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Belton House is a country house near Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. Today it is owned by the National Trust, and is fully open to the public. The house was built between 1685 and 1688 for Sir John Brownlow. Internally and externally the mansion is considered to be one of the finest examples of Restoration style architecture. During its 300 year history it has been home to the Brownlow family and their descendents the Cust family, who donated the house to the National Trust in 1984. The house retains many of its original furnishings, including plaster work, oriental porcelain, silver. The house is set within formal gardens and a series of avenues leading to garden follies within a greater wooded park.
Early History of Belton
The Brownlow family, a dynasty of lawyers, had begun to accumulate land in the area of Belton from approximately 1598, and the reversion of manor of Belton itself in 1609 from the Pakenham family, who finally sold the manor house to Sir John Brownlow in 1617. However, the old house near the site of the church in the garden of the present house remained largely unoccupied the family preferring their other houses elsewhere. John Brownlow, who had married an heiress, was childless and as a consequence was attached to his only two blood relations a great-nephew, also called, John Brownlow and a great niece Alice Sherard. Following the marriage of the two cousin when both were aged 16 in 1676. Three years later the couple inherited the Brownlow estates from their Great Uncle to together with an income of £9000 per annum and £20,000 in cash. They immediately bought a town house in the newly fashionable Southampton Square in Bloomsbury, and decided to build a new country house at Belton.
In 1685 work on the new house commenced. The architect thought to have been responsible for Belton chosen was Wiliam Winde. This presumption is based on the stylistic similarity between the completed Belton and Coombe Abbey by Winde, and also on a letter dated 1690 in which Winde is recomending a plasterer to complete the interiors. Whoever the architect it seems likely the inspiration for the design of Belton was Clarendon House, London designed by Roger Pratt and completed in 1647. This mansion (demolished soon after 1683) was one of the most admired buildings of its era due to "its elgant symmetry and confident and common sensical design" . However, wat is known for sure is that John and Alice Brownlow employed the master mason Wiliam Stanton to oversee the project, his second in command was John Thompson who had worked with Sir Christopher Wren on several of Wren's London churches, while the chief joiner John Sturges, had worked at Chatsworth under Talman, thus so competent were the builders of Belton, that it is thought Winde may have done little more than provide the original plans and drawings, leaving the interpretation to the master craftsmen. This theory is further born out, by the more provincial, but nevertheless less masterful design of the adjoining stable block which is known to have been entirely the work of Stanton.
Design of the House
Belton is designed in the "H" shape and architectural design which became popular in during the late Elizabethan period. However by the late 16th century it had evolved further than the "one room deep" ranges of the earlier houses, such as that at Montacute House. Placing rooms back to back, as at Belton permitted them to be not just better lit and heated but also better accesses and related to each other. Another advantage was that the double room depth allowed the house to be more compact, and under one more easily constructed simple roof. This design also allowed for greater symmetry between the facades.
The plan published in Vitruvius Britannicus in 1717 indicates that at Belton the principal, entrance hall, reception and family bedrooms were placed on the first floor above a low semi-basement containing service rooms. The two principal entrances to the mansion in the centre of both the North and south facades were accessed by external staircases - a single broad flight on the north side, and a double staircase on the south.
A great and imposing internal staircase lead to the second floor, which had a matching fenestration with windows of equal value to those on the first floor below, contained (above the central hall) a large dining room, while the remainder of the rooms were bedchambers. Thus the two main floors of the house were purely for state and family use, the staff and service areas being confined to the semi-basement and attic floors. This concept of keeping staff and domestic matters out of site (when not required) was a relatively new concept which had first been employed by Pratt in the design of Coleshill House in Berkshire. The contemporary social commentator of the day Roger North lauded back stairs as one of the most important inventions of his day.
Belton is built of the local Ancaster stone, the principal room is the large Marble Hall at the centre of the south front. This room which takes it's name from the black and white marble tiles of its floor is the begining of a grand procession of room, and corresponds to the former grat Parlour or Salloon on the north front. The Marble Hall is flanked by the former Little Parlour (now the Tappestry Room) and the Great Staircase Hall, while the Saloon is flanked bt two withdrawing room. While the Marble Hall and Saloon were at the centre of an enfilade of reception rooms, they were in no way meant to form the heart of a suite of state rooms in the Baroque fashion. Indeed one of the most important rooms the Great Dining Room (now the library) was quite sparate on the floor above. The principal bedrooms were, in fact, not part of a state suite, but in individual suites on both floors of the two wings flanking what is sometimes called the "state centre" of the house. Belton's design is curuious for a grand house of the period, as not only was the main staircase asymetrically placed to one side of the hall, but also because the current fashion was to have a Baroque state suite, extending in a long enfilade from either side of the saloon in the European fashion
Gardens and the park
The gardens are expansive, measuring 36 acres (14 ha), and semi-formal, with a wide range of features of various periods and styles. Among the more notable are the orangery and the ice house with its lake.
The park is extensive, including valley bottom and hillside land.
20th century
When the Machine Gun Corps was established in 1915, its home headquarters and base training ground were established in the southern part of the park. The flat bottom and rising sides of the Witham valley here, where the river passes between the Lower Lincolnshire Limestone and the Upper Lias mudstone, made it possible to establish ranges and depot close to good communications in the form of the Great North Road and the east coast main line railway station at Grantham. The depot was closed in 1919 and land was restored to its owner, Lord Brownlow, as the process of removing the temporary buildings progressed.
Trivia
- The house featured as Lady Catherine de Bourgh's residence, Rosings Park, in the BBC's 1995 television version of Pride and Prejudice.
- The house was the setting for the BBC's 1988 adaptation of Moondial.
References
- The National Trust. Belton House. 2006. Page 2. ISBN 1-84359-218-5
- The National Trust. Belton House. 2006. Page 45. ISBN 1-84359-218-5
- This paragraph refering to the input of Winde to the project is the view of Jaskson-Stops, Gervase (1990). The Country House in Perspective. Page 57. Pavilion Books Ltd.
- Girouard, Mark (1978). Life in the English Country House.Page 126 Yale University Press. ISBN 0300022735.
External link
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