Holkham Hall Guide 2010

“Holkham is exceptional for many reasons, not least that it is essentially the project of one man�

Contents

Introduction The Family History The Family Tree The Holkham Landscape The History and Architecture of the House The Marble Hall The North State Dining Room The Parrot Bedroom (Stranger’s Wing) The Statue Gallery and Tribunes The Libraries (Family Wing) The Drawing Room

4 6-9 10-11 12-17 18-20 22-25 26-27 28-29 30-33 34-35 36-37

The Saloon The South Dining Room The Landscape Room The Chapel The Green State Bedroom The Green State and North State Closets The North State Bedroom The North State Sitting Room The Old Kitchen / Upstairs Downstairs The Holkham Estate

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38-41 42-43 44-45 46 47 48-49 50 51 52-55 56-61

Far left : Gilded table support carved by Rysbrack to a design

by William Kent. Left: Saloon View from the Saloon looking

I

t is both an immense privilege and an occasionally daunting prospect to be responsible for Holkham and

the people who live and work on the estate. 250 years

ago my namesake Thomas Coke was at the centre of the agricultural revolution; visitors from across the country came to Holkham to look and learn from this remarkable innovator and under his guidance the estate flourished.

But less than 100 years later the Head of Historic Buildings at the National Trust travelled to Holkham to meet my great grandfather who was then eager to be relieved of the burden of keeping the place going. Fortunately negotiations were vetoed by my grandfather and the estate remains in the care of our family.

My own father is widely respected for having steered the estate through the second half of a difficult 20th century. More recently governments have recognised the real contribution that places like Holkham make to the local community and its economy and today the future looks more secure. In 2007 my father retired and in recent years we have expanded and diversified. My aim is to build a thriving collection of rural businesses around Holkham which will sustain the estate and everyone who lives and works here well into the 21st century.

In 2007 we moved into the hall. The children have taken some time to get used to the size of the place and occasionally friends get lost but it now feels like home. It is a home we are delighted to share with visitors and which I hope you will enjoy.

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The Family History

S

IR EDWARD COKE founded the family fortunes in the 16th century. Regarded as one of the most brilliant lawyers of his time, he wisely invested his wealth in land. From these shrewd investments grew the fortune that 150 years later, his descendant Thomas Coke used to fund the building of this house.

Sir Edward was born at Mileham, Norfolk in 1552. He was the son of Robert Coke, a London barrister, who came from a long-established Norfolk family. Young Edward was educated at the Grammar School in Norwich, then at Trinity College, Cambridge, before beginning his legal career in the Inner Temple, London.

Success came swiftly to the young lawyer. Throughout his long life he held high political and judicial office during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I, living long enough to see King Charles I take the throne.

He was, variously, Speaker of the House of Commons and Attorney General to both Queen Elizabeth and King James. As Attorney General he was responsible, among many other things, for the prosecution of Sir Walter Raleigh and the Gunpowder plotters. During James’ reign he became Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas and finally Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, the most senior judge in the land.

Sir Edward married twice; his first wife, Bridget Paston, bore him ten children, all but two of whom survived into adulthood. Bridget died in 1598 and Edward had her tomb inscribed: ‘Many daughters have

done virtuously, but thou surpassest them all.’

However, five months after her death he married Lady Elizabeth Hatton, widow of Sir William Hatton and daughter of Thomas, Lord Burleigh, later Earl of Exeter.

It was said that Sir Edward was the only lawyer who could interpret and digest the complicated laws of England.

Mindful that ostriches are said to have the ability to swallow and digest anything from stones to bits of iron, Coke chose the ostrich for his crest, and as his motto the Latin phrase ‘prudens qui patiens’. This translates as, ‘the prudent man is the patient one’. Coke then added a phrase which is a pun on his own surname, ‘etenim durissima coquit’ – ‘because he digests the hardest things’ (the word ‘coquit’ can mean either digest or cook).

James I died in 1625 and King Charles found the elderly Sir Edward just as difficult and obdurate over aspects of the royal prerogative. Sir Edward maintained that Parliament should not vote supplies to the King without the redress of grievances. That quarrel was just one of several disputes it took a civil war to resolve.

Sir Edward’s obstinacy was rewarded in 16220 with imprisonment in the Tower. After his release some eight months later, he said the room to which he was conducted had been used as a kitchen, a note being pinned on the door saying, ‘This room has long wanted a Cook’.

Dying in 1634, aged 83, Sir Edward did not live to see the civil war. His legal judgements and commentaries are still quoted today, more than 300 years later.

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Far left : Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), founder of the family fortunes, by Gheeraerts. Middle : Thomas Coke first Earl of Leicester (1697-1759) and

builder of Holkham Hall by Francesco Trevisani and by Pompero Batoni on the right.

THE HOLKHAM CONNECTION IN 1609, Sir Edward Coke bought Neales manor, one of three manors in Holkham parish, from the Armiger family. It was one of many purchases of land in Norfolk and elsewhere by which Sir Edward endowed his six sons.

He did not live here himself; the land was let to a tenant and settled to pass after Sir Edward’s death to his fourth son, John (1590-1661), who thus inherited in 1634.

John married Meriel Wheatley, heiress to the larger neighbouring manor of Wheatley, in 1612. The couple made that manor house, then known as Hill Hall, their family home. Through the deaths of his elder brothers John eventually inherited most of his father’s vast estates, in Norfolk and many other counties, and Hill Hall thus became the principal house of the Coke family. Indeed, it remained in use for most of the life of Thomas Coke, the builder of the present hall, and was demolished in 1757.

The old Hill Hall lay just to the south-west, but no trace of it remains today.

By 1659 John had complete ownership of all three Holkham manors, covering most of the parish. In that same year he rounded off his possessions by buying the property of Edmund Newgate, including the farmhouse now called ‘The Ancient House’ and extensive lands in the north of the parish. Thus it was that over a period of fifty years John Coke acquired the Holkham property which became the nucleus of the great estate of the

Cokes. It was his purchases that enabled his successors in the 18th century to create Holkham Park.

The remainder of the 17th century, however, was marked by misfortune. Only the youngest of John’s six sons survived to inherit, but this son died, unmarried, ten years later. The whole estate then passed to the grandson of the fifth son of Sir Edward Coke. Robert (1650-79) made a splendid marriage to the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Osborne, the famous Lord Treasurer of England (later Earl of Danby and 1st Duke of Leeds), but died aged 28 only eight years after inheriting the estate. Fortunately he left an infant son, Edward (1676-1707). Both Edward and his wife, Carey, also died young, within a few months of each other in 1707, leaving three sons and two daughters. The great estate of the Cokes thus passed to their eldest son, Thomas, who was just ten years old. It was Thomas who was later to build Holkham Hall and became the 1st Earl of Leicester.

THOMAS COKE AFTER the death of his parents, Thomas was sent to live with his cousin, Sir Edward Coke, at Longford in Derbyshire. It is from this time that clues to his character begin to emerge. Highly intelligent, he was also stubborn and wilful.

Thomas enjoyed the sport of cockfighting and was soon in trouble with his tutors for neglecting his lessons

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Left : The most famous portrait of Thomas William

Coke painted by Thomas Gainsborough Right: Coke as an old man by Sam Lane

Opposite left : The third Earl charactured by Trip.

Opposite Right : Four generations of the Coke family

from Thomas William Coke 2nd Earl born in 1822 to

Thomas William Coke 5th Earl who died in 1976.

Below: Edward Coke and Mary Campbell minitures by xxxx

in favour of this pursuit. By the time he reached the age of 15, his guardians decided that ‘the young master’, as he was known, should embark on a comprehensive tour of Europe, known as a ‘Grand Tour’.

Grand Tours were an attempt to acquaint the sons of wealthy families with the glories of Greek and Roman civilisation and European culture in general in the hope that some of it would rub off when they returned to take their place in English society. Under the guidance of his tutor, Dr Hobart of Christ’s College, Cambridge, Thomas spent the next six years (from 1712-1718) on the continent, mainly in Italy.

It was in Italy that Thomas met Lord Burlington’s protégé, the architect William Kent, and his lessons in architecture led to his developing a passion for the architectural style of Andrea Palladio, a 16th-century Italian architect who championed a return to the building styles of Ancient Rome.

Thomas returned to England just before his 21st birthday and immediately married Lady Margaret Tufton, daughter of the 1st Earl of Thanet.

Even as the young couple took their place in London society, Thomas’ fertile brain was planning the building of a vast Palladian house on the north Norfolk coast.

Thomas would be intimately involved in its construction for the rest of his life. Even the death of his only son in 1753 did not lessen his commitment. Thomas himself died in 1759, a full five years before the house was completed. It was left to his widow to complete the construction and furnishing of the house, and she undertook

this task with vigour and determination. Lady Margaret kept meticulous accounts, at some points entering acquisitions of fabric and furnishings in a bold hand: ‘This I bought with my own money!’

MANY years earlier Thomas had been horrified when his younger sister, Anne, had eloped, but on the death of the Dowager Countess in 1775 it was Anne’s son, Wenman Roberts, who inherited the estate. He changed his name to Coke but died a year later. His son, Thomas William Coke, following a Grand Tour rather shorter than that of his predecessor, came to live at Holkham in 1776.

Thomas William built on the successes of his forebears both in terms of status and stewardship of the land. A politician for over fifty years, he was an MP for Norfolk and championed innovation in agriculture. Thomas instigated the Holkham Sheep Shearings, foreshadowing the county shows of today, where experts on all aspects of farming could meet, hold discussions and demonstrate the latest methods of food production and animal husbandry. He was widely known as ‘Coke of Norfolk’, but he was first addressed in that fashion in the House of Commons to distinguish him from two other MPs of the same name.

Thomas William was elevated to the peerage in 1837, at the age of 83, by the newly crowned Queen Victoria.

He took the title ‘Earl of Leicester of Holkham’, the original earldom having passed to the Townshend family; the first title had died with Thomas, the builder of the house.

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During his lifetime Coke of Norfolk planted more than one million trees at Holkham, which helped to create not only a stunning park but also a wonderful habitat for wild life that we still enjoy today.

The second Earl (1822-1909) was the eldest son from Coke of Norfolk’s late second marriage so was only twenty when he inherited Holkham in 1842. His father had made few changes to the house itself, but the young second Earl embarked on extensive modernisation. In the 1850s he built, at the east end of the house, the magnificent stable block and a great range of domestic offices, including a laundry, brewhouse and malthouse, which now house the pottery shop, Bygones Museum and History of Farming Exhibition; the estate office and porters lodge (now the finance office); the present artesian well and water supply system, still in use today; the conservatory, terraces and fountain to the south of the house; and the vestibule and terrace on the north. Even the cricket pitch on the north lawn is due to his love of the game. Many of the fitments installed during his refurbishment of the kitchen are still in place. In 1865, a private gas works was built for lighting the house.

