Gregory's Vision

The Interior Architecture
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There is, in fact, little doubt that Gregory himself, rather than his architects, is the key figure. John Claudius Loudon, who visited Harlaxton in May 1840 and described it in the July number of the Gardener's Magazine, wrote that 'from entering so completely into both the design and the practical details of execution he may be said to have embodied himself in the edifice, and to live in every feature of it'. Although the house was not started until 1832, he began to collect ideas, money and fittings for it ten years earlier. Ultimately he travelled all over Europe, as far as Constantinople and the Crimea. But to begin with he confined himself to England, for his first plans were limited to building a house in the Jacobean or Elizabethan style. He told Loudon that ('there being, at the time he commenced, few or no books on the subject') he visited and studied, among other buildings, Bramshill, Hardwick, Hatfield, Knole, Burghley, Wollaton, Kirby, Longleat, Temple Newsam, and the Oxford and Cambridge colleges.

t seems to have been in 1831 that the architect Anthony Salvin (external link) was called in to, as Loudon put it, 'embody Mr Gregory's ideas in such detail as to fit them for the practical builder'. Salvin was not a surprising choice. Although only at the beginning of his career, he had already established a reputation as a rising country house architect.

The house that he designed (no doubt primed by Gregory with innumerable suggestions and possibly even sketch designs) was a masterly combination of ingenious planning and Picturesque composition. It was literally dug into a hillside, with the ground sloping up behind it and to one side, and down on the other two sides. This means that the main rooms could be put on the first floor, and yet open straight on to the garden on the two sides where the house hit the hill; and the service rooms could be in a basement which became a well-lit ground floor on the sides facing the Entrance Court and the Service Yard.

Gregory had moved in by the time the 1851 Census was made, but died in 1854. He had hoped that all his property would ultimately go to his friend and neighbour Sir Glynne Welby of Denton. But the major part of it was entailed in another direction; the Welbys inherited many of the contents of Harlaxton, but not Harlaxton itself. After passing through several different hands, and narrowly escaping demolition it was first leased, and finally acquired for the University of Evansville, its present occupant.