Sudbury Hall is largely the creation of George Vernon who succeeded to the estate in 1660 and subsequently began to rebuild the home the old manor house of his ancestors, probably to his own designs:
Of all the great houses built in Charles II’s reign, Sudbury Hall is one of the most idiosyncratic: a marriage of old-fashioned Jacobean features (particularly on the exterior_ with carved stone, wood and plasterwork in the up-to-date classical style of Sir Christopher Wren’s City Churches. Some of the magnificent interior decoration was not completed until 30 years after the house was begun, and as time progressed, prvincial craftsmen, like the plastere Samual Mansfield and the carver William Wilson, were replaced by the more fashionable London men, including Edward Pierce, Gringling Gibbons, Thomas Young and the plasterers Bradbury and Pettifer. The finishing touches came only in the 1690s, with Louis Laguerre’s Baroque murals and painted ceilings to the Staircase, Saloon and other rooms.*
Sudbury remained the home of the Vernon family until it was given to the Treasury in 1967 in part payment of the 9th Lord Vernon’s death duties. Ownership was subsequently transferred to the National Trust.
*Information from the National Trust guidebook.
They must have been quite some death duties.
It doesn’t bear thinking about…
what must it have been like to live somewhere like that?!
It would be quite fine as long as you could afford to employ the staff to look after cleaning, gardening etc…
This is a magnificent mansion Cherie and your presentation is excellent in all of your shots…..i like it even more because i was born in Sudbuty…..Ontario, that is:)
….peter:)
Thank you for your kind comments
I have to confess I had not heard of Sudbuty before…
Kind regards from England
Inheritance tax is just crazy!
Luckily we don’t have this in Malaysia.
We also abolished our TV licence about 10 years ago.
A lot of things in this country are crazy and they seem to be getting worse…
I could well do without the TV I can’t remember the last time I watched it
I wouldn’t want the heating bill either:)
Nor me!!
It does look elegant.
It is very intricate.