After George, 4th Baron Carberry died in 1804, Laxton Hall (built by 1783) was left to his widow Susan for life. In 1806 she married her late husband's cousin George Freke Evans MP (1722-1829) and an ambitious programme of alterations and improvements to the house and garden was immediately begun. Humphry Repton with his son John Adey Repton received the commission but by the end of 1808 they had fallen out with the client and were replaced by a surveyor, William Carter, wo had been working at Laxton. It is not known how Dance was introduced to Laxton though it has been suggested (RCHME, 1984, p.110, see below) that it was through Carter who was also surveyor 'for Sir Francis Baring presumably at Stratton'. James Carter, a London surveyor, joiner and model maker was certainly employed at Stratton and on other of Dance's work. Perhaps the two men were related? Drawing [SM D1/1/13] for Stratton is inscribed 'James Carter' on the recto and 'Wm Carter' on the verso.

Dance's design is a development of the (staircase) hall at Stratton Park though at Laxton the low arch below the Ionic screen gives on to a low, dark, corridor that leads to a lobby on the west side and eastwards to a brilliantly lit geometrical staircase. The hall has been compared with the work of French Neo-Classicists and in particular that of Ledoux.

Kalman draws attention to the correspondence between Dance's composition and Soane's project for the Waiting Room Court at the Bank of England of 1803 (SM, vol.72/56, Misc.Bank drawings 1); the ground floor rustication and arches are similar as well as the Ionic columns above. He also suggests that a precedent for the juxtaposition of a colonnade over an arch and the rustication above a low dado wall treatment is the (Corinthian) Arch of Hadrian, published in J. Stuart and N. Revett's Antiquities of Athens (volume 111, 1794, chapter 111, plate 4).

George, 7th Baron Carberry made some alterations and additions after 1845 that may have included the replacement of cornices and chimney-pieces in the areas designed by Dance. In the early 1920s Laxton Hall was bought by the Dominican Order, who opened it as the Blackfriars School in 1924. In 1968 this was closed and the house has since become an old people's home.

LITERATURE. Stroud pp.215-16, reproduced fig.71a; Kalman pp.196-7; Colvin (under Dance and Repton); G. Isham, 'Laxton Hall near Corby, Northamptonshire', Northamptonshire Antiquarian Society, LXVI, 1969 pp.18-21 (drawing reproduced); Royal Commission on Historic Monuments England, County of Northampton, vol.IV, 1984, pp.106-11.

Group

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