The Great Hall
The Great Hall was the heart of the household and is the only remaining Elizabethan room at Longleat, with its chimney piece, beams and panelling.
The room is 11m high and the ceiling, which bears the arms of
Sir John Thynne and his immediate family, is supported by ten beams. At the top of the Minstrels’ Gallery are the coats-of-arms of the Builder’s patron, Protector Somerset, and his brothers in arms at the Battle of Pinkie, Thomas Radcliffe (3rd Earl of Sussex) and Sir William Cecil (Lord Burghley).
The Gallery at the opposite end of the room was added c. 1663, when Charles II and Queen Catherine visited Longleat, staying overnight with their entire Court.
The massive hunting scenes were painted by John Wootton, c. 1736. They were commissioned specifically for the Great Hall by Thomas, 2nd Viscount Weymouth, who is seen, hand on hip, in the canvas over the fireplace. The paintings are said to tell the story of an orphan found in the woods, who was taken on as a stable boy. They also celebrate the connections and alliances of the patron - his uncle, Henry Villiers (son of the Earl of Jersey), his cousin the diplomat Thomas Villiers (later Earl of Clarendon) and his brother-in-law John Spencer of Althorp, father of the 1st Earl Spencer are all shown.
The huge antlers on either side of the State Drawing Room Gallery are those of prehistoric Giant Fallow Deer and came from the family’s Irish estate.
The Red Library
There are seven libraries at Longleat, housing more than 40,000 books. The Longleat libraries include volumes owned by the family before the House was built, notably two books used by the Builder’s uncle, William Thynne, for his 1532 edition of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Nearly half the eighty-five volumes listed in the earliest detailed book list (that of 1577), are still to be found on the shelves.
Like the archives (which contain documents from as early as the 7th century), the libraries have been continuously growing over a period of nearly five centuries. The Red Library alone contains 4,803 volumes, mainly purchases of the 4th Marquess.
The Red Library, named after the colour of the embossed wall coverings, was previously used as a family sitting room. The ceiling was designed by Crace in 1878 and is heavily gilded and inset with copies of cameos painted on black linen.
Paintings within the Red Library include one of Penelope and Dorothy Devereux, sisters of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, who was executed in 1601. The Earl (his portrait is also at Longleat) is an ancestor of the present Marquess through the marriage of his great-granddaughter, Frances Finch, and the 1st Viscount Weymouth.
One of the Louis XIV bureaux mazarin, decorated with floral marquetry, is in the style of André-Charles Boulle, and the other, with panels of blue tortoise shell, is by Boulle himself.
The room also holds a portrait of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells. When deprived of his see by William and Mary in 1691, Bishop Ken was given lodgings at Longleat and an £80 annuity by the 1st Viscount Weymouth, a friend since Oxford days. While living in the house, Bishop Ken wrote many of his famous hymns, including 'Awake my soul’, and, when he died in 1711, bequeathed his extensive library to the 1st Viscount. The Red Library is reputed to be haunted by an elderly gentleman dressed in black.
The Lower Dining Room
The ornate encrusted ceiling is again by Crace and adapted from the Ducal Palace in Venice.
The walls are hung with family portraits of the 16th and 17th centuries, amongst them works reflecting the important alliance of the Thynnes and the Coventry family.
An early 17th-century copy of a painting of Sir John Thynne, the Builder of Longleat, is shown in this room, as is a portrait of Thomas Thynne, usually known as ‘Tom of Ten Thousand’, a reference to his annual income. Depicted in classical dress, he was murdered in 1682 by three assassins hired by Count Königsmark, a rejected suitor of Tom’s wife, Elizabeth Percy.
Other portraits in the room include the 1st Viscount Weymouth by William Wissing, the 1st Viscountess (studio of Lely) and the 2nd Viscount by Michael Dahl. A portrait of Louisa Carteret, second wife to the 2nd Viscount and the most famous of all Longleat’s ghosts, also hangs in the Lower Dining Room. This portrait is signed by Jan Vanderbank and dated with the year of her death, 1736. The sitter is shown in red silk and black velvet fancy dress.
The ebony and ebonised furniture within the Lower Dining Room reflects the two distinct periods at which such items were in vogue; the pair of ebony side chairs originally purchased for the Best Gallery (a top floor picture gallery which does not survive) are inlaid with ivory and were made on the Coromandel coast of India in the 1670s or 1680s; the twenty four ebonised dining chairs in the ‘Goanese’ style are much later, belonging to the reign of William IV.
The Sèvres dinner-service is marked with the date letters for 1773 and 1777. Each piece of porcelain is hand painted with different floral sprays and festoons. Further items from this service can be seen in the Robes Corridor.
The State Dining Room
The State Dining Room is the first of three magnificent state rooms, used by successive owners of Longleat to entertain royalty and other dignitaries.