The second Earl was an enthusiastic countryman whose passions were game shooting and forestry. His father had been a remarkable shot and he carried on the tradition, building on Holkham’s reputation as a fine shooting and agricultural estate. He reclaimed large areas of marshland and planted a belt of Corsican pines on the sand dunes on Holkham Beach in order to protect the land from the sea.

The third Earl (1848-1941) served for many years in

the Scots Guards before succeeding to Holkham. He retired as colonel in 1892 but was recalled to the regular army for the Boer War, commanding a Special Service Company volunteered from the Norfolk Militia. By the time he inherited Holkham in 1909, modernisation was again needed. Electric lighting was installed, supplied from a generating plant housed in an extension to the stables. Before the Earl’s death in 1941, aged 93, this innovation had been made redundant by mains electricity. Now the restaurant and Bygones entrance have taken the place of generating engines and the enormous bank of batteries.

His son, the fourth Earl (18801949), served in the Scots Guards during the Boer War and World War I, but his great love was music and he was an accomplished violinist. He succeeded to Holkham in 1941 and was in charge of the estate for only eight years, dying in 1949. For much of this period, parts of the hall, outbuildings and estate were requisitioned by the Army.

The fifth Earl (1908-1976) served in the family regiment, the Scots Guards, and throughout World War II. He was Equerry to HRH the Duke of York, later King George VI. The fifth Earl had three daughters, but as the estate can only pass through the male line, on his death it passed to his cousin, Anthony Coke. The sixth Earl lived in Zimbabwe for most of his life, apart from when he served with Bomber Command in World War II. His son, Edward, became the seventh Earl in 1994. Edward’s eldest son, Tom, is involved in managing the estate and will become the eighth Earl on his father’s death.

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Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice of England (1552-1634) Bridget Paston (1) Henry Coke (1591 - 1661) Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice of England (1552-1634)

Thomas Coke 1st Earl of Leicester of first creation (1697 - 1759)

m

Margaret Lovelave

Richard Coke (1626 - 1669)

m

Mary Rous

m

Edward Coke (1676 - 1707)

m

Lady Anne Osborne dau. of 1st Duke of Leeds

Robert Coke (1656 - 1678)

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Thomas Coke 1st Earl of Leicester of 1st Creation (1697 - 1759)

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Lady Margaret Tufton (1700 - 1775) Baroness de Clifford, dau. of the 6th Earl of Thanet

Edward Viscount Coke (1719 - 1753)

m

Lady Mary Campbell dau. of Duke of Argyll and Greenwich

Lady Anne

m (1) Viscount Anson

m (1) Viscount Andover m (2) Adm. Sir Henry Digby Thomas William Coke 1st Earl of Leicester of second creation (1754 - 1842)

Right:The Third earl in his favourite shooting jacket that he had to retrieve for the dustbin on several occasions as his wife often tried throw it out!.

Right:The Third Earl with the 7th Earl as a baby.

Marion Trefusis

m

Thomas William Coke 4th Earl of Leicester (1880 - 1949)

Thomas William Edward Coke 5th Earl of Leicester (1908 - 1976)

Lady Anne Thomas William Coke 3rd Earl of Leicester (1848 - 1941)

(2) Col. Horatio Walpole

Carey Newton

Lady Jane

Thomas William Coke 2nd Earl of Leicester (1822 - 1909)

Lady Elizabeth Hatton (nee Cecil, dau. of 1st Earl of Exeter)

m

m

m Lord Glenconner

m

Lady Carey m Bryan Basset

Lady Elizabeth Yorke

Lady Sarah m Major David Walter

The Coke Family Tree Gabriel Roberts

Anne Coke (1699 - 1758)

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m

Wenman Roberts (1717 - 1776)

Thomas William Coke 4th Earl of Leicester (1880 - 1949)

Phillip Roberts (d.1779)

Elizabeth Chamberlayne-Denton

Assumed name of COKE in 1750

Jane Dutton (1) sister of 1st Lord Sherborne

m

Lady Elizabeth

m (1) John Spencer Stanhope

m

Juliana Whitbread (1)

m

Thomas William Coke 1st Earl of Leicester of second creation (1754 - 1842)

(2) Lady Anne Keppel, dau. of 4th Earl of Albemarle

m

Thomas William Coke 2nd Earl of Leicester (1822 - 1909)

Thomas William Edward Coke 5th Earl of Leicester (1908 - 1976)

Hon. Georgiana Cavendish dau. of 2nd Lord Chesham

Anthony Louis Lovel Coke 6th Earl of Leicester (1909 - 1994)

5 sons and 1 daughter

Thomas William Coke 3rd Earl of Leicester (1848 - 1941)

Hermione Drury

m

m

Hon. Alice White, dau. of 2nd Lord Annaly

Hon. Arthur George Coke (1882 - 1915)

Anthony Louis Lovel Coke 6th Earl of Leicester (1909 - 1994) Almary Coke (b. 1938) m Peter Ferraz

(1) Moyra Crossley

m

Edward Coke 7th Earl of Leicester (b.1936)

Hon. John Coke (b. 1938) m Carolyn Redlar (1) Valeria Potter

Thomas Viscount Coke (b.1965)

m

Edward Coke 7th Earl of Leicester (b.1936)

Lady Laura (b.1968) m Jonathan Paul

m

(2) Sarah de Chair nĂŠe Forde

Hon. Rupert (b.1975)

Viscount Coke has taken over from his father as the custodian of the Hall and also the running of the Estate.

The Holkham Landscape The landscape around Holkham Hall – the lake with its islands and wooded slopes, the extensive lawns, the great mass of Obelisk Wood which crowns the rising ground to the south – appears at first sight to have been laid out to some single grand design. In reality, the park has a long and complex history, and one involving some of the greatest names in the story of landscape design.

Work on preparing an appropriate setting for the hall started even before construction of the building itself.

In the 1720s and 1730s, Obelisk Wood was planted and

the obelisk and temple built within it; an earlier and more geometric version of the great lake to the northwest of the hall was created by damming a natural water course; and the ruler-straight south approach, extending for some three kilometres, was laid out. At this stage there were formal lines of trees, avenues and vistas, and the overall ‘feel’ of the landscape was somewhat stiff and geometric.

All this, however, was modified in the years around 1740 by the great designer William Kent, who added

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various less geometric elements to the landscape. In Coke’s widow, employed the famous Lancelot ‘Capabilparticular, the area immediately to the south of the hall ity’ Brown at Holkham in 1762 but his activities were was now redesigned as a piece of Italy in miniature, with restricted to the pleasure grounds in the immediate vicinity of the hall. The accession of Thomas an artificial hillock, the ‘New William Coke in 1776, however, herMount’, surmounted by a templealded a period of radical change. The like seat. A little later, a pattern of old kitchen garden lying to the west of clumps was planted on the lawn to the hall was demolished and a replacethe north of the hall. When ment, which was located some 600 Thomas Coke died in 1759 the metres to the west, was constructed tohall stood within a park of around gether with a new orangery. They were 360 acres, containing a mixture of grand yet simple geometry and ser- Above left : Arial view of the Hall looking out over the designed by the architect Samuel pentine, Italianate elements. park towards the sea. Above Early morning lokking Wyatt and cost around £10,000 to Few changes were made in the south down the long drive. Fallow deer have grazed in build.

1760s and 1770s. Lady Margaret, the park since??

The lake, now considered too stiff HOLKHAM |13

and formal in shape, was given a sinuous ‘twist’ at its Wyatt. It served as the venue for the Sheep Shearings, an northern end by the designer William Emes, and another annual gathering of farmers and landowners at which the at its southern end by his former pupil, John Webb. latest ideas in agriculture could be demonstrated.

Evidently satisfied with what had been achieved, More importantly, the park was massively expanded, mainly to the south but to some extent in all Coke seems to have done relatively little to the landscape directions, so that by 1800 it covered no less than in his later years. A new west drive was created around 1,200 hectares. New lodges were built to designs by 1830, the planting was embellished in a number of Wyatt, in part to replace the existing ones which areas and, most strikingly, between 1833 and 1839 a brick were now marooned within the park. Well over two wall was constructed all around the perimeter of the park. million trees were planted in large clumps (mainly in This was a particularly formidable undertaking and it can the south of the park) and in a vast perimeter belt, have served no very serious practical purpose given its height – either in terms of keepwhich completely surrounded ing game within the park or the new arrangement. The plantunwelcome visitors out. It remains ing was designed by one John the longest park wall in East Sandys, who took over as head Anglia. gardener in 1786.

By the time of Thomas While all this was going on William Coke’s death in 1842, another, more famous individual fashions had again moved on. appeared on the scene – Humphry Landscape parks remained the Repton, then at an earlier stage in quintessential symbols of status his career. Repton prepared a ‘Red but their planting became more Book’ – an illustrated design complex and diverse. More improposal – in 1789 which was portantly, geometric gardens now concerned exclusively with the returned to favour and William area around the lake. Here a Andrews Nesfield, the most pleasure ground was to be laid out important and successful of midand walks cut through the existing 19th century gardeners, created, woodland. A new boathouse and with the architect William Burn, fishing pavilion were to be built, the imposing parterres and and the two shores linked by a terraces which now grace the hall. ‘ferry-boat of peculiar construcThere were also changes in tion’, a chain ferry, which would Portrait of Thomas William Coke, Esq. (1752-1842) inrun to ‘a snug thatched cottage … specting some of his South Down sheep with Mr Walton the wider landscape. Perhaps the most striking came between 1845 picturesquely embosomed in trees’ and the Holkham shepherds by Thomas Weaver and 1850, when a tall monument on the far shore. This would form an interesting element in the view from the hall, for to Thomas William Coke, designed by the Norfolk archimney smoke ‘is always a most interesting object when chitect William Donthorne and with reliefs depicting fleecy folds are revealed, as in the present instance, by a Coke’s activities as England’s leading agricultural imrich background of hanging woods’. Some, but by no prover, was erected on the site of an earlier lodge to the north of the hall. Opinion has always been divided about means all, of these ideas were implemented.

As a result of these changes, by the early 19th century this immense structure; Coke’s own daughter declared Holkham had a more fashionable appearance – it was an that it was ‘much too near and frightful, the wheat sheaf informal, ‘naturalistic’ landscape park. The house looked looking like a vulgar evergreen flower stuck on the top’.

What we see at Holkham today is thus a complex out across open parkland ornamented with woods and clumps. Most of the original geometric elements had been palimpsest. Yet the design has an overall coherence, in softened or removed, although to the south of Obelisk part because of certain continuities or idiosyncrasies of Wood – and thus out of sight of the hall – the great south planting. In particular, holm oaks (Quercus ilex) were avenue was allowed to remain. planted here right from the start, but then became In one respect, however, the park was unusual. Its something of a Holkham speciality. Most of the southern section, that which lay to the south of Obelisk remaining examples in fact date from the 19th century.

