A Study of the evolution of the English Country house offers a fascinating insight into how changing fashions in architecture and the decorative arts shaped the homes of some of the land’s most influential families. This tour takes in four of Northamptonshire’s finest country houses, including Kirby Hall, and Boughton House, Burghley and Drayton House. One of the great Elizabethan houses of England, Kirby Hall was begun in 1570 for Sir Humphrey Stafford, a descendent of the Earls of Stafford, although he died before the house was completed, and it was subsequently sold to Christopher Hatton, a gifted and ambitious courtier of Queen Elizabeth I. Boughton presents a remarkable blend of the intimate and the grand, with its palatial Versailles style frontage added by Ralph, 1st Duke of Montagu in the 1690s. Burghley, one of the largest and grandest houses of the first Elizabethan Age. Built and mostly designed by William Cecil, Lord High Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth I, between 1555 and 1587. The core of Drayton House, built by Simon de Drayton c.1300, still survives, but the house is especially important for its transformation in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1770 the house passed to the Sackville family, when the 1st Viscount Sackville, who served as Secretary of State for America in Lord North’s cabinet during the American War of Independence, took ownership. It remains in his descendants’ hands to this day.
Dates:
7 - 9 September 2022
Prices:
All prices listed are per person
Twin/double share: from £1195
Double room for sole use supplement: £70
Deposit: £350