“Holkham is exceptional for manyreasons, not least that it is essentially

the project of one man”

HOLKHAM | 3

Introduction 4The Family History 6-9The FamilyTree 10-11The Holkham Landscape 12-17The History and Architecture of the House 18-20The Marble Hall 22-25The North State Dining Room 26-27The Parrot Bedroom (Stranger’sWing) 28-29The Statue Gallery andTribunes 30-33The Libraries (FamilyWing) 34-35The Drawing Room 36-37

The Saloon 38-41The South Dining Room 42-43The Landscape Room 44-45The Chapel 46The Green State Bedroom 47The Green State and North State Closets 48-49The North State Bedroom 50The North State Sitting Room 51The Old Kitchen / Upstairs Downstairs 52-55The Holkham Estate 56-61

Contents

HOLKHAM | 4

It 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 Build-

ings 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 negoti-

ations were vetoed by my grandfather and the estate re-

mains 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 cen-

tury. 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.

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

byWilliam Kent. Left: Saloon View from the Saloon looking

HOLKHAM | 6

SIR EDWARD COKE founded the family fortunesin the 16th century. Regarded as one of the mostbrilliant lawyers of his time, he wisely invested his

wealth in land. From these shrewd investments grew thefortune that 150 years later, his descendant Thomas Cokeused to fund the building of this house.

Sir Edward was born at Mileham, Norfolk in 1552. Hewas the son of Robert Coke, a London barrister, who camefrom a long-established Norfolk family. Young Edward waseducated at the Grammar School in Norwich, then atTrinity College, Cambridge, before beginning his legalcareer in the Inner Temple, London.

Success came swiftly to the young lawyer. Throughouthis long life he held high political and judicial officeduring 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 Commonsand Attorney General to both Queen Elizabeth and KingJames. As Attorney General he was responsible, amongmany other things, for the prosecution of Sir WalterRaleigh and the Gunpowder plotters. During James’ reignhe became Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleasand finally Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, the mostsenior judge in the land.

Sir Edward married twice; his first wife, BridgetPaston, bore him ten children, all but two of whomsurvived into adulthood. Bridget died in 1598 andEdward 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 anddaughter of Thomas, Lord Burleigh, later Earl of Exeter.

It was said that Sir Edward was the only lawyer whocould interpret and digest the complicated laws of England.Mindful that ostriches are said to have the ability to swal-low and digest anything from stones to bits of iron, Cokechose the ostrich for his crest, and as his motto the Latinphrase ‘prudens qui patiens’. This translates as, ‘theprudent man is the patient one’. Coke then added a phrasewhich is a pun on his own surname, ‘etenim durissimacoquit’ – ‘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 elderlySir Edward just as difficult and obdurate over aspects ofthe royal prerogative. Sir Edward maintained that Parlia-ment should not vote supplies to the King without theredress of grievances. That quarrel was just one of severaldisputes it took a civil war to resolve.

Sir Edward’s obstinacy was rewarded in 16220 withimprisonment in the Tower. After his release some eightmonths later, he said the room to which he was con-ducted had been used as a kitchen, a note being pinnedon the door saying, ‘This room has long wanted a Cook’.

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

The Family History

HOLKHAM |7

THE HOLKHAM CONNECTION

IN 1609, Sir Edward Coke bought Neales manor, one ofthree manors in Holkham parish, from the Armigerfamily. It was one of many purchases of land in Norfolkand elsewhere by which Sir Edward endowed his six sons.He did not live here himself; the land was let to a tenantand settled to pass after Sir Edward’s death to his fourthson, John (1590-1661), who thus inherited in 1634.

John married Meriel Wheatley, heiress to the largerneighbouring manor of Wheatley, in 1612. The couplemade that manor house, then known as Hill Hall, theirfamily home. Through the deaths of his elder brothersJohn eventually inherited most of his father’s vast estates,in Norfolk and many other counties, and Hill Hall thusbecame the principal house of the Coke family. Indeed, itremained in use for most of the life of Thomas Coke, thebuilder of the present hall, and was demolished in 1757.The old Hill Hall lay just to the south-west, but no traceof it remains today.

