Charles Wall, the business partner and son-in-law of Sir Francis Baring of Stratton Park (he married Harriet in September 1790), bought the Norman Court estate, about a dozen miles from Stratton Park, in 1807. There was an older manor house on the site that had been pulled down in about 1752 when a hunting box was built, in a more elevated position nearby. Survey drawings and a sketch elevation (see [SM D2/7/16] and [SM D2/7/17] and note) show the 1752 house. By 1810, both Wall and Sir Francis Baring had 'left the Commercial concern' and Wall was said 'to be worth as many thousand pounds as there are days in the year' (Farington, 1 July 1810). In 1810, Dance was called in and though alterations and additions were considered, he rapidly moved on to make several variant designs for a new house and offices to cost at least £50,000 (Farington, 1 July 1810).

The plan was an enlargement and development of Coleorton but on an unimpeded site and on a more spacious scale. A central, 12-sided Polygon Hall (24 feet in diameter and four storeys compared with Coleorton's 18 feet and three storeys) top-lit by a clerestory rising above the roof was flanked by two exedrae rather than the single one at Coleorton. The grander stair was an imperial staircase (placed on one side) and various rooms were distributed in a nine-part division reflecting Palladio's villa plans. Kalman (pp.176-7) points out that the principal dimensions of these rooms - 16 (16 feet 6 inches), 24 feet and 36 feet - form a geometric progression corresponding to the ratio 4:6:9 that was recommended by Alberti for medium-sized rooms and one adopted for some of Palladio's villa plans.

The cross-axial plan has a room for the children on the ground floor placed next to Charles Wall's dressing room; both father and children having easy access to the back stairs. The offices are in a wing on the west side of the house connected by a yard with a covered passage on three sides; the larger kitchen yard at the westernmost end is enclosed by a semicircular wall. No servants' hall or laundry are indicated. In all of his designs for Norman Court, Dance kept to the same basic plan but his elevations differ in style. The first design ([SM D2/7/2]) is Gothic with, for example, turrets with gabled finials but on the same sheet is a rough sketch of a front with a two-storey portico. Design B is in a round-arched style that on the part-elevation of [SM D2/7/14] has turrets with the first floor windows having balconies. However, smoothly moulded arches with continuous imposts roughed in on [SM D2/7/8] and [SM D2/7/9] give a chaste effect that is disrupted by the emphatic porte-cochere which ([SM D2/7/9]) is round arched but with an eclectic assembly of capped octagonal turrets, coupled Corinthian columns, urns and balustrade. Design C ([SM D1/10/13]) has square-headed windows, a two-storey, pedimented, Corinthian porte-cochere and semicircular turrets with, rising above the balustraded parapet, bollard-like terminations capped by inverted paterae. Design D ([SM D2/7/10]) has a faintly pencilled Gothic front with pointed-arched windows and circular turrets with tall, cusped pinnacles. Design E ([SM D1/10/14]) reverts to Corinthian Classical but drawing [SM D2/7/13] offers a beautifully finished alternative elevation in a minimal Gothic style that is at the same time Indian. Subsequent designs revert to Corinthian while sporting a lantern storey that is Chinese in inspiration.

By June 1810, Dance had made finished designs for Norman Court and it may have been the death of Sir Francis Baring in September that postponed any decisions. Other family problems intervened and in 1815 Charles Wall died in a riding accident. The estate passed to Charles Baring Wall who employed Henry Harrison as his architect for further alterations to the existing house. Dorothy Stroud considered it likely that Dance made some earlier changes to the house, for example, some chimney-pieces suggest his hand.

LITERATURE. Stroud pp.212-13; Kalman pp.175-87 (includes discussion on geometric progressions and harmonic proportion).

OTHER SOURCES. Tim Mowl, 'Norman Court', 1991, typescript notes, 4pp (Dance file, Soane Museum).

Group

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