In 1951, about eleven years before Stratton Park was demolished, approximately 75 black-and-white photographs were taken by the National Monuments Record. Photocopies of these photographs have helped to provide some evidence for which designs were or were not executed. Subsequent alterations such as, for example, the replacement of chimney-pieces and of later schemes of decoration have also been noted where possible.

Client
Francis Baring MP (1740-1810), the son of an immigrant German cloth manufacturer, became the head of an important and influential merchant bank. He was a director of the East India Company in 1779 and chairman from 1792 to 1793, for which he received a baronetcy in 1793. Baring died on 11 September 1810, at his Lee estate in Kent. Lee Manor House, probably designed by Richard Jupp (1728-99), surveyor to the East India Company, was built 1771-2 for Thomas Lucas, a merchant who died in 1784. His widow married J. J. Angerstein the following year and she, having a lifetime interest in Lucas's estate, lived at Lee after it was purchased at auction in 1796 by Baring who subsequently added further land. Thus Baring did not move into the house until after her death in 1800. According to Farington (13 September 1810) 'A family possessed of an estate at or near Lee in Kent from a change of their circumstances found it necessary to dispose of it, & being offered for sale Sir Francis became the purchaser. After the bargain ... had been made at a low rate, upon which in addition to what He had paid He presented the family with a gift of ten thousand pounds ... an advantage to them beyond any expectation they could have formed.'

Purchase of Stratton Park
In 1801 Baring bought the Stratton estate in Hampshire from the 5th Duke of Bedford (died 2 March 1802) and added further land that eventually amounted to 12,000 acres. Baring's summary of his personal accounts, under July 1801, states 'Hants, paid 70000' and 'Interest to the Duke 2000' and the following year 'Land Hants paid 100000' while a draft and bond to secure £80,000 dated 28 February 1801 is among the Stratton estate papers at the Hampshire County Record office. In his personal accounts for 1804-05, under 'assets - land', Baring estimates the value of Stratton at £180,000. The estate at Lee near Lewisham was valued at £70,000 and other personal assets added up to £262,182 and 18 shillings.

The house that Baring bought with the estate was built for the 3rd Duke of Bedford to John Sanderson's design, 1731. It was a large Palladian mansion on a half-H plan having a piano nobile over a ground floor. The plan, published in Vitruvius Britannicus, shows a double-pile house with a central east/west corridor with east and west wings measuring 100 by 23 feet. The 15-bay south elevation, about 215 feet wide and with two slightly projecting, quoined end bays with Venetian windows, was fronted by an Ionic four-column portico rising two storeys above an arcaded rusticated ground floor and reached by twin dog-leg stairs. The portico and the eastern nine bays of the house had been demolished (according to J. P. Neale) by 'a late Duke of Bedford [the 4th Duke who succeeded in 1732 and died in 1771] ... leaving only one wing, lest its attractions should induce his successors to neglect the magnificent residence at Woburn, which he had built'. Woburn Abbey was rebuilt for the 4th Duke by Henry Flitcroft, 1748-61.

Brief and building costs
Dance's earliest dated drawing ([SM D1/1/9]) was made on 6 January 1803 and refers to a payment on account to James Carter, presumably for a survey drawing ([SM D1/1/13]) of the house, so that Baring's drawing ([SM D1/5/4]) was probably made towards the end of 1802. It shows that he wanted a new east wing containing a drawing room and eating room on either side of an antechamber and a further two bays between this new wing and the remaining body of the house. Discussion with Dance must have shown that more accommodation was needed for Baring had a large family - five sons and five daughters; Lady Baring died (on 3 December 1804) before Dance's work was completed.

Client and architect agreed additionally on a re-ordering of three of the surviving bays (containing a stair and a room 21 feet by 20 feet 6 inches) to allow for a new, larger stair, a new bedroom or attic storey over the piano nobile, a new south entrance with portico that with the new wing, but with the stucco work excluded, was roughly costed at £17,900 ([SM D1/5/5]). According to Farington, the final cost was £25,000 for he noted in his diary (25 June 1806) that 'The estate in Hampshire which Sir Francis bought from the late Duke of Bedford is reckoned to produce £8,000 a year. Dance had nearly finished the alterations of the House which belongs to it at an expense of £25,000. One of the rooms is furnished with pictures painted by Opie, Northcote & Peters, which were bought at the sale of Boydells Shakespeare Gallery'. However, the last dated drawings ([SM D1/3/2]) for the finishing of the drawing room made on 16 September 1806 and ([SM D1/3/2] and [SM D1/4/29] versos) for the office measured on 4 April 1807 indicate that the final figure would have been much higher.