By 1659 John had complete ownership of all threeHolkham manors, covering most of the parish. In thatsame year he rounded off his possessions by buying theproperty of Edmund Newgate, including the farmhousenow called ‘The Ancient House’ and extensive lands inthe north of the parish. Thus it was that over a period offifty years John Coke acquired the Holkham propertywhich became the nucleus of the great estate of the

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

The remainder of the 17th century, however, wasmarked by misfortune. Only the youngest of John’s sixsons survived to inherit, but this son died, unmarried, tenyears later. The whole estate then passed to the grandsonof the fifth son of Sir Edward Coke. Robert (1650-79)made a splendid marriage to the eldest daughter of SirThomas Osborne, the famous Lord Treasurer of England(later Earl of Danby and 1st Duke of Leeds), but died aged28 only eight years after inheriting the estate. Fortunatelyhe left an infant son, Edward (1676-1707). Both Edwardand his wife, Carey, also died young, within a few monthsof each other in 1707, leaving three sons and two daugh-ters. The great estate of the Cokes thus passed to theireldest son, Thomas, who was just ten years old. It wasThomas who was later to build Holkham Hall and be-came the 1st Earl of Leicester.

THOMAS COKE

AFTER the death of his parents, Thomas was sent to livewith his cousin, Sir Edward Coke, at Longford in Der-byshire. It is from this time that clues to his characterbegin to emerge. Highly intelligent, he was also stubbornand wilful.

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

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.

HOLKHAM | 8

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

Grand Tours were an attempt to acquaint the sons ofwealthy families with the glories of Greek and Romancivilisation and European culture in general in thehope that some of it would rub off when theyreturned to take their place in Englishsociety. Under the guidance of his tutor,Dr Hobart of Christ’s College, Cam-bridge, Thomas spent the next sixyears (from 1712-1718) on thecontinent, mainly in Italy.

It was in Italy that Thomas metLord Burlington’s protégé, the archi-tect William Kent, and his lessons inarchitecture led to his developing apassion for the architectural style ofAndrea Palladio, a 16th-century Italianarchitect who championed a return to thebuilding styles of Ancient Rome.

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

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

Thomaswould be intimately involved in its constructionfor the rest of his life. Even the death of his only son in1753 did not lessen his commitment. Thomas himselfdied in 1759, a full five years before the house wascompleted. It was left to his widow to complete the con-struction and furnishing of the house, and she undertook

this task with vigour and determination. Lady Margaretkept meticulous accounts, at some points entering acqui-sitions of fabric and furnishings in a bold hand: ‘This Ibought with my own money!’

MANY years earlier Thomas had been horrifiedwhen his younger sister, Anne, had eloped,

but on the death of the Dowager Count-ess in 1775 it was Anne’s son, WenmanRoberts, who inherited the estate. Hechanged his name to Coke but died ayear later. His son, Thomas WilliamCoke, following a Grand Tour rathershorter than that of his predecessor,came to live at Holkham in 1776.

Thomas William built on thesuccesses of his forebears both in terms

of status and stewardship of the land. Apolitician for over fifty years, he was an MP

for Norfolk and championed innovation inagriculture. Thomas instigated the Holkham Sheep

Shearings, foreshadowing the county shows of today,where experts on all aspects of farming could meet, holddiscussions and demonstrate the latest methods of foodproduction and animal husbandry. He was widely knownas ‘Coke of Norfolk’, but he was first addressed in thatfashion in the House of Commons to distinguish himfrom two other MPs of the same name.

ThomasWilliam 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 orig-inal earldom having passed to the Townshend family; thefirst title had died with Thomas, the builder of the house.

Left : The most famous portrait of ThomasWilliam

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 ThomasWilliam Coke 2nd Earl born in 1822 to

ThomasWilliam Coke 5th Earl who died in 1976.

Below: Edward Coke and Mary Campbell minitures

by xxxx

HOLKHAM | 9

During his lifetime Coke of Norfolk planted morethan one million trees at Holkham, which helped tocreate not only a stunning park but also a wonderfulhabitat for wild life that we still enjoy today.

The second Earl (1822-1909) was the eldest son fromCoke of Norfolk’s late second marriage so was only twentywhen he inherited Holkham in 1842. His father hadmade few changes to the house itself, but theyoung second Earl embarked on extensivemodernisation. In the 1850s he built, atthe east end of the house, the magnifi-cent stable block and a great range ofdomestic offices, including a laundry,brewhouse and malthouse, whichnow house the pottery shop, BygonesMuseum and History of FarmingExhibition; the estate office andporters lodge (now the finance office);the present artesian well and water supplysystem, still in use today; the conservatory,terraces and fountain to the south of thehouse; and the vestibule and terrace on thenorth. Even the cricket pitch on the north lawn is due tohis love of the game. Many of the fitments installed dur-ing his refurbishment of the kitchen are still in place. In1865, a private gas works was built for lighting the house.