Wood, consisted of arable fields rather than pasture – an Certainly, there is little in the Holkham landscape that arrangement that reflected Thomas William Coke’s great seems out of place or intrusive. It is a richly textured, vast, interest in agricultural improvement. Indeed, it was here and awe-inspiring creation, and the perfect setting for the that the Great Barn was built in 1790 to designs by monumental architecture of the hall itself.

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Top left:The Triumphal Arch, designed in 1739 but only completed in 1752. Top Right: Kent’s original design for the Arch. . Middle left :The Doric Temple;

Middle right: A glimpse of the Coke Monument, designed by William Donthorne and erected in 1845–8 at a cost to the tenants of the estate of £4,000.

Bottom right:The park in autumn is perhaps at its best. Bottom right:The 80ft hight obelisk which marks the high point of the park was built in 1730.

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By the early 19th century Holkham had a more fashionable appearance – it was an informal, ‘naturalistic’ landscape park

The History and Architecture of the House

Above: A design by William Kent for the south front, differing in a number of respects from what was built.Typically, Kent has been unable to resist adding

an unrelated sketch – a design for a piece of silverware. Below: Detail of a map showing the old house, Hill Hall. Opposite: Holkham from the south circa 1800, by John Sell Cotman.

It seems likely that Thomas Coke, the effective creator of Holkham Hall and its estate, must have started thinking about building a new house here while still a teenager on his extended Grand Tour. It was on that tour that he started buying and commissioning both paintings and sculpture, and it was also then (in 1714, shortly after his arrival in Rome) that he met and became friends with William Kent, who was to have a crucial role at Holkham. Kent was then only a trainee painter, and it was not until the 1720s back in England that his talents as an architect and designer of interiors, furniture and gardens began to emerge. Meanwhile, Coke had met Kent’s benefactor and promoter, the third Earl of Burlington, who appears to have been the third key creative mind in the equation.

Coke came of age and took charge of his inheritance in 1718. He was a very rich young man, but his extravagance (not just in collecting but in hunting

and gambling) and his huge losses in the South Sea Bubble of 1720 meant that he was soon short of ready money; and although he started to enclose the heathland around the existing family house, Hill Hall, and turn it into parkland, work on a new house did not begin until 1734. Many people thought it an unpromising site; three years earlier Sir Thomas Robinson noted that Coke had ‘no other temptation [to build there] than that his ancestors lived there, and have left a large estate round an exceeding bad old house’. There was, he said, ‘not fifty pounds’ worth of wood within two miles of the place’.

This may have been an exaggeration, but certainly Coke had to do a great deal of planting.

That same year, 1731, Lord Hervey wrote to the Prince of Wales that Hill Hall was ‘a most unpleasant place, but [Coke] comforts himself with a park in embryo, and a Burlington house with four pavilions on paper’.

The question of just who

HOLKHAM | 18

designed Holkham continues to divide scholarly opinion.

The implication of Lord Hervey’s remark is that the originator of the basic plan, with its constellation of four wings around a central block, was Lord Burlington. However, there exist undated designs in the British Library for a house without those wings. In these the plan of the central block is very like that of the present house, including the unique layout of the Marble Hall, and the elevations include not only the great south portico pretty much as built but also the quartet of corner towers. The drawings are probably in the hand of Matthew Brettingham senior (1699-1769), the Norwich bricklayer-turned-architect who was to superintend construction. But Brettingham seems not to have had an original idea in his head, despite claiming responsibility for Holkham in the book he published in 1764, ‘The Plans, Elevations and Sections of Holkham in Norfolk’, and his claim was angrily dismissed by Horace Walpole (son of Sir Robert Walpole of neighbouring Houghton), who said he had seen Kent’s designs for Holkham ‘an hundred times’.

Colen Campbell, one of the pioneers of the new English Palladian movement, visited Holkham soon after Coke bought the first two volumes of his groundbreaking publication, ‘Vitruvius Britannicus’, in 1720, probably to view the possible site for a new mansion, and he may have drawn up a scheme which was shelved for lack of funds and is now lost. Brettingham published his clearly outrageous claim to authorship five years after the death of Coke, in whose lifetime he would not have dared to make it. It was left to his son, Matthew junior, to

qualify the claim in the second edition of the Holkham book in 1773, where he said that ‘the general ideas were first struck out by the Earls of Burlington and Leicester, assisted by Mr William Kent’, though he added that they had been ‘departed from in every shape’. The Earl, he said, ‘continued with uncommon diligence to improve and elucidate the first sketches of the plans and elevations concerted with the Earl of Burlington and Mr Kent; and in this he was guided by those great luminaries of architecture, Palladio and Inigo Jones’.

Thomas Coke clearly had a very close involvement in the evolution of the design and had definite ideas of his own which he was well able to articulate, having had something of an architectural training in Rome. On the other hand, it is evident from his correspondence that he frequently sought advice and approval from Burlington, an architect in his own right and the leading aesthetic arbiter of his generation; it may well have been Burlington who suggested the idea of the four wings, which in essence comes from Andrea Palladio’s project for the Villa Mocenigo near Venice. It is also clear that Coke badgered Kent for designs both for the house as a whole and for the Family Wing in particular. Kent died in 1748, with much work still to be done on the interior; but Coke and Brettingham stuck very closely to Kent’s established style, in furnishing as well as in architectural detail.

Coke took a very practical approach to the project and the Family Wing was built and occupied (1734-40) before work began on the main block. The aim then was to get the south front completed, including the balancing

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Chapel Wing, so that if anything happened to Coke his successor would not be tempted to make do with a lop-sided composition. Next came the Kitchen Wing, and finally the Stranger’s Wing, on which a start was made in 1757. For some years work proceeded slowly thanks to cash-flow problems arising out of things like election expenses (Coke was first elected MP for Norfolk in 1721, at the age of 24) and the difficulties in collecting rents due. However, after the death of Coke’s only son in 1753 he seems to have focussed on getting the house finished as soon as possible and at whatever cost, and expenditure soared. When Coke himself died in 1759, the project was very nearly complete and the finishing touches were applied over the next few years by his widow, Lady Leicester.

The first sight of Holkham to the visitor approaching from the south along the four-mile avenue is unquestionably one of the great experiences of country house visiting in England. As Coke and his fellow designers intended, it impresses not just by the spreading vastness of the composition but also by its nobility and restraint, with the massive central portico evoking the grandeur of ancient Rome. Closer to, however, it cannot be denied that there is a certain austerity (this would have been offset by the gilding of the windows’ glazing bars), which is

at least partly due to the use of buff-coloured brick. The original intention was to use golden Bath stone, and Coke’s correspondence in 1734 records his discussions with Ralph Allen, the quarry owner there; but the idea seems to have foundered on the difficulty of finding ships to transport the stone halfway round the English coast.

The estate brickworks were already producing ‘white’ bricks, and it was now decided that these would be acceptable for the house, the theoretical justification being that, according to the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, this was the preferred building material of the Romans. The other justification was, of course, economic, and it is interesting to speculate whether, if stone had been used, Coke could ever have had enough money to complete the house as intended. Getting on for three million bricks were used in an enormous variety of shapes and sizes – some 140 altogether. After 250 years of exposure to the harsh north Norfolk climate, the brickwork and its pointing (the joints were filled with white lime putty) are still in more or less perfect condition.

The design of Holkham, which quickly became a place of pilgrimage for architects as well as aristocratic sightseers, was more influential than might be expected from its remote location. Architects such as James Paine and Sir Robert Taylor picked up on its austere idiom and

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on the composition of the wings in particular. The idea of having a quartet of towers with pyramidal roofs was also an eye-catching novelty, and appeared on several subsequent major houses, notably Croome Court (1751-2) and Hagley Hall (1754-60), both in Worcestershire. The magnificent Marble Hall was a hard act to follow, but Robert Adam did his best in the Great Hall of Kedleston in Derbyshire, with its columns of Derbyshire alabaster 25 feet high.

Holkham is exceptional for many reasons – not least that it is essentially the project of one man, whose controlling intelligence saw it through from start to finish.

But it is also exceptional in that it has been spared the neglect, alterations and sales that have afflicted so many other great houses. This is partly because its owners since Thomas Coke have mostly been long-lived and prudent.

Three successive owners – Thomas William Coke and the second and third Earls of Leicester – between them spanned almost two centuries, 1776-1941. The house has never been seriously neglected, and its owners have respected both the fabric and the contents, carrying out modernisation for the most part sensitively. For at least half a century after Thomas Coke’s death the family were so deeply in debt that there was no money to make

fashionable changes, although the house was always properly maintained, both inside and out.

The main changes came under the second Earl, who inherited in 1842 and died in 1909. He added the north porch (a necessary innovation given the bleakness of the Norfolk winter), installed plate glass windows (a less desirable development), and in 1849-55 created the garden terraces to the designs of William Andrews Nesfield. He installed central heating at great expense and tinkered with the picture-hangs and furnishing. Other innovations included a new water supply, building a private gas works for lighting the house (1865), new WCs (1890s), and the addition of the large conservatory, stable block and extensive domestic offices (all 1850s). In his old age he bought a new Daimler motor bus, whose repair in the years 1905-8 cost more than maintaining the house. The third Earl installed electric light, using a private generator, and updated the bathrooms, WCs and heating, as well as tinkering further with the furnishing of the rooms.

It has been the great achievement of the seventh Earl to reverse the more unsympathetic changes of his ancestors, notably by reinstating the correct 18th-century glazing to the windows and returning the state rooms as far as possible to their original appearance.

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The Marble Hall

Kent’s original design for the Marble Hall (above) shows the colonnade running round in front of the window and the staircase curving up to either side of

a statue of Jupiter. In execution, these features were changed: Ionic columns were substituted for Corinthian and coffering was added to the vault.

Surely the most magnificent entrance hall in England, this remarkable room appears to be the joint inspiration of three men: Thomas Coke, first Earl of Leicester, who built the house; his friend Richard Boyle, the ‘architect earl’ of Burlington; and Burlington’s protégé William Kent, an architect and garden designer of genius. Its essential elements – a lofty apsed space rising the full height of the house, with a screen of columns running around at first-floor level – are present in an early set of plans from around 1726, perhaps based on a scheme drawn up for Coke by the Palladian architect Colen Campbell, and again in a drawing by Kent. In purely architectural terms the sources include the ancient Roman Temple of Venus and Roma, the so-called ‘Egyptian hall’ described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius; the Church of the Redentore in Venice (designed by Andrea Palladio); and the chapel of the palace of Versailles.

Features from all of these have been brought together in a brilliant synthesis, made all the more splendid by the use of pink Derbyshire alabaster for the columns and the facing of the lower walls.

