Petworth House

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Petworth House
Garden facade

Garden facade

Creation time : 1688-1696
Conservation status: receive
Geographical location 50 ° 59 '19.5 "  N , 0 ° 36' 32"  W Coordinates: 50 ° 59 '19.5 "  N , 0 ° 36' 32"  W.
Petworth House (England)
Petworth House

Petworth House is a manor house in West Sussex , UK . The mansion, classified as a Grade I cultural monument, is located in the small town of Petworth and is famous for its landscaped park , its extensive collection of paintings and sculptures and its rich interior.

history

The origins of Petworth House go back to the 12th century when Adelheid von Löwen , the widow of Henry I , transferred the property to her half-brother Jocelin de Louvain, who had married Percy's heiress Agnes. In 1309, Petworth is mentioned as a fortified manor house, but until the late 16th century the Percys used their possessions in northern England such as Alnwick Castle as residences, while Petworth House was rarely visited. This only changed in the 16th century. After the death of the 6th Earl of Northumberland , Petworth House fell to the king. It was not until 1557 that the 6th Earl's son, the 7th Earl , got the house back. After the 7th Earl was executed, Elizabeth I forced his brother, Henry Percy, 8th Earl of Northumberland , to live at Petworth House until 1576. He therefore had the house rebuilt and expanded until 1582. The 9th Earl had further modifications carried out from 1615. In 1682 Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, married the Percy heiress Elizabeth . Their rich legacy allowed Seymour to have the present mansion built from 1688 to 1696 - probably based on a design by Daniel Marot - using older walls. His son and heir, Algernon Seymour, left only one daughter as heir. Therefore, the huge property was divided into three parts after his death, Petworth House fell to his nephew Charles Wyndham along with the newly created title Earl of Egremont in 1749 . From 1756 to 1763, Matthew Brettingham had his own museum space, the Sculpture Gallery (now the North Gallery ), added. When Wyndham died, the work was not yet finished. His son, George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont , had Matthew Brettingham the Younger convert the State Bedroom into the White Library from 1774 to 1779 . Under him, Petworth experienced a "golden age" . The 3rd Earl of Egremont was a generous patron of John Constable and William Turner , among others . Turner painted twenty oil paintings and around 100 watercolors in Petworth between 1827 and 1837, including motifs from the park and the interior. For his growing art collection, the 3rd Earl of Egremont had the North Gallery expanded and remodeled again from 1824 to 1827.

After the death of the 3rd Earl of Egremont, his illegitimate son George Wyndham , who was raised to Baron Leconfield in 1852, inherited Petworth House. Henry Wyndham, the 2nd Baron Leconfield, had the south wing of the house rebuilt in Baroque style by Anthony Salvins between 1869 and 1872 . Due to high inheritance taxes, the 3rd Baron gave the house to the National Trust in 1947 , but retained the right to live in the house. The upper floor of the house is privately owned by the Wyndham family, the main rooms of the manor house, the kitchen and the former servants' rooms can be visited, the park is freely accessible.

investment

The mansion is located in the middle of the town of Petworth. It consists of a three-storey, almost 100 m long, almost unadorned wing with two main storeys. The west facade facing the park is structured as a show side by 21 windows per floor, the windows on the ground floor lead directly onto the terrace. Originally the building was crowned by a flat dome, which was removed during a renovation in 1778. On the northern narrow side, the North Gallery was added as a museum building from 1824 to 1827.

On the east side of the house, the elongated, two-storey servants' wing from the 18th century extends parallel to the house , and to the south of it the extensive stables around an elongated courtyard, which also date from the 18th century, but in the middle of the 19th century. Century were expanded and rebuilt.

The Red Room . Watercolor by Turner, around 1827

Interior

The main rooms of the manor house are sumptuously decorated with Chippendale furniture and the collection of paintings established by the 10th Earl of Northumberland in the 1630s. In addition to eight miniatures by Elsheimer , a Titian and numerous other pictures, the 10th Earl left behind a collection of 18 paintings by Anthony van Dyck . His successors added pictures by Rogier van der Weyden , Hobbema , Hieronymus Bosch , Lorrain , Teniers , Gainsborough , Kauffmann , William Blake , Reynolds and the largest collection of paintings by William Turner outside a museum. The most recent restorations sought to restore the interior furnishings of the early 19th century, as Turner has depicted in numerous watercolors.