The final accounts seem not to have survived but in his summary of personal accounts (running from 1 July to 30 June of each year) Baring lists under 1803-04 '3000 Stratton' and for 1804-05 '12500 building at Stratton'. For 1805-06 he notes that £4,500 was spent on furniture for Stratton and 33 Hill Street, London (altered by Dance for Baring in 1803) with almost as much spent on furniture over the following two years. Baring's personal accounts for 1806-07 note '11255 building &c Stratton' and 'The building &c at Stratton ex[cluding] / furniture has cost to the 30 June 1807 £30,700.' However, Dance's designs for estate cottages at East Stratton are dated November 1806 and perhaps their cost is included; while £10,227 spent the following year on 'Building at Stratton' may include the costs of Dance's alterations to Micheldever Church as well as the Stratton park lodges. In 1808-09 Baring spent £3,476 on 'Stratton house &c'. Bills and more detailed accounts have not been traced.

The design
At Stratton, Dance's task was to design a country seat for Baring from the remains (less than half) of a conservatively Palladian mansion with an old-fashioned piano nobile over the usual low ground floor. By reducing the original footprint and adding another storey, a more compact arrangement was made. Essentially, Dance's final design for the principal floor of the 'New Building' did not change from his first proposal ([SM D1/1/11]) except, for example, the reduction in size of the east wing and the omission of a service stair. Before the partial demolition, the old house had, from the ground floor to the principal floor above, two internal dog-leg stairs together with a servants' stair. There was also an external stair on the south front that, with the portico, added grandeur but not much convenience and had, with the garden entrance on the north side, also been demolished. Sanderson's front elevation had quoining at its angles and around the ground floor windows and though Dance thought 'It is best to avoid all quoin stones ...' (letter to Lord Londonderry regarding Mount Stewart, [SM D3/9/1a]) he did consider using them ([SM D1/1/2]). He also made a design with horizontal rustication ([SM D1/1/7]) though National Monuments Record photographs (1951) show the stucco in a very poor conditions and apparently without joints.

The portico
Sanderson's Palladian portico had once stood on a base 12 feet above the ground with its pediment rising above the roofline of his two-storey (three-storey in the centre) building. Dance's Greek Doric portico grew out of the ground and was both practical, since it was a porte-cochere, and immensely dignified. The details and proportions of the order were probably designed with Paestum in mind though the shafts are plain rather than fluted. The front door was rather dwarfed by the (existing) tall windows over it but by throwing two compartments into one and removing the floor of the piano nobile above, a generous space with dramatic floor-to-ceiling height became the 'Hall of Entrance'. However, the stair had only to reach 11 feet to the first floor. Dance's solution was an ingenious stair plan on three sides and in three stages that gave visual emphasis to an Ionic screen fronting a gallery. The result was elegant and welcoming.

The gallery on the north side of the entrance hall gave on to the 'Hall of Communication' in the 'New Building'. This second circulation area (which was without an internal stair) allowed access to the re-modelled dining room on the south side and to the drawing room and library in the new east wing and, via an external stair, to the garden on the north. The hall had an Egyptian style chimney-piece (plainer than the one in the library at Lansdowne House) for which Dance made several designs. The north-end was lit by a large window 16 feet high by 11 feet wide.

Wall paintings
Like Soane, Dance seemed to have particularly enjoyed designing libraries and the one at Stratton was distinguished by the fine wall paintings within panels above the bookshelves. These showed red figures on black in the manner of Greek vases and were probably executed by the elder Robert Smirke. The walls were decorated in a series of friezes, the panels of the doors picked out in brown and black against yellow ochre. The striking effect seems to call for klismos chairs and other Greek Revival furniture in the style of Thomas Hope. Indeed, at the time Dance was making his designs for the library ([SM D1/5/2] is dated 27 March 1804) he visited Hope's London house in Duchess Street, with Farington (31 March 1804) and thought it 'better than He expected' though it could not be supposed 'that He [Hope] was qualified to make a design for any work of consequence'.

Garden design
Working in the City, living on the west side of Gower Street with a garden of about 24 by 65 feet and without a suburban residence, it might seem that Dance had little scope for landscape design. However, country house commissions offered possibilities. Thus an early design for an unidentified country house, c.1771?, included two unusual wings consisting of treillage plant houses. At Ashburnham Place Dance designed extensive garden terraces, a formal garden and a bridge. The terrace and retaining walls at Coleorton were among Dance's contribution to gardens that included Wordsworth's winter garden in which Dance also had a hand. At Stratton, he laid out the gardens for the double cottages in the village and for the house, designed the garden on the north side, re-contouring the ground and adding a circular pond and rock-work that, 13 or 14 feet high, was laid out on either side of a stair and a bridge ([SM D1/1/1]). The use of massive rocks to retain, screen and frame as well as add interest to the elevated view from the dining room was an unusual solution. Seen against the wooded hill immediately north of the house, the rock-work would have appeared primitive and rather stark. Rock-work had been used for grottos, cascades and hermitages by earlier designers such as William Kent in a way that conjured up a light-hearted idea of the sublime. Dance's use is related to the noble austerity of his Greek Revival portico and the nearest parallel is that of Belsay, built 1807-17, where the strict Neo-Classicism of the house contrasts with the romanticism of its quarry garden.

