This history of Harlaxton Manor, its construction, interiors and inhabitants, is reproduced from the Harlaxton Manor Guide Book (©1984).

The links below follow the structure of the Guide Book.

Foreword	Lady Wedgwood
Harlaxton Manor	Mark Girouard
The Interiors at Harlaxton	Clive Wainwright
The Stucco at Harlaxton	Geoffrey Beard
Harlaxton's Varied Inhabitants	Graddon Rowlands

A Note on the Contributors

• Lady Wedgwood (Dr Pamela Tudor-Craig), a distinguished medieval scholar, was Professor of Art History at Harlaxton College. She organised the Richard III Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 1973 and has frequently broadcast on radio and television.
• Dr Mark Girouard is one of the country's leading architectural historians. He has written many books including The Victorian Country House, Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan Country House and the best-selling Life in the English Country House.
• Mr Clive Wainwright is Research Assistant in the Department of Furniture and Woodwork at the Victorian and Albert Museum. He has published widely on British furniture and interiors of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is currently working on antiquarian interiors.
• Dr Geoffirey Beard was, until his retirement, Director of the Visual Arts Centre at the University of Lancaster. A noted authority on stucco, his many books include Decorative Plasterwork in Great Britain, Craftsmen and Interior Decoration in England 1660-1820 and The Work of Robert Adam.
• Dr Graddon Rowlands was Principal of Harlaxton College until 1989 having previously been a lecturer and administrator at universities both in this country and the United States.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Sir Bruno Welby who provided fine negatives of the four Salvin (external link) perspectives illustrated on the centre pages; to Mr John Piper, CH, who kindly allowed us to photograph his favourite painting of Harlaxton which hangs in his Oxfordshire home; to Yale University Press for giving their permission to reproduce (with minor revisions) Dr Cirouard's essay on Harlaxton from The Victorian Country House (1979); to the British Architectural Library for the picture of the North Elevation of Harlaxton Manor; to the Radio Times Hulton Picture Library for the photograph of Mrs Van der Elst; to Messrs Gotch Saunders and Surridge for their photograph of Mr Pearson-Gregory; and to Mr Francis Le Marchant for his watercolour of the Harlaxton Conservatory on the back cover.

We are indebted to the other scholars who advised on the compilation of this guidebook and whose contributions will appear in the larger work on the manor which it is hoped to publish in due course - Dr Jill Allibone, Mr David Durant, Mr Kenneth Lemmon, Mr John Anthony, and Ms Sandra Wedgwood.

Our thanks are to all of the above and to the three eminent authorities who have given freely of their time to make this guidebook a reality.