However, comparison of Kent’s drawing with the hall as built shows it underwent considerable changes, with the Corinthian order originally proposed being replaced with an Ionic one copied from the Temple of Fortuna Virilis in Rome, and the deep coving of the vault acquiring a pattern of coffering derived from the great dome of the Pantheon, also in Rome. Two other crucial changes happened while the room was under construction in 1757, when the columned screen running across the north (entrance) side was pulled down (no doubt because it obscured too much light), and Kent’s horseshoe staircase, which would have curved up to either side of a colossal statue of Jupiter, was altered to the present arrangement. >

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Above and right: Three views of the Marble Hall, showing the columns of Derbyshire alabaster and the bold coffering of the vault. Opposite bottom left: Matthew Brettingham’s section, still not quite as built. Opposite bottom right: The vault structure is of timber and plaster, not stone.

Although Coke, who had spent several formative years in Rome as a teenager, clearly intended the hall to evoke ancient Roman grandeur, some recent historians have also suggested an additional, or alternative, interpretation, which is that aspects of the design refer to the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and therefore reflect Coke’s position as a leading English freemason. However, there seems to be no way of proving this since there are no written references to such a hidden ‘programme’ in his correspondence, or indeed anywhere else.

The alabaster for the hall arrived by ship in June 1757, when a group of specialist masons set about fashioning it into the columns; these are in fact not solid but consist of load-bearing wooden cores with an outer sheath. The coffered vault is also not quite what it seems, being made of wooden laths coated in stucco, rather than solid masonry.

Coke died in April 1759 when work was still in full swing, and the elegant wrought-iron balustrade was installed on the orders of his widow, copying one from William Kent’s celebrated staircase at 44 Berkeley Square in London.

Lady Leicester, as she then was, commissioned a fine monument to her husband and herself for the church at Tittleshall, some 12 miles to the south of Holkham, and she ordered a cast of the monument’s bust of Coke (by the great sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac) to be placed over the door leading from the hall to the Saloon. Over the opposite door, the entrance from the north front, she installed an inscription which reads: ‘This SEAT, on an open barren Estate, Was planned, planted, built, decorated And inhabited the middle of the XVIIIth Century

By THO’s COKE EARL of LEICESTER.’

As in an ancient Roman building, the hall is embellished with classical statues and carved reliefs. Set into the apse walls are four plaques, all additions of the early19th century and collectively known as ‘Thomas William Coke’s political reliefs’. From left to right they are ‘The Trial of Socrates’, by Richard Westmacott; ‘The Death of Germanicus’, by Thomas Banks; ‘Cosimo de Medici at the gates of Florence’ (bought as a Michelangelo but actually by Stoldo Lorenzi), and ‘The Signing of Magna Carta’, by Francis Chantrey. The latter, dated 1832, symbolised Thomas William Coke’s firm support for the Reform Bill of that year, which is why some of the figures in medieval costume are identified as contemporary figures.

At the north-west corner of the hall, by the door leading into the North Dining Room, is another Chantrey relief, this time presented in 1834 and commemorating two woodcock which the sculptor killed with a single shot while Thomas William Coke’s guest at Holkham in 1830.

Curious visitors started arriving to see Holkham Hall long before it was finished, and first sight of the Marble Hall always had the desired impact. A typical reaction was that of Lady Beauchamp Proctor, visiting in 1764; it was, she wrote, ‘the grandest thing of the sort in England’, although she also noted that it was the fashion to condemn it since, looking at it from the top of the stairs, ‘it does certainly appear like a cold bath’. It is worth mentioning, before leaving the room, that only the resident family, their guests and approved visitors would have used these grand stairs. The servants who ran Holkham were invisible in a corridor that runs behind the alabaster walls, moving between floors by invisible service stairs.

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The North State Dining Room

The door at the north-west corner of the Marble Hall colonnade leads into a series of rooms of rather austere splendour, in which walls of bare plaster are relieved by isolated accents such as chimneypieces, doorcases, niches and sculpture. This was the novel style of interior decoration pioneered by Thomas Coke’s friends Lord Burlington and William Kent, for instance in Burlington’s celebrated little villa at Chiswick. At Holkham these rooms refer back to classical antiquity but also to the works of an English 17th-century architect greatly admired by Burlington and Kent, Inigo Jones. In the North Dining Room (as in many of the other state rooms) Jones was the inspiration for the design of the ceiling, which has a circular dome with a perpendicular height of eight feet, while the walls have busts of Roman emperors. Thomas Coke, who devised much of the detail of the interiors of his house, was very fond of placing paintings and pieces of sculpture in symbolic pairs; thus, in this room, a bracket to the left of the apse, representing the ‘good’ emperor Marcus Aurelius, is balanced to the right by one of the definitely bad emperor Caracalla, one of the most bloodthirsty tyrants in Roman history. A bust of Aelius Verus (who was adopted by the Emperor Hadrian as his successor but never ruled) over the left-hand chimneypiece stares across at the head of an unidentified goddess over the right-hand chimneypiece.

The chimneypieces themselves are elegant specimens in white Carrara marble and Sicilian jasper, carved by the leading London sculptor Thomas Carter. The central plaques represent scenes from Aesop’s fables, perhaps intended by Coke to illustrate how the weak can frustrate the intentions of the powerful. On the left, bees fend off

a bear that is trying to steal their honey, while on the right a sow defends her litter from a marauding wolf; interestingly, the nose of the sow was broken off by a badlybehaved early tourist, some time before 1768.

Carter also put together the imposing buffet table in the apse, possibly following a design by John Vardy (a protégé of William Kent) dating from circa 1756; he used porphyry legs with lions’ paws, and a green marble slab sent from Rome by Matthew Brettingham junior in 1754. The top is cut to fit the curve of the apse. Underneath sits a vase of red Cornish granite, carved from a block presented to Coke on his wedding by the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe.

The mahogany and gilt dining chairs are part of a large set provided by the Soho cabinetmakers Paul Saunders and George Bradshaw in the mid-18th century. Around this period there was a phobia about cooking smells, which meant not only that dining rooms were usually a long way from the kitchen (as here) but also that they contained no fabrics that could absorb smells. Consequently these chairs were originally upholstered in red leather and instead of a carpet the room had a painted oil cloth, probably representing a Roman mosaic pavement.

The chairs would have been placed against the walls, and dismountable dining tables would have been moved in when required from a room hidden behind the apse.

The present table was made around 1835 by the London firm of Johnstone, Jupe and Company, and can be expanded to allow the insertion of extra leaves by means of a mechanism underneath. It now stands on a fine French Savonnerie carpet of about 1820, with a bold scrolling pattern.

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Far left:The canopied bed, crowned

by an earl’s coronet, is hung with silk woven to a bold 18th-century

pattern, which is also used for the

walls, window curtains and chairs.

Left:Van Dyck’s portrait of the Duke

of Lennox and Richmond.

The Parrot Bedroom Passing from the North Dining Room and through the adjoining North Tribune, the visitor enters a short linking room that connects with the Stranger’s Wing. This is the north-western of the four satellite pavilions to the main house, and was where family guests were – and still are – usually accommodated. The last part of the house to be built, it was begun in 1757 and was completed in the 1760s by Lady Leicester, after her husband’s death. Like the Family Wing, it was planned for maximum convenience, with the rooms on the main floor arranged around a central staircase so that servants could service them easily from the basement. Originally there were three apartments here, each comprising a bedroom and two dressing rooms, and many guests commented favourably on the arrangements, especially the provision of water closets – in the 18th century considered a great luxury rather than a necessity.

The Parrot Bedroom takes its name from the striking painting to the right of the bed of parrots and macaws. It is by the celebrated Flemish painter Frans Snyders (15791657), a pupil of Pieter Brueghel the younger and assistant to Rubens. The other notable painting here, over the chimneypiece, is the ‘School of Van Dyck’ portrait of the second Earl of Warwick. In the room beyond, now a bathroom, the walls are hung with fine tapestries, part of a set supplied by Paul Saunders at a cost of £366 2s 6d.

The scenes, after designs by the great French artist Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), depict aristocrats enjoying themselves.

The visitor leaves the Stranger’s Wing via the central stairwell, where hang two important full-length portraits: James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond, by Van Dyck, and the late-18th century politician (and close friend of Thomas William Coke) Charles James Fox, by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

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Country Life Picture Library

(left and above) The austerely architectural sequence comprising the Statue Gallery and its two Tribunes was modelled on the Gallery at Chiswick House

in London.

The North Tribune From the Stranger’s Wing we return to the North Tribune, which is one end of the tripartite sequence of rooms that takes up the west side of the main house. This is really a much-enlarged version of the tripartite gallery in Lord Burlington’s Chiswick villa, though whether the basic idea here was also Lord Burlington’s is not entirely clear. In both cases the central room is rectangular with apses at each end, while the flanking rooms are domed octagons (at Chiswick one is octagonal and the other circular). The architecture is austere, only a little relieved by the gilding of doorcases and mouldings, and the main purpose was to display Thomas Coke’s outstanding collection of antique sculpture. This had been acquired partly by Coke himself while in Rome, and partly subsequently by Matthew Brettingham junior, who was in Rome on his behalf in 1747-54. Some of the items came from important private collections such as that of Cardinal Albani, some from a shady dealer called Belisario Amadei, and others from Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, the leading restorer of antiquities in Rome and the man responsible for most of the repairs to Coke’s acquisitions.

Coke led the way in 18th-century England in building up such a collection; others followed, but as few had his resources it remained unsurpassed.

In the North Tribune the niches are occupied by two

of Coke’s favoured pairings. Two full-length statues represent paradigms of female virtue – Agrippina, who searched tirelessly for justice for her murdered husband Germanicus, and Juno, the mother of the gods and the deity of matrimony. Two represent personifications of male vice – Lucius Antonius, a powerful figure in Republican Rome whom Cicero called a robber and a monster, and the emperor Lucius Verus who was notorious for his addiction to drunkenness, gambling and debauchery.

The fine 18th-century English chandelier is one of a pair acquired by Lady Leicester for £200.

The Statue Gallery The Gallery contains the cream of Coke’s collection, displayed in niches or on wall brackets. The setting is suitably Roman, with the rich coffering of the apses copied from the Temple of the Sun and Moon, as illustrated by Palladio in his ‘Four Books of Architecture’. The handsome chimneypiece is copied from one at Wilton House which was thought in the 18th century to be by Inigo Jones; it was made by Joseph Pickford, who did a good deal of work in the house.

The highlight of the sculpture collection is perhaps the statue of Diana as goddess of hunting, which occupies the second niche on the left. The story goes that it was acquired by Coke himself at great trouble and

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expense: it is said that the Italians realised its importance and he was briefly arrested for trying to export it without a licence, although this version has been challenged.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Coke included the statue in the background of his portrait by Casali, painted in 1757, which can be seen in the Chapel lobby. Another outstanding work is the statue of Marsyas (in the penultimate niche on the left), who according to legend was ordered by Apollo to be flayed alive for his temerity in challenging the god’s musical supremacy. The statue was acquired by Brettingham from Cardinal Albani’s

collection, still apparently in the untouched state in which it had been excavated, ‘encrusted over with the Tatar of the Earth’. On its arrival in England, the collector Charles Townley described it as ‘incomparably the finest male figure that has ever come into this country’.

