary studies for decorative treatment in the RIBA Drawings Collection ('Dance Leoni' Nos 83, 107). There is nothing at all in the Soane Museum of Dance's designs for alterations and additions made c.1780-4 for Cranbury Park (though there is a drawing in 'Dance Leoni' No.78, and another, not in Dance's hand, in the Corporation of London Records Office, Surveyor's Miscellaneous Plans (Dance Portfolio) 264). Other schemes are well documented by drawings at the Soane Museum and in particular, the executed designs for Dance's three major country houses - Coleorton, Stratton and Ashburnham - for which 550 drawings remain.

A City man in the country
For Dance, combining site visits to the country with his duties as an architect to the City of London must have been difficult. It is likely, for instance, that the falling out of favour with Lord Ashburnham was due to Dance's infrequent attendance. Again, he passed on the commission for Lowther Castle (and possibly, Bayham Hall) to the young Robert Smirke through pressure of City and other work (which included Coleorton and Stratton at this time) as well as the distance from London. Nor could Dance have been particularly tempted by the usual 5 per cent fee since his official post gave him a comfortable income. Probably it was the challenge and requirements of a countryside location and brief that stirred him and, a sociable person and also a widower (from about 1791), he may have enjoyed the house party aspects that went with the job.

Clients
Dance's best clients were also friends, or friends of friends. Sir Francis Baring, who would have known the architect as a fellow City man with a common interest in, say, the East India Company, employed him for alterations to a house in Hill Street, Mayfair at the same time that Stratton Park was being rebuilt, and Dance also carried out lodge houses and estate cottages at Stratton, altered the parish church at nearby Micheldever and made an unexecuted design for East Stratton chapel, all from 1803 to 1808. Baring must have been an excellent client. Wanting a country seat with generous and convenient provision for a large family he made a rough plan with his suggestions added and seems to have left the rest to Dance though, allowing for Baring's deafness, there must have been some discussion. Baring was also wealthy and added more land to the estate and purchased paintings and furniture for the house. Dance also made unexecuted designs for country houses for Baring's eldest son, Sir Thomas Baring and for his son-in-law Charles Wall.

Dance's friendship with the Camden family was owed to an introduction from his brother-in-law Captain Nathaniel Smith, whose ship was named after Lord Camden (Stroud pp.84-5). The architect was to be involved with all three of their country estates (Camden Place, Wilderness Park and Bayham Hall) as well as a town-planning scheme for Camden Town, London and (for Lord Londonderry, a Camden son-in-law) Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland. Dance's brother Nathaniel Dance painted Lord Camden in his Lord Chancellor's robes and hat (1767-9) and executed an attractive group portrait of his children (1767).

Sir George Beaumont shared a number of friends with Dance including the artist and diarist Joseph Farington, who usefully recorded many of Dance's encounters with his clients. On 16 April 1804, for instance, Farington noted that the architect dined at Lord Lowther's where the other guests included Lord St Asaph (later Ashburnham) and Sir George and Lady Beaumont - three present or future clients.

Surveys, alternative and variant designs
Dance's country house commissions invariably began with a survey made either by a local man, or by James Carter who assisted on a number of jobs, or by the architect himself. A survey was necessary because none of Dance's executed designs were on clear sites, though Coleorton came very close. Designs on new ground such as Bayham Abbey, Norman court and various unidentified projects - all unexecuted - did not require surveys. Dance's inventiveness and wide-ranging sources show in the number of alternative and variant designs that he made for a single job. Except where he had an indecisive client, like Sir George Beaumont, Dance generally moved quickly to establish the plan and it was the elevational treatment and detailing of the decoration that he drew and re-drew. At Ashburnham Place, several designs for recasing the principal front see Dance working towards a resolution beginning with one element, enlarging it, adding more elements, retaining some and subtracting others in a series of design decisions that seem to have excluded the owner. On the other hand, for the unexecuted Norman Court scheme designs in a variety of styles conclude with alternative elevations to the same plans. Dance's preference was for the Gothic/quasi-Indian front rather than the Classical Corinthian design but here the choice was to be made by the client.

