| Wollaton Hall | |
|---|---|
 Wollaton Hall in the snow, November 2010 | |
| Type | Prodigy house |
| Location | Nottingham,Nottinghamshire |
| Coordinates | 52°56′53″N1°12′35″W / 52.9480°N 1.2096°W /52.9480; -1.2096 |
| Built | 1580–1588 |
| Built for | Sir Francis Willoughby |
| Architect | Robert Smythson |
| Architectural style | Elizabethan |
| Owner | Nottingham City Council |
| Website | wollatonhall.org.uk |
Listed Building – Grade I | |
| Official name | Wollaton Hall |
| Designated | 11 August 1952 |
| Reference no. | 1255269 |
Listed Building – Grade II* | |
| Official name | Camellia House 100 Metres South West of Wollaton Hall |
| Designated | 12 July 1972 |
| Reference no. | 1255271 |
Listed Building – Grade II* | |
| Official name | Doric Temple and Attached Bridge 200 Metres South-East of Wollaton Hall |
| Designated | 10 August 1989 |
| Reference no. | 1270389 |
| Official name | Wollaton Hall |
| Designated | 1 January 1986 |
| Reference no. | 1000344 |
  Location of Wollaton Hall in Nottinghamshire | |
Wollaton Hall is an Elizabethancountry house of the 1580s standing on a small but prominent hill inWollaton Park,Nottingham, England. The house is nowNottingham Natural History Museum, withNottingham Industrial Museum in the outbuildings. The surrounding parkland has a herd of deer, and is regularly used for large-scaleoutdoor events such as rock concerts, sporting events and festivals.
Wollaton Hall was built between 1580 and 1588 forSir Francis Willoughby and is believed to be designed by the Elizabethan architect,Robert Smythson, who had by then completedLongleat, and was to go on to designHardwick Hall. The general plan of Wollaton is comparable to these, and was widely adopted for other houses, but the exuberant decoration of Wollaton is distinctive, and it is possible that Willoughby played some part in creating it.[1] The style is an advancedElizabethan with earlyJacobean elements.
Wollaton is a classicprodigy house, "the architectural sensation of its age",[2] though its builder was not a leading courtier and its construction stretched the resources he mainly obtained fromcoalmining; the original family home was at the bottom of the hill. Though much re-modelled inside, the "startlingly bold" exterior remains largely intact.[3]
On 21 June 1603, Willoughby's son SirPercival Willoughby hostedAnne of Denmark and her childrenPrince Henry andPrincess Elizabeth at Wollaton.[4] Charles, laterCharles I, came in 1604.[5]
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The building consists of a central block dominated by a hall three storeys high, with a stone screen at one end and galleries at either end, with the "Prospect Room" above that. From this there are extensive views of the park and surrounding country. There are towers at each corner, projecting out from this top floor. At each corner of the house is a square pavilion of three storeys, with decorative features rising above the roof line. Much of the basement storey is cut from the rock the house sits on.[6]
The floor plan has been said to derive fromSerlio's drawing (in Book III of hisFive Books of Architecture) ofGiuliano da Majano'sVilla Poggio Reale near Naples of the late 15th century, with elevations derived fromHans Vredeman de Vries.[7] The architectural historianMark Girouard has suggested that the design is in fact derived from Nikolaus de Lyra's reconstruction, andJosephus's description, ofSolomon's Temple in Jerusalem,[8] with a more direct inspiration being the mid-16th centuryMount Edgcumbe in Cornwall, which Smythson knew.[9]
The building is ofAncaster stone fromLincolnshire, and is said to have been paid for with coal from the Wollaton pits owned by Willoughby; the labourers were also paid this way.Cassandra Willoughby, Duchess of Chandos recorded in 1702 that the master masons, and some of the statuary, were brought from Italy. The decorativegondola mooring rings carved in stone on the exterior walls offer some evidence of this, as do other architectural features. There are also obvious French and Dutch influences. The exterior and hall have extensive and busy carved decoration, featuringstrapwork and a profusion of decorative forms. The window tracery of the upper floors in the central block and the general busyness of the decoration look back to theMiddle Ages,[6] and have been described as "fantasy-Gothic".[10]
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The house was unused for about four decades before 1687, following a fire in 1642, and then re-occupied and given the first of several campaigns of re-modelling of the interiors.[6] Paintings on the ceilings of the two main staircases and round the walls of one are attributed to SirJames Thornhill and perhaps alsoLouis Laguerre, carried out around 1700.[6] Re-modelling was carried out byWyatville in 1801 and continued intermittently until the 1830s.