The first royal visitor was Queen Elizabeth I, in 1574, and the most recent HM Queen Elizabeth II, in 1980.
The state rooms were re-decorated by the 4th Marquess in the 1870s and 80s, to designs by Crace. The ornate and heavily gilded ceiling in the State Dining Room frames paintings attributed to the School of Titian, their subjects including Cupid and Psyche and Jupiter and Danaë.
The walls are covered with tooled Spanish leather made in Cordoba, c. 1620, and display 17th- and 18th-century family portraits. A painting of the notorious Isabella Rich, wife of Sir James Thynne (studio of Van Dyck), hangs to the left of the first fireplace. She was a prominent figure at the Royalist court in Oxford during the first Civil War and her husband, Sir James Thynne, eventually published a disclaimer refusing to take responsibility for her debts.
In the northern window bay is a portrait by William Larkin of Catherine Lyte Howard, the second wife of Sir Thomas Thynne, as well as a pair of Roman Bianco E Nero marble and walnut side tables of the late 17th or early 18th century carved with bellflowers, scrolling foliage and strapwork.
Two mighty Louis XIII carved and engraved ebony cabinets flank the entrance to the Saloon, both enclosing architectural interiors one of rosewood, ivory and marquetry partly mirror glazed with painted landscape and simulated lapis lazuli columns, the other, again mirrored, and with gold columns, painted ivory panels, a wood and ivory chequered floor and marquetry drawers.
 The Saloon
28 metres long, this room was created in the late 17th century and was then known as the Long Gallery. It was later redecorated by Crace in the 19th Century.
The ceiling was inspired by one in the Palazzo Massimo in Rome: the date of completion, 1875, is given in a panel above the window alcove.
The massive Carrara marble fireplace, introduced by Crace, was copied from one in the Doge’s Palace in Venice and is signed by its Italian maker, Valentino Panciera (1829-1902). In business for 56 years, the sculpture studio of the brothers Panciera near Venice's Grand Canal produced works in both wood and marble.
The tapestries, mostly Flemish and dating from the 17th century, were adapted for the 4th Marquess, and include scenes from the life of Cyrus the Great. Originally divided by embroidered portico panels they are now shown against red velvet.
The furnishing is formal with pairs of Italian pier tables and early 18th century North Italian parcel-gilt and pale blue-painted open armchairs upholstered in contemporary pink and ivory silk damask, a series of Boulle pieces (French and English) and a weighty suite of English Regency giltwood furniture made by Morel and Hughes introduced here from the ground floor Wyatville drawing room (now the Red Library).
The furnishing is also exotic, even theatrical, with an exuberantly carved and curved mid 18th-century Venetian polychrome and parcel-gilt pier-table, another late 17th-century North Italian parcel-gilt polychrome and black japanned side table, inlaid with figures in a water landscape with floral sprays and mother-of-pearl, a pair of large Chinese cloisonné enamel ice-chests with pierced domed covers and tall bronze andirons in the manner of Roccotagliata Riccio.
In the eastern bay are a late 18th-century north Italian giltwood pier-table in the manner of Guiseppe Maria Bonzanigo, the renowned sculptor in wood who worked chiefly for the House of Savoy, and two carved giltwood throne armchairs: the more exuberant example from the Low Countries, a Stadhouderstoel of 1747-8 to be associated with Nicolaas Bruynestein, the other, 18th-century Venetian with needlework on the cartouche padded back and seat by the 5th Marchioness and her daughters, dated 1926. A lighter note is struck by the Louis XV ormolu-mounted kingwood and parquetry games-table, the tray-top with a roulette circlet and pierced brass dial.
The State Drawing Room
The whole interior was designed by Crace as a setting for the 4th Marquess of Bath’s collection of Italian pictures. As well as a version of Titian’s own ‘Allegory of Divine Wisdom’, a copy of the original central octagon in the antechamber to the Sala Grande of Sansovino’s Libreria Marciana in Venice, the ceiling includes copies of three of the tondi appropriately depicting allegories of human knowledge in the Sala Grande itself, a room decorated in the Mannerist taste in the 1550s by a team of artists selected by the architect on Titian’s advice.
The frieze when installed was attributed to the 17th-century artist Pietro Liberi (recently Bartolomeo Litterini has been suggested), while the Genoese velvet from an Italian church is of the same period.
In 1877 Crace also supplied the ‘curtains of maroon and crimson-brocatelle silk’ and, at a cost of £454, the carpet, originally red and gold but dyed green on the orders of the 5th Marchioness. Then, as now, the carpet was a subject of controversy - Bath wrote to Crace on 5 January 1877, ‘I have had great pressure put on me to have the Drawing room carpet all of one colour but I have resisted it, I may prove to be wrong but am at present strongly of opinion that a Persian pattern such as we have decided on will be the right thing.’ Of the soft furnishings supplied in the 1870s for this room, only the chocolate and buff window blinds do not survive.
