| Burghley House | |
|---|---|
 The façade of Burghley House | |
| Type | Prodigy house |
| Location | Cambridgeshire |
| Coordinates | 52°38′33″N0°27′09″W / 52.642393°N 0.452585°W /52.642393; -0.452585 |
| Built | 1555–1587 |
| Architect | William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley |
| Architectural style(s) | Elizabethan |
| Website | burghley.co.uk |
Listed Building – Grade I | |
| Official name | Burghley House |
| Designated | 16 January 1956 |
| Reference no. | 1127501 |
Listed Building – Grade I | |
| Official name | Stables with forecourt railings and service wings and servants wing, brewery and porters lodge |
| Designated | 16 January 1956 |
| Reference no. | 1127502 |
Listed Building – Grade I | |
| Official name | The Orangery |
| Designated | 16 January 1956 |
| Reference no. | 1127503 |
Listed Building – Grade I | |
| Official name | North Forecourt Area Railings and Gates at Burghley House |
| Designated | 16 January 1956 |
| Reference no. | 1331234 |
| Official name | Burghley House |
| Designated | 16 January 1985 |
| Reference no. | 1000359 |
  Location of Burghley House in Cambridgeshire | |
Burghley House (/ˈbɜːrli/[1]) is a grand sixteenth-centuryEnglish country house nearStamford,Lincolnshire. It is a leading example of the Elizabethanprodigy house, built and still lived in by the senior (Exeter) branch of theCecil family and isGrade I listed.
The exterior largely retains its Elizabethan appearance, but most of the interiors date from remodellings before 1800. The house is open to the public on a seasonal basis[2] and displays a circuit of grand and richly furnished state apartments. Its park was laid out byCapability Brown.[3]
The house is on the boundary of thecivil parishes ofBarnack andSt Martin's Without in thePeterborough unitary authority ofCambridgeshire. It was formerly part of theSoke of Peterborough, an historic area that was traditionally associated with Northamptonshire. It lies 0.9 miles (1.4 km) south of Stamford and 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Peterborough city centre.
The house is now run by the Burghley House Preservation Trust, which is controlled by theCecil family.
Burghley was built forSir William Cecil, later 1st Baron Burghley, who wasLord High Treasurer to QueenElizabeth I of England, between 1555 and 1587, costing £21,000 at the time. It was modelled on the privy lodgings ofRichmond Palace.[6][7][8] It was subsequently the residence of his descendants, the Earls, and since 1801, theMarquesses of Exeter. Since 1961, it has been owned by a charitable trust established by the family.[8][9]
Victoria Leatham (b. 1947),antiques expert and television personality, followed her father, Olympic gold medal-winning athlete, IAAF President andMP,David Cecil, the 6th Marquess, by running the house from 1982 to 2007. The Olympic corridor commemorates her father.[10] Her daughter, Miranda Rock, is now the most active live-in trustee.[9][11] The Marquessate passed it in 1988 to Victoria's uncle,Martin Cecil, 7th Marquess of Exeter (1909–1988), and then to his son,William Michael Anthony Cecil (b. 1935), both Canadian ranchers on land originally bought bythe 5th Marquess, who have not lived at Burghley.[12]
The house is one of the main examples ofstonemasonry andproportion in sixteenth-century EnglishElizabethan architecture, reflecting the prominence of its founder, and the lucrative wool trade of the Cecil estates. It has a suite of rooms remodelled in thebaroque style, with carvings byGrinling Gibbons.[6] The main part of the house has 35 major rooms, on the ground and first floors. There are more than 80 lesser rooms and numerous halls, corridors, bathrooms, and service areas.[8][13][14][15]
In the seventeenth century, the openloggias around the ground floor were enclosed. Although the house was built in the floor plan shape of theLetter E, in honour of Queen Elizabeth, it is now missing its northwest wing. During the period ofthe 9th Earl's ownership, and under the guidance of the famous landscape architect,Capability Brown, the south front was raised to alter the roof line, and the north-west wing was demolished to allow better views of the new parkland.[6][8][13][15] A chimney-piece after the design of Venetian printmakerGiovanni Battista Piranesi was also added during his tenure.[16]
The so-called "Hell Staircase" and its neighbour "The Heaven Room" has substantial ceiling paintings byAntonio Verrio, between 1697 and 1699. The walls to the "Hell Staircase" are byThomas Stothard, who completed the work about a century later. The Bow Room is decorated with wall and ceiling paintings byLouis Laguerre.
Although depleted of a number of important pieces bydeath duties in the 1960s, the Burghley art collections are otherwise mainly intact and are very extensive. The house still displays several hundred paintings, a large proportion of which are of the 17th century, bought in Italy byJohn Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter (c. 1648–1700), and byBrownlow Cecil, the 9th Earl (1725–1793). They visited Italy eight times, bringing back large quantities of art. John Cecil purchased 300 works of art during his 22 years in Burghley and spent on his last visit to Europe £5,000 (c. £600,000 in 2017 currency[17]).
