House Tour
The Great Hall
The Great Hall is entered off-centre. This is a survival of the traditional arrangement whereby the porch
led into a passage with the kitchens and butteries on the left and the hall, entered through a two-arched screen,
on the right - as in numerous medieval houses and Oxford and Cambridge colleges. Although the hall here
was redecorated in the late 17th century and again in the 18th, it must have seemed very old-fashioned by the
1790s when it was eventually remodelled. The days when the room had been used by the entire household or
even just by the lower servants were long past: all that was required now was a formal room for the reception
of visitors.
Remodelling took place between 1792 and 1796 when the central bay window, the classical chimney-piece and
doorcases were introduced, while the hall chairs (probably supplied by Thomas Chippendale the Younger) and the
Coadestone copy of the Borghese Vase were recorded here in an inventory of 1808. However, the Jacobean-style
plaster ribs and ornament on the ceiling, and the panelling with its heraldic programme, perhaps date from 1827
when Lady Hertford modernised the ground-floor rooms in this part of the house: the upper walls were then
painted to imitate jointed stone and the pine panelling grained to look like pale oak. In the bay window are
eleven panels of 17th century stained glass once in the Jacobean Chapel and Great Chamber. They represent the
arms of former owners of Temple Newsam: from the left the first three are Lacy arms; then the paternal coat of
Ingram; next Sir Arthur Ingram and his three wives, followed by his children and grandchildren.
The room was restored in 1988 when many picturesque architectural features which had been removed some 50 years
previously as 'offensive Victorian accretions' were reinstated. The arrangement of pictures partly follows
an inventory of c 1870 which emphasised the house's connections with the Stuart dynasty, loyalty to the crown
and its own illustrious ancestors.
Gentlemen's Passage
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