The second Earl was an enthusiastic countryman whosepassions were game shooting and forestry. His father hadbeen a remarkable shot and he carried on the tradition,building on Holkham’s reputation as a fine shooting andagricultural estate. He reclaimed large areas of marshlandand planted a belt of Corsican pines on the sand dunes onHolkham 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. Heretired as colonel in 1892 but was recalled to the regulararmy for the Boer War, commanding a Special ServiceCompany volunteered from the Norfolk Militia. By thetime he inherited Holkham in 1909, modernisation wasagain needed. Electric lighting was installed, supplied

from a generating plant housed in an extension tothe stables. Before the Earl’s death in 1941,

aged 93, this innovation had been made re-dundant by mains electricity. Now therestaurant and Bygones entrance havetaken the place of generating enginesand the enormous bank of batteries.

His son, the fourth Earl (1880-1949), served in the Scots Guardsduring the Boer War and WorldWar I, but his great love was music andhe was an accomplished violinist. He

succeeded to Holkham in 1941 and wasin charge of the estate for only eight years,

dying in 1949. For much of this period, partsof the hall, outbuildings and estate were

requisitioned by the Army.The fifth Earl (1908-1976) served in the family

regiment, the Scots Guards, and throughoutWorldWar II.He was Equerry to HRH the Duke of York, later KingGeorge VI. The fifth Earl had three daughters, but as theestate can only pass through the male line, on his deathit passed to his cousin, Anthony Coke. The sixth Earllived in Zimbabwe for most of his life, apart from when heserved with Bomber Command inWorldWar II. His son,Edward, became the seventh Earl in 1994. Edward’seldest son, Tom, is involved in managing the estate andwill become the eighth Earl on his father’s death.

Bridget Paston (1) Lady Elizabeth Hatton(nee Cecil, dau. of 1stEarl of Exeter)

Henry Coke(1591 - 1661)

Richard Coke(1626 - 1669)

Margaret Lovelave

Mary Rous

Robert Coke(1656 - 1678)

Lady Anne Osbornedau. of 1st Duke of Leeds

(2) Col. HoratioWalpole

Edward Coke(1676 - 1707)

m

m

m

m

Carey Newton

Thomas Coke1st Earl of Leicester

of 1st Creation(1697 - 1759)

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

EdwardViscount Coke(1719 - 1753)

m Lady Mary Campbelldau. of Duke of Argylland Greenwich

ThomasWilliam Coke4th Earl of Leicester

(1880 - 1949)

MarionTrefusis

Lady Janem (1)Viscount Andoverm (2) Adm. Sir Henry Digby

Lady Annem (1)Viscount Anson

Lady Annem Lord Glenconner

Lady Careym Bryan Basset

Lady Sarahm Major DavidWalter

ThomasWilliam Edward Coke5th Earl of Leicester

(1908 - 1976)

m Lady ElizabethYorke

Sir Edward Coke,Lord Chief Justice of England (1552-1634)

Right:TheThird earl in hisfavourite shooting jacketthat he had to retrievefor the dustbin on severaloccasions as his wifeoften tried throw it out!.

Right:TheThird Earl with the7th Earl as a baby.

m

m m

m

Thomas William Coke3rd Earl of Leicester

(1848 - 1941)

Thomas William Coke2nd Earl of Leicester

(1822 - 1909)

Thomas William Coke1st Earl of Leicesterof second creation

(1754 - 1842)

Thomas Coke1st Earl of Leicester

of first creation

(1697 - 1759)

Sir Edward Coke,Lord Chief Justice ofEngland (1552-1634)

Anne Coke(1699 - 1758)

Phillip Roberts(d.1779)

Gabriel Roberts

mWenman Roberts(1717 - 1776)

ElizabethChamberlayne-Denton

Assumed name of COKE in 1750

Thomas WilliamCoke

1st Earl of Leicesterof second creation

(1754 - 1842)

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

mJane Dutton (1)sister of 1st LordSherborne

Thomas William Coke2nd Earl of Leicester

(1822 - 1909)

m Hon. Georgiana Cavendishdau. of 2nd Lord Chesham

Thomas William Coke3rd Earl of Leicester

(1848 - 1941)

m Hon. AliceWhite,dau. of 2nd Lord Annaly

Almary Coke (b. 1938)m Peter Ferraz

Hon. Arthur George Coke(1882 - 1915)

mJulianaWhitbread (1)