Among the busts, the finest is probably that of Thucydides (the first on the window wall), which is a Roman copy of a Greek original. Thucydides, who lived between circa 460 and 400 BC, was the greatest of ancient Greek historians; his ‘History of the Peloponnesian War’ between Athens and Sparta was the first recorded account

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of a war written as it happened, in effect initiating the whole concept of contemporary history.

In addition to its function as a gallery, this room was referred to in 1757 as the ‘Chambre d’Assembly’ for guests. Its architectural austerity was offset by white damask curtains, and by seat furniture of mahogany picked out in gold, upholstered in dark blue leather (this has recently been renewed), supplied by Saunders and Bradshaw in 1757. Between the windows are two fine gilded sidetables in the manner of William Kent. Apart from socialising here, guests with a classical background (which in the 18th century would have been all educated gentlemen) could amuse themselves by identifying the statues and trying to work out the theme of the collection. Of course, Coke (and Brettingham on his behalf) acquired such works as were available on the market, rather than ordering them to fit a preconceived programme; insofar as the sculpture here has a theme, it may be one of fruitfulness and plenty, suggested by statues of young Bacchus (god of wine), Venus (goddess of fertility), Apollo (the sun god), Neptune (the sea god) and Diana (goddess of the hunt). This might have provided a metaphor for the productivity of the estate outside the windows.

Lady Beauchamp Proctor, visiting for the first time in 1764, was embarrassed by the scanty clothing of some of the statues in the gallery – ‘indeed they were quite indecent’ – and criticised the clumsy way in which some had been repaired with new noses, fingers or arms.

Country Life Picture Library

The South Tribune Whereas the niches in the North Tribune contain statues, here they have bookshelves for some of the largest volumes in the great Holkham library. These include over one hundred volumes of rare maps, and early-19th century volumes with illustrations of European birds, many executed by Edward Lear. Altogether the library has over 10,000 printed books and hundreds of manuscripts, many wonderfully illustrated and with fine gilded bindings.

The panel over the window, with the date 1753 beneath an earl’s coronet, is a reminder that we are now on the south front of the house, which was completed some years before the north side. The chandelier here is the pair of that in the North Tribune.

Thomas Coke’s collection of antique Roman sculpture remains unsurpassed

in an English country house. Outstanding specimens include the statues of

Diana, goddess of hunting (left of chimneypiece) and Marsyas (foreground right).The seat furniture was bought for the room in 1757.

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The Libraries Library Passage From the South Tribune a short link leads one through to the Family Wing. Hanging in the link, or Library Passage, is a large painting entitled The Vision of Aeneas in the Elysian Fields. It is of particular interest in that it was commissioned in Rome by Thomas Coke while still a teenager, and the artist Sebastiano Conca (1679-1764) was required to incorporate the figure of the young Coke himself. He is on the left in the guise of Orpheus, plucking his lute. Orpheus was able to enchant not just animals and birds with his music but also trees and even stones – just possibly a reference to what Coke hoped one day to achieve in his creation of an Arcadian park on the Norfolk coast.

Inigo Jones of 1727 (an important source for elements of the internal decoration of Holkham) and the Plans of Holkham which the executant architect of the house, Matthew Brettingham senior, published in 1764.

Over the chimneypiece is [Philip?] Reinagle’s portrait of Thomas William Coke – ‘Coke of Norfolk’, the first Earl of Leicester of the second creation – surrounded by portraits of his first wife and three daughters. To the right of the chimneypiece is a very interesting firescreen, formed from a Treasurer’s bag embroidered in silver thread (now tarnished) with the arms of Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707-51); a great patron of the arts, he was the eldest son of George II and would have been king as Frederick I had he not predeceased his father. Just how the object came to be at Holkham is not known.

Classical Library

Manuscript Library

Originally this was the ante-room to the private apartments, but in the early-19th century over 700 printed books were moved here from the attic. Most of them are in Latin, hence the name of the room, but here also are architectural volumes such as William Kent’s Designs of

This was originally Thomas Coke’s dressing room, but acquired its present title when it became a repository for manuscripts in the early-19th century. In Coke’s time the collection was curated by Domenico Ferrari, who had been his tutor in Rome. The most striking feature is the

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The Long Library is William Kent’s most complete interior at Holkham and has always been used as the family’s private sitting room. Over the chimneypiece

is a Roman mosaic acquired in 1774.The Manuscript Library (top right) is dominated by Trevisani’s Grand Tour portrait of the 20-year-old Thomas Coke.

canvas over the chimneypiece, Francesco Trevisani’s portrait of Thomas Coke, painted in Rome in 1717. He is shown seated on an extravagant baroque chair, with classical – perhaps antique – sculpture in the background.

Coke was then aged twenty, and a year later, immediately on his return to England, he married Lady Margaret Tufton, whose oval portrait is top left.

Long Library The Family Wing was the first part of Holkham to be built, being begun in 1734 and completed in 1740. To begin with it was attached by a covered passage to the old manor house, and it enabled the family to live in comfort and style while the main mansion was going up – a process not completed until the late 1750s. Having such a wing also meant that, when the main house was finished and furnished, the family need never be inconvenienced by visitors, however grand. Like the Strangers’ Wing, it was planned with the main emphasis on convenience, the rooms serviced via the central staircase from the basement; that was where personal servants like the valet and lady’s maid had their rooms, with the but-

ler not far away in his quarters at the south-west corner of the main house.

The wing was decorated and furnished in the 1730s, and the guiding mind was undoubtedly that of William Kent, who produced a detailed design for the decoration of the Long Library; the inspiration for the ceiling was that of the library of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, which Kent and Coke had visited together in 1714. This was always the main living room in the wing, proof of the importance for Thomas Coke of his books and manuscripts, and as such a precursor of the ‘social library’ that was to become fashionable in English country houses of the late-18th century. Apart from the painted decoration suggested by Kent for the ceiling cove but not executed, everything is pretty much as he intended, including the built-in bookcases, the pedimented overmantel (now with a Roman mosaic of a lion attacking a leopard, brought back by Thomas William Coke from his Grand Tour in 1774) and the white and gold colour scheme.

There were never curtains to the windows, which have sliding shutters, and the furniture was originally upholstered in black leather, which must have produced a very stylish, if not particularly cosy, effect.

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Drawing Room

From the Long Library a vista of over 400 feet runs through the south front enfilade as far as the chapel in the far wing. The intervening rooms were all state rooms, decorated with the greatest possible magnificence and intended for show rather than daily use. The sequence begins with the Drawing Room, which early accounts refer to as an ante-room to the Saloon next door. The walls here and in the South Dining Room were hung with the same crimson cut velvet (now replaced with a copy), supplied by Robert Carr in about 1755. Apart from being a good background to hang paintings against, such fabrics were always very expensive and were statements of wealth, expected to last a long time.

Thomas Coke accumulated his picture collection in two main phases. As a young man in Rome he acquired paintings that either had subjects from Roman history and mythology or else were typical ‘veduti’ (generalised landscape views) of the kind acquired by most Grand Tourists. In the second phase, by which time the construction of Holkham was well under way and his mind was turning to its decoration and furnishing, he employed Matthew Brettingham junior as his agent in Rome (174754). Picture-hanging in the state rooms began around 1754 and was completed after Coke’s death by his widow.

Coke did not adopt the usual practice of arranging paintings by school or period, but concentrated rather on content, symbolic or otherwise. Works had to appeal aesthetically, but they were also meant to entertain guests, whether by inviting them to work out the symbolic theme of a room or by conveying Coke’s view of history or politics. To some extent the hangs were achieved by trial and error, and paintings were undoubtedly moved around right from the start. Nevertheless, Holkham’s arrangement of paintings was probably more carefully thought out than in any other English house of its period, and it remains one of the best documented and best preserved not just in England but in Europe.

The picture hang on the chimneypiece wall of this room is the original one, recreated by the 7th Earl of

Leicester. At the centre, in a splendid carved frame, is the Madonna in Glory by Pietro de Pietri (1671-1716), which is juxtaposed with two marble busts of Roman emperors: on the left the bloodthirsty Caracalla, shown as a frowning brute, and on the right Marcus Aurelius.

Despite his innocent boyish face, Marcus Aurelius persecuted the Christians, so it may be that this ensemble is meant to symbolise the triumph of Christianity over paganism. Above, to left and right, are two bird paintings by the Dutchman Melchior Hondecoeter (1636-95), which were purchased by Coke from the collection of Sir Robert Walpole at a sale in 1748. These too are highly symbolic, since they represent William III’s wars against Louis XVIII, with different birds symbolising different countries (the cock for France, goose for England, stork for Holland and so on). There is also an allusion here to William III’s alliance with England and thereby to the Glorious Revolution which placed him on the throne, and beyond that to the classic theme of British Protestant liberty versus Catholic absolutism. The hang is completed by two landscapes. That to the left of the chimneypiece is by Gaspar Poussin (1615-75), while that to the right is by the great French artist Claude Lorraine (1600-82). The latter is not just a landscape but illustrates the story of the lute-playing contest between Marsyas and Apollo (dressed in blue).

The other paintings in the room include, placed over the doors, four landscapes by Jan Frans van Bloemen (16621749), also known as Orizonte. On the side walls are fulllength portraits of two key members of the Coke family: on the left (above the document appointing him attorney-general to Queen Elizabeth I), Sir Edward Coke, painted by Marcus Gheeraerts (1562-1636) in his robes as Chief Justice of the King’s Bench [?] under James I; and on the right, Thomas Coke in the robes of the Order of the Bath, painted

by Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745). Originally there would have been no family portraits in any of the principal rooms – something probably unique in an English country house of the period, and certainly emphasising Coke’s

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The room is full of antique references, but here the effect is warm and sumptuous rather than cool and architectural conception of Holkham as a temple of the arts.

The fine gilded side table between the windows is in the manner of William Kent but was probably supplied in 1757 by Benjamin Goodison. The frame incorporates the scallop shell, associated with the birth of Venus out of the waves, and the alabaster top was sent from Rome by Matthew Brettingham. Above the table is a spectacular

mirror made by the London carver James Whittle, who set up a celebrated partnership with his son-in-law Samuel Norman in 1755.

Seat furniture: the board says James Miller may have supplied the chairs and Goodison the cut velvet upholstery on them; but what about the sofas, which are to a different design and have a different fabric?

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The Saloon The grandest room in the house after the Marble Hall, the Saloon could either be reached ceremonially up the marble staircase or else by the circuit which visitors make today. The room is likewise full of antique references, but here the effect is warm and sumptuous rather than cool and architectural. The gilded coffering of the lofty ceiling is copied from that in the Basilica of Maxentius in Rome, with at the centre of each octagonal panel a sunflower emblematic of the sun god Apollo. Over the entrance door is a bust of the goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter, whose statue visitors were originally intended to pass on their way through the Marble Hall.

