House Tour
The Picture Gallery
The Picture Gallery is amongst the finest rooms of its date in England. The 7th Viscount found here in 1736 an
old fashioned Jacobean Gallery, stretching the entire length of the north wing, a distance of more than 150 feet.
There were great bay windows on each of the long walls and three fireplaces; the ceiling was lower and there was a
typical moulded plaster frieze. The upper walls may have been painted decoratively with formal patterns of
strapwork and the lower walls were panelled. It was virtually derelict, containing in 1702 only 'one parcel
of rape seed'.
Between 1738 and 1745 the 7th Viscount and his architect, Daniel Garrett, divided it up, blocked some of the
windows, raised the ceiling level and provided two magnificent new chimney pieces based on designs by William Kent
and made by the London mason Robert Doe with paintings by Antonio Joli. The walls were lined with wood and covered
with paper hangings flocked in green on a varnished green ground. An exact facsimile using 18th century techniques
was created in 1996 from fragments found under the floorboards identical to a pattern found at Clandon, Surrey,
Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, and the Privy Council Chamber, Westminster from the 1730s.
The overall design for the ceiling is closely related to another by Daniel Garrett for the Great Room at Aldby
Hall, Yorkshire, while the plasterwork itself was executed by Thomas Perritt and Joseph Rose Snr. of York.
Their detailed account survives: the low relief work was probably done on the bed of the ceiling, but the
mouldings and profile portraits were pre-cast and nailed into position. The latter cost 10s 6d (52½p) each,
and represent George I in the centre with George II, his children and grandchildren around the sides.
It was an opportune gesture of loyalty to the royal family at a difficult time for the King with the Jacobite
Rebellion still a very fresh memory. The ceiling was painted a salmon colour and other areas in off white.
Georgian Library
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