To the main rooms belong

  • the so-called Somerset Room , which serves as a picture gallery and shows pictures by Frans Snyders , Bernardo Bellotto , Paul Bril , Claude Lorrain, Adam Elsheimer and Lely as well as Chinese porcelain from the 17th century and a manuscript of the Canterbury Tales made between 1410 and 1430 ,
  • the Square Dining Room . The dining room was created during a renovation in 1764 and was given its current furnishings between 1795 and 1815. Among the numerous paintings in this room are two portraits by van Dyck showing the 1st Earl of Strafford and the 9th Earl of Northumberland . and the large-format Macbeth and the Witches, painted by Reynolds in 1786 .
  • The Marble Hall (marble hall) originally served as the entrance hall and was built around 1692, presumably based on a design by Marot. The baroque hall was only slightly changed.
  • The large staircase that leads from the main rooms on the ground floor to the bedrooms on the upper floor was repainted by Louis Laguerre after a fire between 1715 and 1720 .
  • The small dining room contains numerous portraits as well as a painting of Saint Sebastian by Gerard Seghers .
  • The Carved Room was furnished around 1690. He has excellent allegorical carvings of Grinling Gibbons . Between 1786 and 1794 the room was enlarged to double its size, and Jonathan Ritson worked on the carvings of the new, northern part of the room for 18 years. The paintings in the room include an equestrian portrait of Charles I by van Dyck and a copy of Henry VIII's portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger made by Remigius van Leemput .
Stairwell
  • In the Red Room , 20 pictures of Turner were collected in 1952, which is why the room was also called the Turner Room. The composition of the pictures has since been changed again, but in addition to a picture by Tizian, a picture by Zoffany and other paintings, four pictures by Turner hang in this room. There is also the Leconfield Aphrodite , a marble bust from the 4th century BC attributed to Praxiteles . Chr.
  • The North Gallery , the museum part of the house that was specially added from 1756, has consisted of three rooms, the South Corridor, the Central Corridor and the Square Bay, since the renovation from 1824 to 1827. The rooms are illuminated by skylights . The rooms are home to numerous sculptures from ancient times such as the 2nd century Egremont Apollo, as well as sculptures from the Renaissance and Classicism, including works by John Flaxman , Richard Westmacott and Francis Chantrey , over 100 paintings by Turner, Gainsborough, Thomas Phillips and others as well as a globe created in 1592 by Emery Molyneux .
  • The chapel is the oldest room in the house. Originally built around 1309, it was rebuilt in Baroque style in the 17th century and has carvings by John Seldon .
The rotunda, a round temple from the 18th century in the Pleasureground

park

A park of 294 hectares begins behind the manor house. A first small park is mentioned in the 13th century, at the time of the 9th Earl of Northumberland the park already covered over 160 hectares. The baroque garden laid out by George London in 1700 was converted into an English garden by Capability Brown from 1751 to 1765 . The park was redesigned several times in the 19th century. In 1987 and 1989 it suffered severe storm damage, but is still considered one of the most successful landscaped gardens by Capability Brown.

South of the house is the walled kitchen garden . To the north of the house there is the approximately 12 hectare pleasure ground with laurel trees , plane trees , linden , cedar and other trees. Paths lead through the garden and lines of sight leading to a rotunda ; there is also a summer house in the style of a Doric temple. The pleasure ground is separated from the meadow on the west side of the house by a ha-ha , which extends about 350 m to an artificially created serpentine lake. The meadow is bordered by low trees and shrubs such as strawberry trees , gorse and honeysuckle . The approximately 2 km long wildlife park, which is surrounded by a total of 8 km long wall, extends northwest of the lake. The game park extends into a wide valley with lawns, groups of trees, a smaller lake and a large herd of fallow deer , which is considered to be one of the oldest herds in England.

Others

Petworth House received visits from monarchs several times:

Joan Aiken describes in her novel "Fanny and Scylla" the manor house and the garden as well as the residents around 1798/99. The writer Henry Green , whose mother was the daughter of Henry Wyndham, 2nd Baron Leconfield , spent parts of his childhood and youth at Petworth House.

literature

  • Christopher Rowell: Petworth House. The National Trust, London 1997.
  • Joachim Raeder : The ancient sculptures in Petworth House (West Sussex) . Zabern, Mainz 2000, ISBN 3-8053-2448-0 .
  • Christopher Rowell: Petworth. The people and the place. The National Trust, London 2012, ISBN 978-0-7078-0420-0 .

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The National Heritage List: Petworth House. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 21, 2013 ; Retrieved February 29, 2012 . 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / list.english-heritage.org.uk
  2. ^ Howard Colvin: A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1804 . 3. Edition. Yale University Press, New Haven / London 1995, ISBN 0-300-06091-2 , p. 158.
  3. ^ William Turner: Ships cruising to anchor (The Egremont Sea Piece).
  4. ^ The National Heritage List for England: The Servant's Wing. Retrieved May 23, 2013 .
  5. ↑ Patrick Taylor: English Gardens. Country parks and cottage gardens in Great Britain and Ireland. Dorling Kindersley, Starnberg 2005, ISBN 3-8310-0781-0 , p. 164f.
  6. ^ National Heritage List for England: Petworth House - Parks and Gardens. Retrieved May 23, 2013 .
  7. ↑ Jeremy Treglown: Romancing. The Life and Work of Henry Green . Random House, New York 2000, ISBN 0-679-43303-1 . P. 7