House Tour

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South Dressing Room

The South Dressing Room, together with the South Bedroom, the State Bedroom and Dressing Room occupy what was the Tudor and Jacobean Great Chamber. Lengths of its plaster frieze survive above their suspended ceilings. The development of this part of the house is conjectural. It seems that the vast Great Chamber may have been divided into a Dining Room and a Withdrawing Room around the middle of the 18th century. These rooms were further divided during the 1790s by Frances Lady Irwin to form bedrooms and dressing rooms.

Although almost certainly conceived as a dressing room for the adjacent South Bedroom in 1808 this room was described as '3d Room unfinished'. It was redecorated in preparation for the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1867 when it was given its present blue wallpaper (reprinted in 2005). It was redecorated again in a similar gold paper in the early 1890s in preparation for the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York when it was used as a dressing room.

Room restored 2005

State Bedroom

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