Sudbury Hall - Derbyshire (NT)
Sudbury Hall is a house of contrasting styles. From the courtyard in front of the main entrance, it appears at first a rather Jacobean shape and general style – a classic E shape handed on from the great Elizabethan houses, with high windows and Renaissance features on the stonework around the doorway, but actually this house was started much later, shortly after George Vernon succeeded to the estate in 1660 at the age of 25.
The story of styles continues inside, with elaborate Baroque painted ceilings and luscious plaster work and carved wood telling their tales of fashions and riches over the years of construction and decoration.
On the day we visited, Sudbury looked rather gloomy and grumpy from the outside, due to the awful weather. The contrasting decorative brickwork diamond patterns and paler stonework delineating the floor levels would be much more cheerful in the sunlight, but the welcome from the guide made up for the gloom. The stone mullion-and-transom windows rise in identical regularity on both the north (entrance) front and the south front. Most of the windows are regular Elizabethan or Jacobean style, as at Hardwick Hall, Sudbury’s Derbyshire cousin. However, at the front, those nearest but one to the central stonework door display curves and ovals, slightly softening the severity and echoing the arched pediments over the entrance. Again, the central window, above the arched door, has an arch of its own, topped by two circles of glass. There is carved stonework above the windows, which is reminiscent of Jacobean strapwork, but the work on the doorway shows more contemporary influences, such as Inigo Jones. On the roof, great rectangular chimneys form a symmetrical pattern around the distinctive central cupola, topped by a golden ball, which is stunning when the sun catches it.
The main alteration to Sudbury after George Vernon’s day is the east wing – a servants’ block built between 1873 and 1883 in a neo-Jacobean style for the 6th Lord Vernon. This wing makes the house seem huge, but, although it blends well in style and was no doubt very useful, does detract from the perfect symmetry of the main house. At the back, the central porch was originally open, but it is now glazed in with stone steps leading up from the south lawn and lake.
Inside, the Entrance Passage leads straight through to the glazed doorway. On the right are the public spaces of the Great Hall, Saloon, Drawing Room and Library and on the left, the more private family rooms and servants’ quarters. However, the Entrance Passage and the Great Hall may originally have been one space as early plans of the house seem to indicate this. The Great Hall was used for large dinners and formal entertaining. At the end of the house is one of the glories of Sudbury – the Great Staircase. Two broad flights split this airy rectangle of space and the decoration is stunning. Here, we are no longer looking back to the Jacobean era, but forward to the Baroque. What looks like intricately carved stone or plaster is actually a wooden balustrade, painted white. Edward Pierce, the craftsman responsible, worked for Christopher Wren in London and was much employed in the reconstruction after the Great Fire (1666). It may have been George Vernon’s increasing wealth and political success that enabled him to bring people like Pierce to Sudbury, and the results take the breath away. Pierce’s bill of £112 15s 5d was paid in 1676. Although originally planned to have the deeply fashionable pineapple as a feature, there are now baskets of fruit on top of the uprights, which could be removed and replaced with candles at night. The year before, the sumptuous plasterwork was completed. Here, as on the balustrade of the staircase, acanthus leaves swirl and fruit abounds. The decoration was completed twenty years later by Louis Laguerre’s classical paintings. The whole scheme hangs together extremely well - such confidence and panache!
Further Edward Pierce carvings are in the Saloon, which is very elegant and sophisticated. It too has elaborate plasterwork by Pettifer and Bradbury and is dominated by family portraits in full length. Again, a ceiling painted by Laguerre declares the Vernons have arrived at the height of culture and taste. The adjoining Drawing Room has the Vernon arms incorporated into the ceiling, again by Pettifer and Bradbury. Another of Sudbury’s highlights appears here – the stunning carved overmantel by Grinling Gibbons. This is an intricate and life-like depiction of flowers, fruit and dead game birds, reminiscent of his work at Lyme Park in Cheshire.
The Library has a decorative plasterwork frieze, this time by completed in 1672 by the local Samuel Mansfield. The family rooms at the other end of the house are much more comfortable in size and style, for every day living.
Upstairs is the last stunner of Sudbury – the Long Gallery. It was completed in 1676, with a Bradbury and Pettifer ceiling jam-packed with witty detail and verve. Although de rigueur in Elizabethan and Jacobean houses, as at Hardwick and Little Morton Hall, Long Galleries were most unusual in houses built by this time. It is thought that George Vernon was consciously playing on the antiquity of his family (which had a Norman origin) and intermingled Roman emperors with family portraits here. The result is a wonderfully airy space, just over 138 feet in length. In the later part of the nineteenth century, the family used this room the most of all and the walls were lined with pine bookcases containing a large part of the 5th Lord Vernon’s library, which would have given a very different atmosphere.
Sudbury Hall is a surprising house of contrast inside and out and has certainly helped us to appreciate Baroque decoration in a way that we never did before.