Sudbury Hall | |
---|---|
General information | |
Status | open |
Type | English country house |
Architectural style | Restoration-era English Baroque, Jacobean |
Town or city | Sudbury, Derbyshire |
Country | United Kingdom |
Coordinates | 52°53′11″N1°45′55″W / 52.886338°N 1.765233°W |
Construction started | 1660 |
Completed | 1680 |
Renovated | 1969-1971 |
Renovating team | |
Architect(s) | John Beresford Fowler |
Website | |
nationaltrust.org.uk |
Sudbury Hall is a country house in Sudbury, Derbyshire, England. One of the country's finest Restoration mansions, it has Grade I listed building status.
The National Trust Museum of Childhood is housed in the 19th-century servants' wing of Sudbury Hall.
In 1086, following the Norman Conquest, the manor of Sudbury was listed in the Domesday Book.
The Vernon family came to Sudbury as a result of the 16th-century marriage of the Sudbury heiress Ellen Montgomery to Sir John Vernon (d.1545), a son of Sir Henry Vernon of Haddon Hall in Derbyshire. [1]
The present house at Sudbury was built shortly after the restoration of King Charles II, between 1660 and 1680 by George Vernon, grandfather of George Venables-Vernon the 1st Baron Vernon. [1] George Vernon used his new-found wealth from marrying Northamptonshire heiress Margaret Onley to build a grand new mansion on the site of a smaller house. He kept meticulous accounts of the building project, and because there is no record of any payment to an architect, historians surmise that George designed Sudbury Hall himself. [2] George Vernon also established the Estate village close to the Hall to provide housing for his servants, labourers and tradesmen. The buildings in the village still survive intact today. [1]
Sudbury Hall was leased for three years from 1840 by Queen Adelaide, the widow of William IV of the United Kingdom. The east wing was added by George Devey in 1876–83. [3] By the late 19th century, the extent of the Sudbury Estate stretched from Cubley down to Marchington in Staffordshire. [1]
In 1916, the 8th Lord Vernon, George Francis Augustus Venables-Vernon, died aged 26 in Malta from an illness contracted while in service as an officer in World War I. As a result, the Sudbury estate was subject to Death duties, the taxation which had been introduced in 1894 by the Liberal Government. [4] As with many other large estates across Britain, this increased financial burden compelled the 9th Lord Vernon, Francis Venables-Vernon, to sell off tracts of land and some of the contents of Sudbury Hall. In the 1930s and 1940s, the 9th Lord was able to buy back some of this land to provide social housing in Sudbury village. [1]
During World War II, a US Air Force hospital was based in Sudbury Park, close to RAF Sudbury. The land was purchased by the government in 1948 and converted into HM Prison Sudbury, with a housing estate for prison officers. [1]
Death duties continued to burden the Vernon family, and in 1967, Sudbury Hall and its principal contents along with part of the gardens and parkland, was transferred by the 10th Baron Vernon [John Lawrence Venables-Vernon] via the Land Fund to the National Trust, in part payment of death duties. The remainder of the Sudbury Estate is still held by Vernon descendants. [2] [1]
In 2020 Sudbury Hall closed to the public for renovations, during which the National Trust consulted 100 child "ambassadors" to redesign the visitor experience for children. It reopened in October 2022, rebranded as The Children’s Country House at Sudbury, equipped with a dressing up and dancing area, a mirror ball, a neon sign with the words "Party like it’s 1699", an escape room experience and humorous speech bubbles hung next to portraits. [5] The revised visitor experience has been criticised by the Vernon Family; Joanna Fitzalan Howard, daughter of John Lawrance Venables-Vernon, 10th Baron Vernon accused the National Trust of "dumbing down" by turning her ancestral home into "a child-centred theme park". [6] The National Trust have stated that the new experience offers "new ways for children to learn about the history of Sudbury Hall" and that the speech bubbles inform children about "hidden symbolism in historic portraits". [7] [8] The changes have also been criticised by the pressure group Restore Trust for discouraging adult visitors unaccompanied by children, and for removing the house contents to make way for "fun active games and activities". [9] In May 2023 the Children’s Country House at Sudbury was awarded Permanent Exhibition of the Year at the Museum and Heritage Awards 2023. Judges expressed the view that the redesign of Sudbury Hall offered a "participatory and imaginative new bold approach to interpreting historic houses and heritage". [10] [11]