The walls are hung with a material known as caffoy, a mixture of wool, linen and silk; it was probably bought in 1755, when 244 yards cost the considerable sum of £195 – the equivalent today of over £17,000. The predominant plum colour has darkened over the years, but originally it would have toned with the marble in the two chimneypieces. These have carved tablets with deliberately contrasting subjects: that on the left is the personification of Astronomy, denoting the disciplined knowledge of the heavens, while that on the right has Cybele, mistress of untamed nature, with unharnessed and ferocious lions. They were supplied by Thomas Carter and installed in 1754. In the same year, Matthew

(Above left) Rubens’s great painting of The Flight into Egypt, acquired in 1745, is juxtaposed with Procaccini’s dramatic Rape of Lucretia (above right).

Holkham’s arrangement of paintings was probably more carefully thought out than in any other English house of its period, and it remains one of the best documented and best preserved not just in England but in Europe.

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The central axis of the whole estate runs through the Saloon and Marble Hall towards the column in memory of Coke of Norfolk.The side tables (above left) are supported on carved storks. Between the windows (above right) are superb mirrors, probably made by the firm of Whittle and Norman.

Brettingham acquired the magnificent tops for the two side tables; made of mosaic and dated to 123-125 AD, they were bought from Cardinal Furietti but had supposedly been excavated at the Emperor Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli. They are supported on carved storks with outstretched wings, in positions usually taken by eagles.

Between the windows are splendid pier glasses, probably

by Whittle and Norman, which each combine two oval mirrors and scrolling candle sconces. The two imposing torchères are William IV period; two more, now in the Landscape Room, were originally also in the Saloon.

Mrs Lybbe Powys visited Holkham in 1756 and noted that this room was just being completed, ‘with many capital pictures standing there to be put up’. The present picture hang is not entirely the original one, although the two overmantel paintings (in frames possibly designed by John Vardy) were commissioned in Rome by Coke in 1714, when he was only 19, and he must have

conceived them as a pair. That on the left is by Andrea Procaccini (1671-1734) and depicts the Rape of Lucretia, while that on the right is by Giuseppe Chiari (16541727) and is of Perseus and Andromeda. The contrast is therefore between female humiliation and female salvation at the hands of two very different men.

The most important pictures in the room, however, face each other from the side walls. On the right is Van Dyck’s great equestrian portrait of ‘The Duc d’Arenberg’, who was imprisoned for eight years in 1634 on suspicion of siding with the Protestant nobility of the Netherlands against their Spanish Catholic rulers. Coke bought it on his way back to England in 1718, perhaps seeing its potential for a political allusion. He acquired the magnificent Rubens of ‘The Flight into Egypt’ (which was originally painted for the Jesuit church in Antwerp) in 1745, probably intending to pair the two, although they have hung in the Saloon only since 1827.

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The South Dining Room Although this has been known as the South Dining Room since the 19th century, in the 18th century it was referred to as a drawing room. Strictly speaking it was the first room in a sequence of four which together formed a grand apartment for exalted visitors too important to be housed in the Stranger’s Wing.

As in the Drawing Room, the ceiling and chimneypiece here are both inspired by the designs of Inigo Jones, while the frieze running around the room, with its paired griffins, has a Roman antique motif culled (like a number of others used in the house) from Antoine Desgodetz’s ‘Les Edifices Antiques de Rome’, published in 1682. The silk wall hangings also match those in the Drawing Room and form a rich backdrop for several outstanding paintings.

Over the chimneypiece is Thomas Gainsborough’s superb portrait of ‘Coke of Norfolk’, a perfect example of how the important English aristocrat liked to be painted as a simple country gentleman with his dogs, whereas his French counterparts would have been depicted in expensive silks and lace ruffles. Equally fine in a very different vein is the portrait of the young Coke on the left-hand wall, painted while he was in Rome by that quintessential Grand Tour artist Pompeo Batoni (1708-87). He is shown wearing ‘Van Dyck’ costume, which according to a family story records what he wore to a fancy dress ball given by the ‘Young Pretender’ (also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie) to mark his marriage to Princess Louise of Stolberg; supposedly the portrait was commissioned by the young princess, who found Coke more appealing than her ageing husband.

Opposite the Batoni is a painting by the Baroque painter Guido Reni (1575-1642), showing the biblical story of Joseph attempting to escape the embrace of Potiphar’s wife. Taken together with the painting to the left of the Gainsborough, depicting a ‘Reclining Venus with Musician’, and busts on the chimneypiece representing a vestal virgin and the beautiful but promiscuous Faustina, it has been suggested that the subtext of this room is ‘bodily temptation and sin’. According to this theory, the Landscape Room which follows offers repentance, leading to redemption in the Chapel. Hanging between the windows is a superb mirror made by the local carver James Miller in imitation (though not an exact copy) of that in the Drawing Room by the London carver James Whittle. Below is a striking side table probably designed by John Vardy (it can be compared with the buffet in the North Dining Room), in which a marble slab of ‘giallo antico’ marble and a frieze of green-veined Egyptian marble are supported on ostrich legs – the ostrich being a Coke family crest.

HOLKHAM | 43

1.

Classical landscape with man fishing in foreground and man with several

2.

Wooded landscape with St John baptising the Saviour – FRANCESCO

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

on

20

3

goats beyond – NICOLAS POUSSIN.

18

4 6

GRIMALDI.

Classical ruins with figures; buildings on right – PIETRO LUCATELLI.

2

5

9 10

7

Rocky cliff with three figures – SALVATOR ROSA.

11

13

15 19 21

14 12

16

Rocky landscape with sacrifice of Isaac – DOMENICHINO.

Classical ruins with figures; buildings on left – PIETRO LUCATELLI.

Classical landscape with two men and a dog in the foreground; buildings

1

8

17 22

hills beyond – NICOLAS POUSSIN.

8.

Classical landscape with two figures and buildings; castle on hill to right

9.

Classical landscape with figures at a well – Jan Frans van BLOEMEN

16.

Rocky coast scene with Perseus and nymphs with Medusa’s head. Also

Classical landscape with distant hills, man on horse with dogs in attendance

17.

Landscape with Apollo guarding the herds of Admetus and Mercury

St John the Baptist preaching – LUCA GIORDANO.

18.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

and viaduct to left – NICOLAS POUSSIN. (called ORIZONTE).

– NICOLAS POUSSIN.

Queen Ester approaching the Palace of Ahasuerus. (The right-hand two

thirds of this painting were destroyed by fire at Fonthill c.1755) – CLAUDE LORRAINE.

19.

– ORIZONTE.

20.

NICOLAS POUSSIN.

21.

– CLAUDE-JOSEPH VERNET.

22.

Classical landscape with figures reclining by a pool. Fishermen in foreground Classical landscape with a river valley, a castle on rocky hill beyond –

Rocky coast scene with shipwreck near a harbour with survivors in a boat

known as the ‘Origin of Coral’ – CLAUDE LORRAINE. stealing them – CLAUDE LORRAINE.

Landscape with a story from Tasso showing the fleeing Erminia coming

fully armed from the Jordan Valley meeting a shepherd and his children – CLAUDE LORRAINE.

Classical river scene with a view of a town. Cattle and sheep in foreground,

also figures with a dog – CLAUDE LORRAINE.

Landscape with a waterfall. Figures in foreground with viaduct and castle on cliff beyond – CLAUDE-JOSEPH VERNET.

Landscape with Argus guarding Io with two nymphs by pool below a waterfall – CLAUDE LORRAINE.

View of sea, port and amphitheatre with distant Colosseum – CLAUDE

LORRAINE.

The Landscape Room Although it formed part of the principal guest apartment, this has been known as the Landscape Room ever since it was created in 1756. It is likely that Thomas Coke had settled the picture hang by the time of his death in 1759, and as such it is recorded in the inventory of 1760. The seventh Earl of Leicester has recreated that hang, and has also had new crimson damask woven for the walls and sofas, using a favourite pattern of the William Kent period.

As the name of the room suggests, all the paintings are technically ‘landscapes’, although in fact a number of them use landscape as the setting for biblical or mythological stories – for instance, Domenichino’s ‘Rocky Landscape with the Sacrifice of Isaac’, or Luca Giordano’s ‘St John the Baptist Preaching’.

The outstanding feature of the room is the collection of no fewer than seven paintings by Claude Lorrain, of which three incorporate scenes from classical mythology, one from the Bible and one from the poet Tasso. Claude was probably the landscape painter most sought after by Eng-

lish collectors, not least because his idyllic views provided the models which many patrons attempted to emulate in the creation of their own parks and gardens. Coke bought at least two Claudes on his Grand Tour, another two in 1749/50, and Matthew Brettingham acquired two more from Cardinal Albani’s collection in Rome in 1752; on the latter occasion Coke also authorised him to spend what was necessary to secure the two paintings by Claude-Joseph Vernet which now hang in this room.

The late John Cornforth described this as ‘one of the most celebrated picture rooms in England, not only for its great display of paintings by Claude Lorrain but for the unique opportunity it gives to turn from the Italianate landscapes on its walls and see through its Venetian window the English classical landscape sweeping up to the obelisk’. The room makes an interesting comparison with the Cabinet at nearby Felbrigg Hall, another Grand Tour creation of much the same years, although with less outstanding pictures.

HOLKHAM | 45

(left) The chapel was designed by Matthew Brettingham. In the gallery is a copy of Raphael’s por-

trait of Pope Leo X (below). The luxurious Green

State Bedroom (right) was intended for the most important guests.

Chapel Corridor A short link connects the central block with the southeast or Chapel Wing, which Thomas Coke constructed at the same time to make sure the all-important south front was not left lopsided. The Chapel Corridor contains several notable works of art. On the window wall are two full-length portraits of Thomas Coke, first Earl of Leicester, and his countess in coronation robes and in the Earl’s case wearing the chain of the Order of the Bath (he was one of the first 38 knights created when the Order was revived in 1725). The artist was Andrea Casali (1705-84), who came to England in 1748. Coke points to his much-prized earl’s coronet, awarded by George II in 1744, while in the background is another prized possession, the statue of Diana, goddess of hunting which has always been displayed in the Sculpture Gallery. On the opposite wall is a tapestry, one of the series after Watteau which otherwise hangs in the Parrot Bathroom of the Stranger’s Wing.

Chapel The interior of the Chapel is mainly the design of Matthew Brettingham senior, who for the lattice pattern of the ceiling adapted the same Roman source, the Temple of the Sun and Moon, that had been used in the apses of the Sculpture Gallery. The lower walls are sheathed in alabaster, while on the upper walls assorted

paintings with biblical subjects are embedded in plaster frames. The tripartite altarpiece has in the centre Guido Reni’s ‘Assumption of the Virgin’ (a surprisingly Catholic choice for a Protestant household), flanked by paintings of St Cecilia and St Anne. Dated 1764, they are the work of Giambattista Cipriani (1727-85), a Florentine artist who came to England in 1755, was employed by neoclassical architects such as William Chambers and Robert Adam, and was a founding member of the Royal Academy.

