Harewood House

Harewood House is a country house located in Harewood near Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Designed by the architects John Carr and Robert Adam, it was built from 1759 to 1771 for wealthy trader Edwin Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood.

Still home to the Lascelles family, Harewood House is a member of Treasure Houses of England, a marketing consortium for nine of the foremost historic homes in England. The house itself is a Grade I listed building, there are a number of features in the grounds and courtyard that have been listed as Grade I, II and III.

The house was built from 1759 to 1771 for Edwin Lascelles, whose family had bought the estate after making its fortune in the West Indies through Customs positions, slave trading and lending money to planters. The house was designed by the architects John Carr and Robert Adam.

Much of the furniture is by the eighteenth-century English furniture designer Thomas Chippendale, who came from nearby Otley. Lancelot "Capability" Brown designed the grounds to which Sir Charles Barry added a grand terrace, in 1844. Artist Thomas Girtin stayed at the house many times, painting the house itself and also the surrounding countryside and landmarks, such as the nearby Plumpton Rocks which at the time was owned by the Harewood Estate.

Harewood House has a long history of hosting visitors interested in its imposing architecture and collections of paintings. The first guidebook to the home was published early in the nineteenth century.

The house served as a convalescent hospital during both World War I and World War II. The archives of the Lascelles family and the Harewood estate are held at West Yorkshire Archive Service. in Leeds. Since 1996, part of the house's grounds have been used as the village in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale, which had been based in two different Yorkshire villages since its inception 24 years earlier.