Sudbury Hall dates from the Restoration era, but George Vernon's building is based on a Jacobean design, with its ornate Great Staircase and Long Gallery. Notably, the state rooms are located on the west side of the building and the servants' quarters on the east side, a traditional layout preferred by Tudor architects. [3] Architectural historian Cherry Ann Knott has suggested that the design of the hall was based on Crewe Hall in Cheshire, which stands around 1.5 miles from Haslington Hall, where George Vernon was born. [12]
The house is a two-storey red brick building fronted with a Baroque main entrance porch, with two levels of paired columns, each surmounted with a pediment. The carvings above the porch were sculpted by William Wilson. [3]
The interior of the house was completed in 1691. There have been a number of small alterations in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the interior was restored 1969-1971 by John Beresford Fowler. The Great Staircase, designed by Edward Pierce, dates from c.1676 and is considered to be one of the finest Restoration staircases in Britain. It is noted for its white-painted balustrade with luxuriant, carved foliage. The landing ceiling is adorned with ornate plasterwork by Robert Bradbury and James Pettifer (1675) and ceiling paintings of mythological scenes by Louis Laguerre. Other plasterwork within the house was designed by Pettifer, Bradbury and Samuel Mansfield of Derby. Of particular note in the drawing room is an ornately carved overmantel by Grinling Gibbons. [3] [13]
Between c.1872 and 1880, architect George Devey significantly modified and extended an early 19th-century servants' east wing to Sudbury Hall; this now houses the National Trust Museum of Childhood. [3]
Sudbury holds a large collection of portraits of Vernon family members, as well as other paintings and works of fine art. Of particular note are a portrait of George Vernon (1635/6-1702), the builder of Sudbury Hall, by John Michael Wright, (oil on canvas, 1660). [14] Other portraits in the collection include:
The house was used for the internal Pemberley scenes in the BBC dramatisation (1995) of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice . The house's centrally-positioned domed cap-house featured in the title shot of Yorkshire Television's children's programme The Book Tower .
Belton House is a Grade I listed country house in the parish of Belton near Grantham in Lincolnshire, England, built between 1685 and 1687 by Sir John Brownlow, 3rd Baronet. It is surrounded by formal gardens and a series of avenues leading to follies within a larger wooded park. Belton has been described as a compilation of all that is finest of Carolean architecture, said to be the only truly vernacular style of architecture that England had produced since the Tudor period. It is considered to be a complete example of a typical English country house; the claim has even been made that Belton's principal façade was the inspiration for the modern British motorway signs which give directions to stately homes.
Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt was a Church of England bishop. He was the Bishop of Carlisle from 1791 to 1807 and then the Archbishop of York until his death.
Cliveden is an English country house and estate in the care of the National Trust in Buckinghamshire, on the border with Berkshire. The Italianate mansion, also known as Cliveden House, crowns an outlying ridge of the Chiltern Hills close to the South Bucks villages of Burnham and Taplow. The main house sits 40 metres (130 ft) above the banks of the River Thames, and its grounds slope down to the river. There have been three houses on this site: the first, built in 1666, burned down in 1795 and the second house (1824) was also destroyed by fire, in 1849. The present Grade I listed house was built in 1851 by the architect Charles Barry for the 2nd Duke of Sutherland.
