Longleat House

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Longleat House

Longleat House is a manor house near Warminster in the county of Wiltshire in Great Britain . The manor house, classified as a Grade I cultural monument, is located about 25 miles south of Bath and has been the seat of the Thynne family since the 16th century, who have been Marquess of Bath since 1789 . The mansion is known for its safari park and is one of the five most visited mansions in Great Britain.

history

Longleat House in 1880

John Thynne , steward of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset , bought an Augustinian monastery in 1540 for £ 53 (equivalent to around £ 30,083 today). According to plans by Robert Smythson , he had the manor house built from 1568 to 1580, which is considered the oldest mansion in the style of the early Renaissance in England and which became groundbreaking for Elizabethan architecture . In 1949, the mansion was the first mansion in Great Britain to be opened to the public. In 1966 the first safari park outside of Africa opened in the park .

investment

The three-story Bath stone mansion is a rectangular complex with two courtyards. The corners of the building are emphasized by oriels, the façades are uniformly designed with repetitive elements: horizontal band friezes, large window areas and pilasters in the classic Doric-Ionic-Corinthian order.

Interior

The entrance hall still has a ten meter high hammer beam vault from the time it was built. The other state rooms of the 118 room house were redesigned in the 19th century by Jeffry Wyatville in the style of the Italian Renaissance. The collection of paintings includes large-scale hunting scenes by John Wootton and pictures by Jacopo Tintoretto and Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael . The library is one of the largest private libraries in Great Britain with 40,000 volumes. Some rooms have modern wall paintings of the 7th Marquess of Bath .

One of several mazes on the property, view from an observation deck in the center

park

The 3.6 km² landscaped garden with a serpentine lake was created from 1757 by Lancelot "Capability" Brown . After 1945, Russell Page restored part of the palace gardens in the Elizabethan style.

The park includes the safari park and an amusement park with carousels, a small train, a large and several small hedge mazes . On the other, over 32 km² large property there is a Center Parcs facility with 600 bungalows.

Trivia

The scenes from the Bollywood film Because My Love Is Immortal , which are set in the Gurukul School, were shot in Longleat. In 2009, the house and garden served as the location for the Rosamunde Pilcher film Four Seasons .

Web links

Commons : Longleat House  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The National Heritage List: Longleat House. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved January 10, 2012 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / list.english-heritage.org.uk  
  2. Visit Wiltshire: Longleat. Retrieved January 12, 2012 .
  3. ^ Longleat Forest Center Parcs, Wiltshire. Retrieved January 12, 2012 .
  4. Pilcher filming locations: Longleat House. Retrieved April 5, 2013 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 11 ′  N , 2 ° 17 ′  W