Carr of York was responsible for alterations to Boynton Hall between 1765 and 1780 for Sir George Strickland, Bt. Drawings for a grand Palladian mansion, almost certainly by Carr, show that as a young man Strickland had ideas of building a new house on a new site at Boynton. Instead he modernised the Tudor house, which Lord Burlington had improved. The recessed centre of the north front was filled in with a canted bay and screens of Doric columns were introduced in the hall. He also added the service wing. There are unsigned drawings for most of this work carried out between 1765 and 1780, probably by Carr, who was paid 17 guineas on 21 September 1767. Carr may also have been reponsible for the Carnaby Temple and the bridge over the Gypsey Race on the estate. The newly designed hall in the mansion was also to serve as a Sculpture Gallery.

Sir George Strickland travelled to Italy on the Grand Tour with his wife Elizabeth (née Winn, of Nostell Priory), and his two daughters arriving in Genoa in November 1778, where they were to sail to Lerici in the company of Mr. Craufurd and his daughters. They were in Naples in January 1779 with the Craufurds and later visited Paestum with Strickland Freeman (who later married his cousin Elizabeth, daughter of Sir George in 1781) and John Soane in February. They left Rome in 1779, where Sir George had purchased an inlaid marble table from James Byres, a dealer in antiquities and paintings, and various other objects from Thomas Jenkins, an agent for many English collectors and a dealer in antiquities, paintings and sculpture. Strickland's correspondence concerning his acquisitions and their dispatch to Boynton Hall is probably one of the most complete of its kind. The archive includes a receipt by Francesco Piranesi for prints of statues and the Antichita di Pesto, by his father G.B. Piranesi.

The carving on the frieze of the base of the tabke is taken directly from the Temple of Vespasian and Titus (also known in the 18th century as the the Temple of Jupiter Tonans / Thundering Jove) in the Roman Forum - it was reproduced in Les edifices antique de Rome dessinés et mesurés très exactement (Paris 1682) by the French artist Antoine Babuty Desgodetz who had been sent to Rome by Louis XIV to record the city's ancient monuments. The Strickland family are known to have owned a copy of this publication in their library - and could well have chosen the design for the table when ordering the base to display the magnificent top they had perhaps acquired on the Grand Tour. The temple was also illustrated in Piranesi's Vedute di Roma.

 

Arthur Oswald, ‘Boynton Hall, Yorkshire’, Country Life, 22 and 29 July 1954
B. Wragg and G. Worsley, The Life and Works of John Carr of York, 2000, p. 119