Further paintings, more easily seen, are hung in the gallery, most notably that over the chimneypiece which is a copy of Raphael’s famous portrait of Pope Leo X with two of his cardinals. The artist in this case was Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), who studied under Michelangelo but is best known for his ‘Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects’ (1550) – the first serious work of art history ever published. To the right of the Vasari is ‘The Penitent Magdalene’ by Francesco Mazzuola (150340), usually called Il Parmigianino, who was born in Parma and worked under the influence of Raphael.

The gallery acted as the family pew for the Cokes and their guests, while the household sat below in the body of the chapel, reached directly from the servants’ quarters.

Until World War II, morning prayers – compulsory for both family and staff – were taken here every day at 9am, conducted by Lord Leicester. Nowadays Sunday services for the parish of Holkham are held here between November and Easter; for the rest of the year they take place in the parish church.

HOLKHAM | 46

Green State Bedroom This was the climax of the state apartment, theoretically reserved for the use of the most important guests, and it is certainly distinguished by the lavishness and sheer expense of its decoration.

The three-colour cut velvet used for the bed hangings and upholstery was much the most expensive in the house, costing the phenomenal sum of £899 for 257 yards – the equivalent today of over £70,000. The bed canopy, which was probably designed by John Vardy, was put up in 1758, but the room was unfinished at Thomas Coke’s death and his widow recorded that she spent £389 completing it. The tapestries on the walls represent the Four Continents. Three of them, made in the late 17th century by the great Flemish weaver Albert Auwercx, were acquired in France by Thomas Coke: to the left of the chimney breast is America, to the right Africa and,

on the wall facing the bed, Europe. The remaining wall space was completed with tapestries woven in Soho for Saunders and Bradshaw, based on designs made specially

by Francesco Zuccarelli: on the window wall, in three sections, Asia (these are prominently signed ‘P. Saunders/Soho’), and flanking the bed panels of Sleep and Vigilance.

Other motifs in the room seem to point towards the theme of marital bliss. The chimneypiece (made by Thomas Carter in the style of William Kent) has a central tablet of two lovebirds, and above it the large painting by Gavin Hamilton, commissioned for the room and installed in 1759, depicts Jupiter caressing his wife Juno – an unusual situation, since he was a serial philanderer.

The gilded pier tables between the windows are in the style of William Kent and have beautiful alabaster tops.

HOLKHAM | 47

The Green State Closet & North State Closet

The painting over the North State Closet chimneypiece is the most complete surviving record of Michelangelo’s intended fresco of the Battle of Cascina.

The Green State Closet was the last room in the state apartment, while the North State Closet was attached to the North State Bedroom and would have been approached from the opposite direction. Both were filled with smaller works of art, predominantly Grand Tour souvenirs, which were probably hung without any particular theme in mind. Typical of these are the four paintings over the Green State Closet chimneypiece, which are Italian scenes by Vanvitelli. Also here are three small altarpiece designs by Sebastiano Conca (whose enormous painting, ‘The Vision of Aeneas in the Elysian Fields’, hangs in the Library Passage), and ‘The Death of Cleopatra’ by William Kent – a reminder that he was a not-terribly good painter before he ever became an architect and designer. Both rooms have attractive small chimneypieces, that in the Green State Closet being boldly designed and almost Art Deco in feel.

The most notable work of art in these rooms can be seen over the chimneypiece of the North State Closet.

Painted by an otherwise unremarkable Renaissance artist called Bastiano da Sangallo (1482-1551), it is the most complete surviving record of the great fresco which Michelangelo planned but never executed in the hall of the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence. He got as far as drawing a vast cartoon of the Battle of Cascina, depicting naked Florentine soldiers surprised by Pisans while bathing, and it was this that Bastiano copied before it was dismembered and dispersed.

Also in the North State Closet is a fine desk in ‘Boulle’ technique, combining brass and tortoiseshell, which has recently been restored. It may have been the first Countess of Leicester’s dressing table, brought here from the family’s house in London along with a number of other pieces.

HOLKHAM | 48

The North State Bedroom

In the 18th century this formed part of the secondsmartest apartment, named after Thomas Coke’s friend the Duke of Grafton, and would have been approached from the Marble Hall, preceded by its own sitting room.

Today it is dominated by a late-Regency four-poster bed, whose canopy incorporates the Prince of Wales’s feathers, although no visit by that gentleman to Holkham is recorded. The chimneypiece was yet another made by Thomas Carter; the unusually neoclassical appearance of the side panels (not in his usual style) is accounted for by the fact that they are copied from an antique fragment representing ‘instruments of Roman sacrifice’, found in the garden of the Villa Medici in Rome. The central tablet represents the ‘Birth of the Poet Lucan’, as depicted in Montfaucon’s book ‘L’Antiquité Expliqué’, published in English in 1731-3.

The painting over the chimneypiece, showing a young man serenading a lady, is thought to be by the Florentine painter Lorenzo Zacchia (1524-87). To the left of the bed is a portrait of Thomas Coke’s great-grandfather Sir William Heveningham. He was one of the judges who signed the death warrant of Charles I, but at the Restoration of Charles II he escaped the gruesome fate of his fellow judges, being imprisoned for life rather than executed thanks to the efforts of his wife. On the opposite wall, to either side of the door, are portraits by Jonathan Richardson of, on the left, Thomas Coke, and on the right, his wife and Edward, their only son. Edward’s death at the age of 34, though a tragedy for his parents, may have been a blessing for Holkham, since he was a drunkard and gambler who maltreated his wife and would probably have frittered away his inheritance.

Two views of the North State Bedroom, with its splendid Regency bed.The adjoining Sitting Room (right) is hung with exceptional Brussels tapestries.

HOLKHAM | 50

The North State Sitting Room Apart from a fine French RĂŠgence amaranth wood commode with gilt mounts, and an important suite of William Kent seat furniture, the main feature of the room is the exceptional set of Brussels tapestries, probably woven by Gerard Peemans in the late 17th century. There are four of them, each representing two months of the year with appropriate Zodiac references, so the summer months of May to August are missing from the sequence. They are full of fascinating detail, with winged female figures to represent the Zodiac and motifs and scenes alluding to the particular season.

The panel on the chimneypiece wall, dealing with January and February, is framed by festoons of dead game and fish; in the background are men skating, while immediately to the right of the chimneypiece a cat has managed to get hold of three fish. The figure of Aquarius the water-carrier has largely been cut away to allow for the door, but Pisces is represented by a figure gathering large fish into her crimson robe.

Next comes March and April, in which the figure of Aries, in plumed helmet with her foot on discarded ar-

mour, seems to be taking a prancing ram for a walk; this side of the composition is framed by military emblems – perhaps a reference to the fact that this was a favoured time of year to embark on military campaigns. Taurus is represented by a figure seated on a Bull, which in classical mythology also represents the story of Europa abducted by Jupiter in the guise of a bull. Flowers announce the onset of Spring, garlanding Europa and the bull and framing the right-hand side of the composition, while in the background men are planting up a formal garden.

November and December follows, out of sequence, with more dead game, including a stag, wolf, fox and peacock. In the centre Sagittarius sits astride a prancing centaur, and Capricorn stands with a goat. In the background are wintry scenes, and snowflakes descend.

Finally comes September and October, an incomplete panel thanks to the presence of the door. Within a frame composed of fruits of various kinds, Libra carries scales in one hand and a cornucopia in the other. What remains of Scorpio is shown clutching a scorpion. In the background is a scene of wine-making.

HOLKHAM | 51

HOLKHAM | 52

The Old Kitchen

The Georgian kitchen was refitted in the 1850s and continued to feed family and

staff untilWorldWar II.The recent paintings

of estate staff are by Andrew Festing.

This kitchen first came into use in 1756. Mrs Lybbe Powys, visiting in that year, was clearly impressed: ‘Such an amazing large and good kitchen I never saw, everything in it so nice and clever.’ Refurbished in the 1850s, when the massive range was installed, it continued in operation right up to the outbreak of World War II. Huge numbers of people were fed from the kitchen. In the middle of the 19th century there were sixty servants in the house alone. Even between the wars there were at least twenty-five servants living and working in the house, together with the large Leicester family who entertained lavishly and often. In a typical month in the 1920s, for instance, food consumed included 250lbs of meat, 300lbs of bacon, 54lbs of tea and 500 loaves. The servants ate off the pewter which is now displayed on the wall and dates from about 1815. The vast number of copper pots, pans, moulds and other utensils were used in everyday cooking.

On the wall is a portrait of Coke of Norfolk by Samuel Lane (1780-1859), rescued from the Corn Hall in Norwich before it was demolished in 1964. More unusual, however, is the series of group portraits of the Holkham staff, commissioned by the present Earl of Leicester to continue a long English tradition of such portraits. Five, all painted by Andrew Festing, hang above the pewter display. The earliest, painted in 1993, represents Lord Leicester (then Viscount Coke) at his desk in the estate office, surrounded by the heads of the various departments at Holkham, and was intended as a tribute to three of the men, who retired together that year. Other paintings depict the farm staff, building maintenance department, forestry department and gardeners, the house staff and finally the estates and finance staff.

HOLKHAM | 53

Clockwise this page: Staff in the

1940’s. Livery design for the footman.

Farmworkers sheering sheep, maids and various staff including gamekeepers all photographed in the 19th century.

Opposite: the attic rooms where staff

once lived, are today used for storage

Upstairs and Downstairs The much-travelled Arthur Young, writing in 1768, considered that Holkham was the largest and best country house in England, architecturally finer than rivals such as Blenheim, Wilton or Sir Robert Walpole’s Houghton (which he thought internally magnificent but heavy). He also felt that it was the most convenient of the major houses he had seen, ‘so admirably adapted to the English way of living, and so ready to be applied to the grand or the comfortable stile of life’. This was due partly to the way in which separate specific areas were allotted to the family and to visitors, but also to the way in which the ground floor – the servants’ domain – was organised. The supervising architect Matthew Brettingham, in his book on Holkham first published in 1764, noted that ‘commodiousness was one of the Earl of Leicester’s maxims, and this sensible principle is seen in every part of the plan’.

A great deal of thought was devoted by Thomas Coke to ensuring that the ‘service’ aspect of the house worked with maximum convenience and efficiency. Although the plan was devised so that the servants could go about their business unobtrusively, moving between floors by hidden staircases, the ‘downstairs’ part of the house was spacious and well-lit, not sunk into the ground as was

often the case in houses of the period. Even the rooms where servants slept were in general sufficiently spacious and pleasant to be capable of conversion into family or guest accommodation in the 19th century.