Baron Vernon, of Kinderton in the County of Chester, is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1762 for the former Member of Parliament George Venables-Vernon. He had previously represented Lichfield and Derby in the House of Commons. Born George Vernon, he was the son of Henry Vernon, of Sudbury in Derbyshire, and Anne Pigott, daughter and heiress of Thomas Pigott by his wife Mary Venables, sister and heiress of Sir Peter Venables, Baron of Kinderton in Cheshire. In 1728, he assumed by Royal Licence the additional surname of Venables upon inheriting the Venables estate in Cheshire from his childless cousin Anne, widow of the 2nd Earl of Abingdon.
Haddon Hall is an English country house on the River Wye near Bakewell, Derbyshire, a former seat of the Dukes of Rutland. It is the home of Lord Edward Manners and his family. In form a medieval manor house, it has been described as "the most complete and most interesting house of [its] period". The origins of the hall are from the 11th century, with additions at various stages between the 13th and the 17th centuries, latterly in the Tudor style.
Charlecote Park is a grand 16th-century country house, surrounded by its own deer park, on the banks of the River Avon in Charlecote near Wellesbourne, about 4 miles (6 km) east of Stratford-upon-Avon and 5.5 miles (9 km) south of Warwick in Warwickshire, England. It has been administered by the National Trust since 1946. It is a Grade I listed building and is open to the public. The park and gardens are listed Grade II* in Historic England's Register of Parks and Gardens.
Cassiobury House was a country house in Cassiobury Park, Watford, England. It was the ancestral seat of the Earls of Essex. Originally a Tudor building, dating from 1546 for Sir Richard Morrison, it was substantially remodelled in the 17th and 19th centuries and ultimately demolished in 1927. The surrounding Cassiobury Park was turned into the main public open space for Watford.
George Venables-Vernon, 1st Baron Vernon, was a British politician.
George Venables-Vernon, 2nd Baron Vernon, was the 2nd Baron Vernon of Kinderton. He acceded to the title in 1780 after the death of his father George Venables-Vernon, first Baron Vernon of Kinderton.
George Anson, known as George Adams until 1773, was a Staffordshire landowner from the Anson family and a British Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1761 and 1769.
George John Warren Venables-Vernon, 5th Baron Vernon, was a British politician. He was one of the last members of parliament for Derbyshire and the first for South Derbyshire. Vernon had a lifetime enthusiasm for Italian literature, particularly Dante after visiting Italy as a child. Vernon county is named after him in Australia.
Frederick Anson (1811–1885) was a British clergyman from the Anson family, who served as Canon of St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.
The Vernon family was a wealthy, prolific and widespread English family with 11th-century origins in Vernon, Normandy, France. Their extant titles include Baron Vernon and Vernon baronets of Shotwick Park.
Fairfax House is a Georgian townhouse located at No. 27, Castlegate, York, England, near Clifford's Tower and York Castle Museum. It was probably built in the early 1740s for a local merchant and in 1759 it was purchased by Charles Gregory Fairfax, 9th Viscount Fairfax of Emley, who arranged for the interior to be remodelled by John Carr (architect). Fairfax was the widower of heiress Elizabeth Clifford, daughter of Hugh Clifford, 2nd Baron Clifford of Chudleigh: his inheritance from her death enabled him to purchase the house, which he intended as a home for his daughter from his first marriage, Ann Fairfax.
George Webster was a 19th-century British Marine Art painter. He toured extensively and painted seascapes of the places he visited. His work was exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists and the Royal Academy.
Commander Francis Lawrance William Venables-Vernon, 9th Baron Vernon DL, styled The Honourable Francis Venables-Vernon from 1889 to 1915, was a British soldier.
Frances Margaret Venables-Vernon, Baroness Vernon was an American heiress who married into the British aristocracy.
Augustus Henry Venables-Vernon, 6th Baron Vernon, was a British landowner and soldier.
Sir Thomas Vernon was a London merchant and director of the East India Company who served in the Parliament of England.
Henry Vernon, of Sudbury, Derbyshire, was an English landowner and politician.