The manor house was radically altered in the nineteenth century, and remained a family home until 1953.*

The present condition of the manor house interior is the result of extensive dry rot that nearly destroyed the building forty years ago. Wooden plugs in the walls reveal where damaged panelling was stripped away. The ground floor and basement levels may be visited at present, but much remains incomplete, awaiting full restoration.

The conversion of the monastic buildings into a new house followed quickly after the closure of the priory in 1536. That new but rambling house with its medieval core was radically altered twice in the nineteenth century (c. 1810-11 and 1830-37), fortunately retaining a substantial part of the monastic refectory.*

*From English Heritage Brinkburn Priory handbook

Brinkburn Priory lies in a secluded and enchanting setting, tucked away in woodland within  loop of the River Coquet. It was founded in the 1130s as a community of Augustinian canons, although the earliest surviving buildings date from the end of the twelfth century. Never a wealthy house, and frequently troubled by Scottish raids, it was one of the first monasteries to be closed at the Dissolution in 1536.

After the Dissolution the priory church was used for a while as the parish church, while parts of the monastic buildings were adapted to form a manor house. The condition of the church rapidly deteriorated, but after years of neglect it was carefully reroofed and restored in the mid-nineteenth century, and stands today as one of the finest examples of early Gothic architecture in Northumberland.*

*From English Heritage Brinkburn Priory handbook

The walls in the central hall at Wallington art covered in Pre-Raphaelite paintings by William Bell Scott. The paintings depict scenes from great moments in the history of Northumberland.

The result is a triumph of Pre-Raphaelite art, a colourful and vividly refreshing Victorian idealised vision of history, from the age of Celtic saints to the industrial revolution in the north. One panel shows the building of Hadrian’s Wall, another the famous scene of Grace Darling and her father heroically rowing to save stranded sailors off the Farne islands.

This photo taken through glass and in dim light is far from perfect but I wanted to share this exquisite model with you.

A model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem which stood from 1145 until 1808. Perhaps more correctly called the Church of the Resurrection, this model is one of many made by craftsmen in Bethlehem under Franciscan supervision, or by the Franciscans themselves. At least four examples have survived in England. The Church is shown as it was between 1554 and 1719 and each part can be removed giving access to the interior.*

*From an information sheet next to the model

Situated next to the marble dairy featured in a previous post is the Head Gardener’s House.

Beside the dairy is the ornate Scottish seventeenth-century style Head-Gardener’s House of 1897, directly inspired by Argyll’s Lodging in Stirling, and surrounded by its neat garden behind a fine wrought-iron gate. The high status of the head-gardener in the estate hierarchy is obvious from such a residence, including even a decorative dolphin fountain and sundial.

On the south side of the house, Kinross designed four formal garden terraces still planted in Edwardian style. A geometric terrace is now stocked with floribunda roses and hostas, To one side is a small grass terrace, edged by four large stone vases. Below it, through a wrought-iron gate with griffins adorning the piers, is a tennis lawn, and below that, a croquet lawn. There is a stone dovecote on the far side of the elevated terrace provided for.

The lower terraces are surrounded by a bank of rhododendrons down to the lake, smoothly achieving the transition from nineteenth-century formal gardens to eighteenth-century picturesque landscape.*

The lower terrace and the lake can be viewed in my previous post.

*From the Manderston guidebook