PLANS FOR REDGRAVE HALL

In the 1760's Rowland Holt III commissioned fashionable landscape designer Lancelot 'Capability' Brown to redesign the whole Park, including the Hall.

Brown is said to have tried unsuccessfully to persuade Holt that he should build flanking wings on the house to make it look more attractive. The result was an imposingly austere, compact mansion set in some of the most beautiful parkland in England.


EXPLORE THE HALL The Hall was demolished in 1947, but surviving plans (by Basil Oliver FRIBA, 1937) give a glimpse of what it was like. The plans show cross-sections through the building. The Georgian part, with its grand staircase and reception rooms, was built in front of the core of the old Tudor house, which became the kitchens.

	(1) Section looking east, showing kitchens (left) and entrance (right). << Click for enlarged 56kb version

	(2) Section looking north, showing west wing (left) and east wing (right), with facade of Bacon's house (centre). << Click for enlarged 47kb version

	(3) South side of courtyard. << Click for enlarged 30kb version

	(4) Rear elevation, showing two Georgian wings and back of Bacon's house (centre). << Click for enlarged 43kb version



The ground floor (click image for enlarged 120kb version)	The first floor (click image for enlarged 90kb version)


A VISITOR'S DESCRIPTION, 1867

The character of the interior is that of a most spacious and convenient mansion. It has been completely re-furnished and re-decorated and is an interior that may be compared with any in this part of England.
	The principal suite of appartments, the dining room, saloon, and drawing room have been redecorated by Nosotti in a manner worthy of a palace. The saloon ceiling is in the Pompeiian style, and the painting is beautiful in the extreme. Beyond these spacious, lofty and elegant apartments are the large and small libraries, the inside of whose doors are so fitted with mock bookshelves, fitted with imitation books, that when the doors are closed the mode of egress and ingress is perfectly concealed.
The grand stone hall, with handsome mosaic pavement, and fine oak staircase with bronze ballusters, is surrounded with newly bronzed busts of the Caesars. Innumerable chambers run round the quadrangle of the building as the first and second floors, and in the central part of the building on the ground floor are the servants' offices, forming the ancient portions of the structure, with all the commodiousness of the ancient kitchens of an abbey, and all the appliances and conveniences necessary for the modern practice of the cuisine.