Burton Agnes Hall
The Burton Agnes Hall is a mansion in the Elizabethan style in the village of Burton Agnes at Driffield in English county East Riding of Yorkshire . It was built between 1606 and 1610 for Sir Henry Griffith according to plans attributed to the builder Robert Smythson . The older Norman Burton Agnes Manor House from 1173 still stands on the neighboring property today. Both buildings have been listed as Grade I Historic Buildings by English Heritage .
Building history
The manor house has a number of beautiful stucco ceilings from the 17th century and mantels. The ceiling of the Long Gallery was restored in two stages by the architect Francis Johnson from 1951 to 1974. The plans, attributed to John Smythson, show a square building with bay windows and a courtyard. All the pomp is concentrated on the front facade, which has many windows and many bay windows, two rectangular ones on either side of the main entrance, two semicircular ones at the ends of the side wings and two pentagonal ones at the corners of the building. Gables that alternate with parapets of the same height create variety in the facade.
The front facade is one story higher than the rest of the house. This creates a long gallery that runs the entire length of the second floor. Thus the side facades are asymmetrical.
The two rectangular bay windows next to the two middle partitions of the house contain the gate and the bay window at the end of the hall. So you get a traditional arrangement, but with the entrance to the gate building in a place that you can't see, not from the front, but on the side of the bay window, so that the symmetry is retained in the main view.
The main rooms vary in size due to the protrusion of the bay windows, but the most important room is the Long Gallery, which runs the full width of the front facade. It has a barrel vault that is richly decorated with stucco. The parade bedroom, which is now divided into two rooms, was located on the upper floor above the salon. Although the house was renovated several times, a large part of the fixtures from the 17th century have been preserved. B. Wood carvings, stucco ceilings and alabaster figures.
Robert Smythson clearly influenced Burton Agnes Hall, but when you compare the plans with the house then actually built, it becomes clear that there are several differences. In the plans, all four large bay windows at the corners of the main facade are pentagonal, but actually two of the bay windows were designed in a semicircular shape. The middle section of the east facade was removed, the corner sections of the north facade became rectangular and the west facade was completely changed. The gatehouse also has an entrance from the front in the plan, but one was actually built from the side.
These changes make it impossible for this plan to be based on just a survey of the house. It must be kind of the first version of the original plan Smythson made for Sir Henry Griffiths. It is difficult to say to what extent the built variances are due to changes in thought made by Smythson himself, and to what extent those changes were made by the Griffiths and the bricklayers and joiners who built the house. The semicircular windows probably go back to Smythson himself, because such windows appear at a crucial point in his plans for two other houses. But it is possible that he planned a house with parapets throughout at the same height and that this detail was changed or forgotten by a conservative client.
Gardens
The gardens are home to 3,000 different species of plants, including the British collection of bluebells . The enclosed flower garden has game motifs with a central chess board made of black and white garden tiles. Other games include checkers , ladder and hoop toss . Each of these games is in its own garden and is surrounded by flowers, which are arranged according to their color. There is also a market garden with attractively planted seasonal vegetables. The whole garden is teeming with strange statues. Works by various artists are exhibited in temporary exhibitions on the property and in galleries. A forest path on the property is known for its snowdrop splendor in February.
Both the Elizabethan-style house and the old mansion, listed as a Grade I Historic Building, are open to the public all year round.
history
The property has been in the hands of the same family since Roger de Stuteville built the first mansion there in 1173. Walter Griffith lived there from 1457 . The Griffiths were a Welsh family who immigrated to Staffordshire in the 13th century and inherited the estate at Burton Agnes.
The present Elizabethan house was built in 1606–1610 near the old house of Sir Henry Griffith, 1st Baronet , after he was appointed a member of the Council of the North . His daughter, Frances Griffith , heir to the estate, married Sir Matthew Boynton , Governor of Scarborough Castle and first Baronet Boynton. After her death in 1634, the property was bequeathed to her son Francis , who later became the second Baronet Boynton. Legend has it that the skull of Sir Henry's youngest daughter Anne was walled up in the great hall. It is said to be a screaming scull that must return to its old place when removed.
The widow of the 6th Baronet married John Parkhurst of Catesby Abbey in Northamptonshire , known as "Handsome Jack", who made the family fortune and neglected the property.
After the death of the 11th Baronet in 1899, the house fell to his daughter, who married Thomas Lamplugh Wickham and took the original name Boynton as a second family name. After their death, the house again fell to the son of the two, Sir Marcus Wickham Boynton , who for many years successfully ran horse breeding on the property and was High Sheriff of Yorkshire from 1953 to 1954 . He died in 1959, leaving the property to a distant cousin, Simon Cunliffe-Lister , the then only 12-year-old grandson of Viscount Whitelaw and son of the 3rd Earl of Swinton . Today the property is owned by the Burton Agnes Preservation Trust and is managed by Cunliffe-Lister and his mother, The Hon. Susan Whitelaw .
A Hall Class locomotive was named the Burton Agnes Hall and now stands in the Didcot Railway Center .
Individual evidence
- ^ Nikolaus Pevsner, David Neave: The Buildings of England . 2nd edition 1995. ISBN 0-300-09593-7 . Chapter: Yorkshire: York and the East Riding . P. 367.
- ↑ Burton Agnes Hall . English Heritage . Retrieved February 24, 2015.
- ^ Burton Agnes Manor House . English Heritage . Retrieved February 24, 2015.
- ^ National Plant Collection of Campanula . National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens. Archived from the original on March 19, 2006. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 27, 2008.
- ↑ Burton Agnes Hall: The Ghost . Burton Agnes Hall. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
literature
- Mark Girouard: Robert Smythson & the Elizabethan Country House . Yale University Press, Yale 1983. ISBN 0-300-02389-8 . Pp. 182-188.
- Mark Girouard: Elizabethan Architecture . Yale University Press, Yale 2009. ISBN 978-0-300-09386-5 . Pp. 44-48.
- History of Burton Agnes Hall . BurtonAgnes.com
Web links
- Burton Agnes Hall website
- Landed Family and Estate Papers Subject Guide - Wickham Boynton family of Burton Agnes (incorporating the Griffith family) . University of Hull
Coordinates: 54 ° 3 ′ 19.3 ″ N , 0 ° 19 ′ 0.5 ″ W.