The chapel has a largealtarpiece byPaolo Veronese and his workshop, and two large paintings byJohann Carl Loth, a German painter active in Venice with few works in British collections. There are in total seven works byLuca Giordano, including a self-portrait.[18]
In the Pagoda Room, there are portraits of the Cecil family,Elizabeth I,Henry VIII, andOliver Cromwell. Many delicately painted walls and ceilings of the house were done byAntonio Verrio.[19] The Billiard Room displays six oval portraits of members of theOrder of Little Bedlam, the 5th Earl's drinking club.[20]
The large collection ofJapanese export porcelain is especially important because, almost uniquely, pieces still in the house, and others sold in 1888 and 1959, can be identified with pieces in an inventory of the house with several hundred ceramic items made in 1688. These are the "earliest recorded pieces in Europe" that can be documented in this way, and of great interest to scholars.[21]
There are a number of outstanding pieces of furniture including work by celebrated 18th-century cabinet makers,Ince and Mayhew, in addition to silver, tapestry and collections of other porcelain, much of this is on public display in the state rooms, or display cases for the ceramics. A new "Treasury" space in the Brewhouse displays annually changing exhibitions highlighting aspects of the collections.
Theavenues in the park were all laid out according to the 1755–1779 designs by Capability Brown,[22] paying due respect to pre-existing plantings, some of which were from the 16th century or earlier.[23][24]
Brown also created the park's man-made lake in 1775–80. He discovered a seam of waterproof "blue" clay in the grounds, and was able to enlarge the original nine-acre (36,000 m2) pond to the existing 26-acre (105,000 m2) lake. Its design gives the impression of a meandering river. Brown designed the Lion Bridge at a cost of 1,000 guineas (£1,050[nb 1][25]) in 1778. He was paid £23,000 in total of the park designs in Burghley. Brown's landscape has been conserved by planting 30,000 new trees between 2012 and 2016.
Originally,Coade-stone lions were used as ornamentation. After theseweathered, the existing stone examples were made by local mason Herbert Gilbert in 1844. Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert planted two trees to commemorate their visit.[26]
As well as the annualBurghley Horse Trials,[27] the park plays host to the "Burghley Run" forStamford School and an annual meet for the Cambridge University Draghounds.[28]
Recent developments have included starting a sculpture garden around the old ice house and, in 2007, a "garden of surprises" was created using traditional ideas of water traps, shell grottos and a mirror maze, but in a 21st-century style.[29] The Burghley House trust has commissioned contemporary artwork in the grounds from leading artists.[30]
The parkland and gardens of Burghley House are listed Grade II* on theRegister of Historic Parks and Gardens.[31]
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TheLincolnshire county boundary crosses the park between the town of Stamford and the house. Burghley is located in the ancientSoke of Peterborough, once a part ofNorthamptonshire but now for ceremonial purposes inCambridgeshire; for planning and other municipal functions the house is in the Peterborough unitary authority.[32]
The house is a Grade Ilisted building, with separately Grade I listed north courtyard and gate. The listing document for the House provided this summary: "C19 and C20 formal gardens and pleasure grounds, developed from those originally designed by Lancelot Brown, surrounded by a park of C16 origins for which Brown provided extensive plans between 1754 and 1777".[33][34]
The residents of the house since 2007 were Miranda Rock, director of the Burghley House Preservation Trust, granddaughter of the 6th Marquess of Exeter and daughter ofLady Victoria Leatham[35] with Orlando Rock (chairman of Christie's UK) and their family. Data before theCOVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom indicated that the number of visitors to the site each year had almost doubled during Miranda Rock's tenure, to 110,000.[36]
One of the more curious and prominent features of the house, is the presence of fourteengreen sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) skulls on the wall in the kitchen. These are likely the remnants of the Victorian delicacyturtle soup, which heavily reduced green sea turtle numbers and eventually dropped out of favour with the upper classes.[37]
Burghley House has been featured in several films and television programmes including:Treasure Houses of Britain (1985);[38]Middlemarch (1994);[citation needed]Antiques Roadshow (1998, 2009);[39]Pride & Prejudice (2005);[40]The Da Vinci Code (2006);[citation needed]Castle in the Country (2006);[citation needed]Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007);[citation needed]How We Built Britain (2007);[citation needed]Climbing Great Buildings (2010);[41]Royal Upstairs Downstairs (2011);[citation needed]Housefull 2: The Dirty Dozen (2012);[citation needed]The Crown (2016);[42]Top Gear (2018);[citation needed]Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing (2021);[citation needed] andThe Flash (2023).[43]
Themedieval settlement of Burghley, mentioned inDomesday, was abandoned by 1450. Failure to locate its site leads to the supposition that the settlement was near Burghley House, and perhaps lies below the estate.[44][45]