The earliest of the Italian Old Masters, displayed in their 19th-century arrangement, is the Siennese Coronation of the Virgin. The most famous, the target of an audacious theft in January 1995, Titian’s ‘Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ has now returned to its original place. Other paintings include ‘Ascelaphus and Proserpina’ by Tintoretto, ‘Saint Jerome in the Desert’ by Francesco Granacci, a Madonna and child by Lorenzo di Credi and portraits traditionally said to show two of Sir John Thynne’s children.
There are two panels by the Ghirlandaio workshop – ‘The Magnanimity of Alexander the Great’ and ‘Julius Caeser and the crossing of the Rubicon’. Both are from the Palazzo Piccolomini in Siena, and date from c. 1493-1495.
The subject of the Tintoretto derives from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: seen only by Ascalaphus, Proserpina (abducted by Pluto to the underworld) ate seven pomegranate seeds (this, according to Jupiter’s decree, prevented her from returning to earth) - for revealing what he saw she turned him into an owl (both pomegranate and owl appear in the picture).
The Louis XVI writing-table once belonged to the Prince de Talleyrand and was made by Pierre Gamier. The early 18th century casket is probably Trapani and is made of gilt copper-mounted tortoiseshell, coral, mother-of-pearl, hardstone and marble. Other notable furniture includes a Régence Boulle commode by Bernard van Risen Burgh I, a Florentine pietra dura and pietra tenera table, a Louis XV floral marquetry bombé commode with green marble top by Claude-Charles Saunier, a Louis XV ormolu-mounted Sèvres porcelain, kingwood, amaranth and parquetry table en chiffonière by Roger Vandercruse Lacroix and, displayed with a late Louis XIV scarlet Boulle encrier, a Louis XIV contre-partie Boulle bureau-plat of unusual long narrow shape, the top inlaid with confronting swans, arabesque foliage, figures, animals, monkeys and other birds in the manner of Nicolas Pineau.
Flanking the fireplace is a pair of mid-Victorian giltwood polescreens with earlier 19th-century gilt thread and silk velvet tabards displaying the royal arms.
 The Dress Corridor
The majority of the dresses on display in the Dress Corridor belonged to Frances, the 4th Marchioness, and were made in the latter half of the 19th century.
One of the dresses on display can also be seen in a portrait by G.F. Watts in the Breakfast Room. Other costumes include the coronation robes, which were made for the coronation of Edward VII in 1902, and the 3rd Marchioness’s wedding dress, made in 1830.
The ceramics on show include fine examples of 18th- and 19th- century Sèvres, Worcester and Crown Derby porcelain.
The handpainted chocolate pots were much in use during the 18th century, particularly for breakfast in bed, served to the lady of the house.
The Grand Staircase
This spectacular addition by Wyatville changed the whole orientation of the building.
The Grand Staircase was commissioned by the 2nd Marquess of Bath at the beginning of the 19th century and replaced a much simpler, 17th-century staircase by Sir Christopher Wren located beyond the far end of the Great Hall.
The wrought-iron chandelier was made in the 19th century and modified when electricity was installed at Longleat in the late 1920s (at a total cost of £8,094 15s.2d.). It is lowered by a winch from the dome above.
The three large hunting pictures with their decorated plaster surrounds were the only paintings chosen by Wyatville to be part of his original design: the central canvas, 'The Lion Hunt', is after Rubens, and the two others (a wolf hunt and another lion hunt) are after Franz Snyders. Many of the paintings now displayed here relate to Longleat and the Thynne family. The portraits of Charles II and his Queen, Catherine of Braganza, commemorate the royal couple’s visit to the House in 1663. To the left of the King there is a portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh, whose brother, Carew Raleigh, married the widow of Sir John Thynne, the Builder of Longleat. Thomas Coventry, the Lord Keeper, whose portrait hangs on the turn of the Grand Staircase (away for conservation until further notice), is an ancestor of the present Marquess: Coventry's daughter Mary, whose own portrait can be seen in the Servery adjacent to the State Dining Room, married Henry Fredrick Thynne, and it was her son who was created the 1st Viscount Weymouth in 1682. The portrait dated 1567 at the head of the first flight of stairs shows the 10th Baron Cobham and his family.
The exotic 19th-century furnishing of this area, still evidenced by the four life-sized Venetian walnut and ebonised blackamoor torchères also originally included large Meissen figures and Chinese cloisonné pieces.
At the foot of the stairs can be seen the family tree, dating from 1215 to the present day and, amongst the group of sculptures, a fine bust by Michael Rysbrack of the Longleat librarian, George Harbin. |
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