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.