The hall remains essentially in its original Elizabethan state, with a "fakehammerbeam" wood ceiling of the 1580s, in fact supported by horizontal beams above, but given large and un-needed hammerbeams for decoration.[6] The slightly earlier roofs of the great halls atTheobalds andLongleat were similar.[11]
The gallery of the main hall contains Nottinghamshire's oldestpipe organ, thought to date from the end of the 17th century, possibly by the builder Gerard Smith. It is still blown by hand. Beneath the hall are many cellars and passages, and awell and associated reservoir tank, in which some accounts report that anadmiral of the Willoughby family took a daily bath.
The Willoughbys were noted for the number of explorers they produced, most famouslySir Hugh Willoughby who died in the Arctic in 1554 attempting aNorth East passage toCathay.Willoughby's Land is named after him.
In 1881, the house was still owned by the head of the Willoughby family,Digby Willoughby, 9th Baron Middleton, but by then it was "too near the smoke and busy activity of a large manufacturing town... now only removed from the borough by a narrow slip of country", so that the previous head of the family,Henry Willoughby, 8th Baron Middleton, had begun to let the house to tenants and in 1881 it was vacant.[12]
Wollaton Hall was sold by the11th Baron Middleton to the Nottingham Corporation for £200,000 (equivalent to £14.41 million in 2023).[13] Estate and personal papers of the Willoughby family were used to create the Middleton collection at the department ofManuscripts and Special Collections, The University of Nottingham. They include theWollaton Antiphonal and the single manuscript holding the 13th-century post-Arthurian romanceLe Roman de Silence.[14]
Nottingham Council opened the hall as a museum in 1926. In 2005 it was closed for a two-year refurbishment and re-opened in April 2007. The prospect room at the top of the house, and the kitchens in the basement, were opened up for the public to visit, though this must be done on one of the escorted tours. The latter can be booked on the day, lasts about an hour, and a small charge is made.
In 2011, key scenes from theBatman movieThe Dark Knight Rises were filmed outside Wollaton Hall.[15] The Hall was featured asWayne Manor.[16][17] The Hall is five miles north ofGotham, Nottinghamshire, through whichGotham City indirectly got its name.[18]
Wollaton Hall Park is Grade II* listed on theRegister of Historic Parks and Gardens.[19]
TheCamellia House[20] is a listed building in its own right, as are many other buildings and structures,[21] including adoric temple andHa-Ha.
In 1855,Joseph Paxton designedMentmore Towers inBuckinghamshire, which borrows many features from Wollaton. Both properties have been used as film locations forChristopher Nolan'sBatman trilogy of films, featuring asWayne Manor – the latter inBatman Begins and Wollaton Hall itself inThe Dark Knight Rises.
Since Wollaton Hall opened to the public in 1926, it has been home to the city's natural history museum.[22]On display are some of the items from the three quarters of a million specimens that make up itszoology,geology, andbotany collections. These are housed in six main galleries:
The museum started life as an interest group at theNottingham Mechanics' Institution; it is now owned by theNottingham City Council.
In 2017 the museum hosted a tour of dinosaur skeletons titledDinosaurs of China, Ground Shakers to Feathered Flyers. The exhibition was attended by over 125,000 people.[23]
From July 2021 to August 2022, the Nottingham Natural History Museum featured the world's first exhibit ofTitus, a "real"Tyrannosaurus rex fossil which was discovered in Montana, in the United States, in 2014.[24]
Places of interest inNottingham | ||
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