Different areas of the ground floor were the domain of particular staff, according to their function. The butler, for instance, had his suite of bedroom, pantry and plate room at the south-west corner of the main house, with immediate access to both the state rooms above and to the Family Wing. The south-east corner was the housekeeper’s kingdom, where amongst other duties she supervised the still room, laundry, dairy and the housemaids.

The north-east corner was the steward’s area, and nearby was the Steward’s Room, where senior servants ate – usually five or six, but sometimes more if there was a big house party. The Kitchen Wing contained not only the kitchen but also the Servants’ Hall (both of them double-height spaces), where about 25 lesser staff ate, supervised by the house porter. The food here and in the Steward’s Room would have been considerably hotter than that served ‘upstairs’ to the family and their guests in the distant dining room. Stairs next to the Servants’ Hall led up to rooms occupied by the footmen and other male servants, including a gallery where they stored their

HOLKHAM | 54

Not until the early-20th century, however, was there a bathroom, in which the kitchen maids were allowed to take a bath once a week

uniforms and powdered their hair. Not until the early20th century, however, was there a bathroom, in which the kitchen maids were allowed to take a bath once a week. Gas lighting and heating were introduced ‘downstairs’ in 1865, whereas the family and state rooms continued to be lit by candles and lamps for another half-century.

Early Visitors to Holkham Even before the Hall was finally finished in the early 1760s it was becoming a tourist attraction for upper-class visitors. Some of these would have been friends of the family, but an increasing number came to satisfy their curiosity about a house whose reputation spread very quickly. Lady Hervey, visiting in 1765, summed up the particular reason why fellow aristocrats were so keen to see the interior, which was that ‘the utmost magnificence and elegance is blended with all the conveniences possible’ – a combination which was both novel and very probably not available in their own houses.

Lord Bath is one of the earlier visitors recorded, in 1747, at which point the Family Wing was certainly occupied but the main house was very much a building site. Mrs Lybbe Powys and her party, visiting in 1756 during the family’s absence, was typical of a growing breed of well-heeled travellers who made extended expeditions to see the sights of an unfamiliar part of the country.

She and her friends were not only shown the house but also given a ‘breakfast’ of fruit and cakes. At this stage there was no entrance fee, but visitors were expected to tip the staff handsomely. The number of visitors grew so quickly that Lady Beauchamp Proctor, returning for a second look in 1772, was unpleasantly surprised to find that she had to wait for at least an hour with a crowd of complete strangers while a previous party went round.

Interest in Holkham had by that stage been fuelled by the detailed account that Arthur Young published in 1768, and this was followed by the first proper house guide, published in 1775 by a Norwich bookseller (with permission from Wenman Coke, who had just inherited on Lady Leicester’s death). In that year it was stated that the house could be visited ‘any day of the week, except Sunday, by noblemen and foreigners, but on Tuesday only by other people’.

HOLKHAM | 55

The Holkham Estate

In his book ‘England’s Greatest Houses’, Simon Jenkins describes Holkham as one of England’s twenty greatest houses. He wrote: ‘It is the perfect English house from the Golden Age of the Grand Tour, surviving intact in its original setting and with the founding family still in custodianship... there is none finer.’ However, Holkham is much more than a beautiful house set in glorious north Norfolk. It is a diverse collection of thriving rural businesses that continues to grow as a major contributor to the local economy, and provides secure employment for more than two hundred people who live and work here.

A visitor to Holkham usually comes to see the park and the hall, and to have a look round the Bygones Museum, the History of Farming Exhibition, perhaps buy a keepsake from the Gift Shop or have a cup of tea and a piece of cake in the Stables Café. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a great deal more to Holkham than the hall and its outstanding art colledtion. It is ‘below the surface’ that much of the fascination of Holkham lies.

Do visitors wonder who feeds the park’s deer, cuts the grass, prunes the trees and bushes, tends the flowers, even who cleans all the windows?

Holkham has a proud agricultural history – after all, the family’s claim to fame for many people is from history lessons at school. Thomas William Coke, first Earl of Leicester (of the second creation), a politician and avid agriculturist, became known as ‘Coke of Norfolk’. His advanced methods of animal breeding and husbandry, and his lifelong work to improve – and increase the value of – the land at Holkham through the use of crop rotation have been taught to generations of children. It is this legacy that drives the innovations of today.

To give an idea of the scope of the estate, there are 16 tenanted farms ranging over an approximate 6,100 hectares (61 square kilometres). There is a further 1,850 hectares farmed ‘in-hand’ by the Holkham Farming Company. The spread of crops grown on Holkham land is varied – sugar beet and barley are the main crops, but wheat is grown on the better land along with break crops such as beans, peas and potatoes. The estate has recently set up a joint venture to develop a sizeable vegetable production operation.

But not all the land is given over to plants – the estate is home to a herd of 150 suckler cows. All the calves from HOLKHAM | 57

the herd are fattened and butchered locally and the meat the hall, and Julius Drake, the renowned pianist, gives from them and from the deer that are regularly culled on regular recitals.

Every two years the park is given over to the Holkham the estate is sold through estate outlets such as the Victoria Hotel, the Globe Inn and Holkham Foods Ltd. Country Fair, an enormous undertaking that regularly The estate owns and maintains more than three hun- welcomes over 40,000 people into Holkham over the dred houses, many of them listed by English Heritage. weekend it is held.

All of these events need organisation and Holkham Wherever possible these houses are let only to people who live and work locally. This includes six almshouses has the ability to attract and retain excellent staff. The that were built recently in the local village of Burnham estate employs over two hundred people from the local Market – the first almshouses built in the country for over area and plays a major part in the community. There is two hundred years. They are currently let to retired em- a harmonious co-existence between the estate and surrounding villages and many local families have ployees of the estate.

But the biggest activity at Holkham is leisure and supplied workers to Holkham for several generations. tourism, and this is predicted to grow over the years. It is A thread of continuity runs through all that Holkham estimated that over 500,000 people visit Holkham Beach does, which links the past with the future in a dynamic each year and there can be as many as three thousand way. The estate is determined to preserve rural values and rural life, but to balance people staying at Pinewoods these with the need to be Holiday Park in the nearby commercial – not always town of Wells-next-the-Sea. an easy task.

These visitors make a crucial And the legacy and contribution to a changing local heritage of this great eseconomy, which is increasingly tate have to be preserved reliant on visitors.

– the current members of Holkham has played host to the Coke family describe various large open-air concerts themselves as custodians, as well as many smaller and not just owners. Lord more intimate recitals in the Coke and his family Marble Hall. Stars of the calibre of José Carreras and Elton John moved into the hall in have come to Holkham to give Far left: Holkham Hall is a perfect backdrop for concerts.

2007 when his father, the concerts on the lawns in front of Below: The Nature Trail in the Park is very popular with visitors. seventh Earl of Leicester, HOLKHAM | 58

Stables Yard with its gift shop and Café. the Bygones Mu-

seum Museum houses a vast

collection of more than 4,000 fascinating exhibits ranging

from mechanical toys, house-

hold implements and agricul-

tural tools, to vintage cars

and massive steam engines.

retired. In time, Lord Coke will become the eighth Earl, and the succession was assured with the arrival of Edward Coke (or Ned, as he likes to be called) in 2003.

There are contemporary challenges to be faced: climate change and the need to develop sustainable energy to power the hall and all the estate buildings is paramount. Also, Holkham’s place on the north Norfolk coast brings its own set of problems. The predicted sea level rise and the threat of flooding cannot be ignored. The estate is looking at using ground-source heating or biomass

furnaces instead of conventional methods to power itself in the future.

Holkham in the 21st century is a dynamic and progressive estate. All who work here are conscious of the history that brought them here. The standards that they have inherited from their predecessors drive the search for excellence in all aspects of estate management, and their determination to give visitors the best possible ‘Holkham’ experience.

Clockwise: Various businesses

on the Estate include The Victorai Hotel ,The Globe Inn in

Wells-next-the-Sea. Holkham Linseed Paints. Pinewoods

Holiday Park and farming.

HOLKHAM | 59

Far left : English partridge which is on the red list of endangerd birds. A flock of Avocet fly over the marshes on the Holham nature reserve.

Conservation at Holkham

For many people the main attraction of Holkham is the beauty and magnificence of its setting. The hall stands in a 5,000-acre park, surrounded by deer and a nine-mile wall.

Holkham Beach is widely recognised as one of the loveliest in England; but the estate is comprised of much more than these notable landmarks. The extent to which the estate works to look after the natural environment may not always be apparent or understood. If the seemingly natural landscape were left unmanaged it would quickly revert to scrubland; the cattle and sheep that graze the marshes play an important role in sustaining the habitat as well as the local economy. All the estate’s livestock and the deer that graze the park are processed by a local butcher in WellsNext-the-Sea, who supplies most of the hotels along the coast as well the estate’s own Globe and Victoria Inns.

The estate employs nine gamekeepers and four woodsmen, who work to preserve natural habitats and to maintain the trees, the hedgerows and the wider landscape.

Looking after the landscape involves controlling pests such as rats and rabbits that cause damage to crops and hedgerows; rabbits can destroy a field in a matter of days and thousands are culled annually. More than 25 per cent of the estate’s land is allocated for the conservation of wild species. This benefits game birds such as the grey partridge and pheasants, which are shot in sustainable numbers in the winter, but visitors will also notice the unusual numbers of song birds such as skylarks, bullfinches and house sparrows, which thrive on insects living in the hedgerows and on field margins that are a deliberately kept free from harmful pesticides.

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Walled garden project The massive six-acre walled gardens to the west of the hall date back to the late 1700s – and 2010 sees the beginning of a project to renovate them.

Magnificent Italian iron-work gates frame the entrance to the walled gardens, which are subdivided into eight sections and known as ‘rooms’. The gardens have been closed to the public since 2005, when they were last used as a nursery. In Victorian times they provided a constant and varied supply of flowers and exotic fruits for the hall. Their transformation will take up to five years and visitors will be able to see our gardeners at work as they revitalise this magical place.

In the second section of the gardens there is an enormous stand of Victorian greenhouses which have been restored with the help of English Heritage.

There are also some derelict sunken greenhouses, which were designed to sit at a lower level to avoid extreme temperature fluctuations; these too will saved.

A working area has been designed as a vegetable garden and together with the cut flower garden these will provide produce for the hall and the estate’s two inns. At the far end of the gardens is an open area for weddings and other events, and a perennial wild flower meadow which offers a spectacular display as well as a refuge for wildlife.

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Designed and published by Arie & Ingrams Design.

Text written by the Roger White, Prof.Tom Williamson, Michael Daley, D.P. Mortlock, Christine Hiskey.

Photographs by Harry Cory Wright, Christopher Drake, Divid Kirkham/Fisheye Images. Michael Daley. June Buck/Country Life Picture Library Printed by Clifford Press Copyright The Earl of Leicester, Coke Estates Ltd 2010.

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