House Tour
Terrace Room
The New Terrace Room took its name from a French window leading out onto the terrace which
was removed in the 1860s. The room was the site of the original early-Tudor staircase. This rose from
the wall opposite the hall door by a series of short flights of wooden steps and landings to doors that led to
the first- and second-floor passages of the west wing (with the principal family apartments) and, at an
intermediate level, the first floor of the south wing. Despite redecoration during the 1680s this staircase
must have seemed irredeemably old-fashioned, so in 1777 James Wyatt was paid to build a new staircase elsewhere
and this ground-floor room then became ante-chamber.
In 1827 Lady Hertford hung the New Terrace Room with sumptuous 18th-century Brussels tapestries telling the story of
Moses; another gift from the Prince of Wales, probably in 1806. The tapestries left the house in 1922 but seventy
years later were bought back for Temple Newsam at a country house auction near Dublin. For the time being the
walls have a reprint of a French wallpaper of c.1804, probably supplied by Thomas Chippendale the younger and
found beneath the Oriental wallpaper in the Chinese Drawing Room, along with a border added c.1820.
Dining Room
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