Portes-cocheres
In his planning, Dance gave much thought to arrival, reception and communication. Almost all of his country houses have a porte-cochere, the carriage porch at least 7½ feet wide that allows passengers to alight and enter a house with dry feet. As he wrote to Lord Londonderry in about 1803: a Coach / porch or Portico at the entrance... is both ornamental / & extremely convenient at night & bad weather / to drive under (see Mount Stewart [SM D3/9/1a]). The first that he designed appears in a design of c.1771 for an unidentified country house. French examples are much earlier; L. Francard published his designs in Portes cocheres menuiserie (Paris) c.1680-5. In England, James Paine had proposed one for the south front of Worksop Manor, 1761-7 that was not carried out. Later, Henry Holland's Carlton House had a Corinthian porte-cochere, c.1785; Joseph Bonomi used them for five houses built between 1789 and 1806; Nash used one for Luscombe Castle, 1800-04. Soane seems not to have employed them much though he added one to Bentley Priory in 1798.

Coleorton-type plan
At Coleorton (and afterwards for other schemes - Norman Court, Bayham Hall, an unidentified house for Thomas Baring and an unidentified Gothic villa 87 feet wide - all unexecuted) the porte-cochere opened into an entrance hall that gave on to a three-storey, 12-sided hall lit by windows at second floor level, and flanked by an exedra and a staircase asymmetrically placed, as was Dance's preference. At Coleorton, the first floor of the lantern tower had a gallery that gives on to the bedrooms and dressing rooms. Beaumont sometimes set up his easel in the well-lit gallery and an organ was built into its north side so that it was a social as well as a circulation space. A source for Dance's lantern halls must lie with the central tower of a church in which windows placed in an upper stage light the crossing. On the other hand, Dr Sally Jeffery (correspondence, 3 January 2003) suggests that 'the idea of a polygonal domed hall with lighting from windows set high could have emerged in an indirect way, from Lord Burlington's villa at Chiswick'. A further point about Chiswick as a possible source is that though not a 'tribune' in the way used by later architects (see the general note on Coleorton) the octagonal, domed saloon was referred to as 'a large Tribunal' by Sir John Clerk of Penicuik in 1727, and the hall on the floor below, the lower tribune (R. Hewlings, Chiswick House and gardens, English Heritage guidebook, 2nd ed., 1991, p.8).

Hall and stair
In other houses, the entrance hall or staircase hall was paramount in Dance's design. At Stratton, he overcame the difficulty of re-using existing spaces by removing a floor and having a staircase-entrance hall. Passing under the Doric portico and through the front door, the visitor walked a few paces into the hall and up four steps, his eye drawn to the stately end wall with its first floor Ionic screen fronting a galleried corridor. On either side the stair rose in two flights pausing at wide landings under tall windows. The entrance hall at Laxton (where there was an existing staircase hall) is a development of the hall at Stratton though in a later and more austere Greek Revival style. At Ashburnham, Dance retained the existing entrance hall and carved out a new staircase hall that was even more magnificent than the one at Stratton. Top-lit, with a first floor gallery having a Doric screen at either end below triple arches on the second floor, the reverse imperial staircase was supported in its single lower flight by piers and arches. Dance proposed an imperial staircase for Norman Court and one was built at Mount Stewart though the plan ([SM D3/9/5]) shows a half-turn with landings stair. This practical plan was used for 143 Piccadilly and proposed for Wilderness Park but a flying stair in a semicircular or semi-elliptical compartment (which presumably made top-lighting more effective) was used for Camden Place and proposed for some unbuilt schemes including Freefolk and Paul. Geometrical stairs (on an elliptical or stretched elliptical plan) were designed for Langdown and for Mr Prowting in the City of London. Whatever the type of stair, top-lighting was a priority, the ornamental ironwork of the balustrades received much attention and the lowest step of the ground floor flight almost invariably finished in a curve or scroll (curtail step).

Group

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