Offices
The offices were placed to one side of the house - Dance's favourite arrangement. Sited to the west of the old wing, with an L-plan stables around a yard to the north and a laundry and wash-house separated by a passage from the brewhouse to the south, the detached kitchen was nearest to the house, being opposite and slightly to the rear of the west wall. Generous drying grounds were laid out between the laundry and the kitchen which were linked by covered ways. Rock-work, fences, walls and plantations screened the offices all around though the Barings in their family bedrooms in the west wing would have had a good view of the domestic routine.

Comments by Cockerell
C. R. Cockerell visited Stratton Park on 25 January 1823, making a sketch plan of the principal floor and an elevation of the portico front. He wrote that 'The front is plain but good, it wants point & elevation, something in the Barrack fashion. Portico does not accord with the lines & it is evidently post-[erior] the end windows ought to have had projected balconies for grace exterior as well as convenience & charm within. The Hall is handsome, stone rustic (French) below cornice, porphry pillars & bronze entablature above - ths latter is bad taste. The cornice not agreable seen so much under, the order somewhat high, would have been better on pedestals, little too overhanging, I esteem the order of rooms to the right most convenient & graceful, of very handsome proportions also nothing more convenient cheerful & handsome. The bridge at C to the garden an agreable appendage to Drawg: Ro: & looks well from dining Ro: Windows. The suites range well I think a staircase for servants at M [in the wide curved wall of the north end of the library] would save much tramping of sevants for service of Library & Drawg: Ro & Breakfast Ro. I think this system of House with a story of 10 ft high below & the noble story raised above it abo 18f: high with a small advantage over the prospect still the means of reaching the garden agreably, most delightful, it lends much to the grace of exterior and looks nobly. The lower apartments serve very well for ground Bed Ro:s, for studies, rooms of business, school rooms, near cielings here, you step from windows into garden. They are snug warm & very comfortable - on entering you descend a few steps under cols of Hall into a corridor leading to the Rooms - which looks well .... The sashes are all french against which they complain that they do not keep out the wet, tho ever so well contrived. Also you cannot proportion the admission of air'. The volume The volume of studies of house plans with drawings and notes compiled by Cockerell in 1825, and called by him 'Ichnographia Domestica', was divided into lots but not lot 247 (privately bought), which had the material relating to Stratton Park.

Demolition of Stratton Park
A letter to the Soane Museum of 25 July 1990 from the owner of the new house of Stratton Park since 1988, D. J. Stride, explains the recent history of the house: '... the Dance mansion was demolished in 1961 to make way for the present house and only [the] splendid portico now remains, together with part of the stables. These latter, however, have been altered beyond recognition ... to six houses. The Barings sold the house in the '30s for a girls school and then Barings Bank bought it back in 1939 providing safe refuge [for the bank] during the war. Sir John Baring who bought the house from Barings Bank in 1961, knocked it down and built the present Stratton Park [1963-5, architects Stephen Gardiner and Christopher Knight] then sold it in the seventies to an Arab Sheikh ...'

LITERATURE. DNB; the plan, front elevation and section of Stratton Park were published in J. Woolfe & J. Gandon, Vitruvius Britannicus, vol.IV, 1767, pl.52-5; J. P. Neale, Views of seats, vol.III, 1819; M. Webb, 'A House that integrates old and new', Country Life, CXLI, 1967, pp.80, 82-3; Stroud pp.200-03; Kalman pp.157-63; S. E. and J. Birchenough, The Manor House Lee and its associations, 2nd.ed., 1971, pp.53-7, 61-3; J. Harris, 'C. R. Cockerell's "Ichnographica [sic] Domestica"', Architectural History, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, XIV, 1971, pp.25-6, fig.22a; P. Ziegler, The Sixth Great Power, Barings 1762-1929, 1988, passim.

OTHER SOURCES
ING Baring Archive: Sir Francis Baring's account books BP2.S15; Lee estate papers NP 2.L.1; Hampshire County Records Office, Winchester; National Monuments Record, photographs taken in 1951.

For other schemes by Dance for Sir Francis Baring see 33 Hill Street, London; St Mary the Virgin, Micheldever, Hampshire; Chapel of St Bartholomew (later Church of All Saints), East Stratton, Hampshire; estate cottages, East Stratton, Hampshire; gate and twin lodge houses on the London road, Stratton Park, Hampshire; and lodge house on the Winchester road, Stratton Park, Hampshire.

For an unexecuted project for a country house for Sir Thomas Baring (eldest son of Sir Francis) see the unidentified country house. For an unexecuted project for a country house for Charles Wall (son-in-law and partner of Sir Francis Baring) see Norman Court, West Tytheley, Hampshire.

Group

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