Lady Elizabethm (1) John Spencer Stanhope

Anthony Louis Lovel Coke6th Earl of Leicester

(1909 - 1994)

Edward Coke7th Earl of Leicester

(b.1936)

mHermione Drury

(1) Moyra Crossley

(1)Valeria Potter (2) Sarah de Chairnée Forde

ThomasViscount Coke(b.1965)

Lady Laura (b.1968)m Jonathan Paul

Hon. Rupert(b.1975)

m

m

Viscount Coke has takenover from his father as thecustodian of the Hall and alsothe running of the Estate.

Hon. John Coke (b. 1938)m Carolyn Redlar

The Coke Family Tree

m

5 sons and 1 daughter

m

ThomasWilliam Coke4th Earl of Leicester

(1880 - 1949)

ThomasWilliam Edward Coke5th Earl of Leicester

(1908 - 1976)

Anthony Louis Lovel Coke6th Earl of Leicester

(1909 - 1994)

Edward Coke7th Earl of Leicester

(b.1936)

HOLKHAM | 12

The landscape around Holkham Hall – the lake with itsislands and wooded slopes, the extensive lawns, the greatmass of ObeliskWood which crowns the rising ground tothe south – appears at first sight to have been laid out tosome single grand design. In reality, the park has a longand complex history, and one involving some of thegreatest names in the story of landscape design.

Work on preparing an appropriate setting for the hallstarted 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 andmore geometric version of the great lake to the north-west of the hall was created by damming a natural watercourse; and the ruler-straight south approach, extendingfor some three kilometres, was laid out. At this stagethere were formal lines of trees, avenues and vistas, andthe overall ‘feel’ of the landscape was somewhat stiffand geometric.

All this, however, was modified in the years around1740 by the great designer William Kent, who added

The Holkham Landscape

various less geometric elements to the landscape. Inparticular, the area immediately to the south of the hallwas now redesigned as a piece of Italy in miniature, withan artificial hillock, the ‘NewMount’, surmounted by a temple-like seat. A little later, a pattern ofclumps was planted on the lawn tothe north of the hall. WhenThomas Coke died in 1759 thehall stood within a park of around360 acres, containing a mixture ofgrand yet simple geometry and ser-pentine, Italianate elements.

Few changes were made in the1760s and 1770s. Lady Margaret,

Coke’s widow, employed the famous Lancelot ‘Capabil-ity’ Brown at Holkham in 1762 but his activities wererestricted to the pleasure grounds in the immediate vicinity

of the hall. The accession of ThomasWilliam Coke in 1776, however, her-alded a period of radical change. Theold kitchen garden lying to the west ofthe hall was demolished and a replace-ment, which was located some 600metres to the west, was constructed to-gether with a new orangery. They weredesigned by the architect SamuelWyatt and cost around £10,000 tobuild.

The lake, now considered too stiff

HOLKHAM |13

Above left : Arial view of the Hall looking out over the

park towards the sea. Above Early morning lokking

south down the long drive. Fallow deer have grazed in

the park since??

HOLKHAM | 14

and formal in shape, was given a sinuous ‘twist’ at itsnorthern end by the designer William Emes, and anotherat its southern end by his former pupil, John Webb.More importantly, the park was massively expanded,mainly to the south but to some extent in alldirections, so that by 1800 it covered no less than1,200 hectares. New lodges were built to designs byWyatt, in part to replace the existing ones whichwere now marooned within the park. Well over twomillion trees were planted in large clumps (mainly inthe south of the park) and in a vast perimeter belt,which completely surroundedthe new arrangement. The plant-ing was designed by one JohnSandys, who took over as headgardener in 1786.

While all this was going onanother, more famous individualappeared on the scene – HumphryRepton, then at an earlier stage inhis career. Repton prepared a ‘RedBook’ – an illustrated designproposal – in 1789 which wasconcerned exclusively with thearea around the lake. Here apleasure ground was to be laid outand walks cut through the existingwoodland. A new boathouse andfishing pavilion were to be built,and the two shores linked by a‘ferry-boat of peculiar construc-tion’, a chain ferry, which wouldrun to ‘a snug thatched cottage…picturesquely embosomed in trees’on the far shore. This would forman interesting element in the view from the hall, forchimney smoke ‘is always a most interesting object whenfleecy folds are revealed, as in the present instance, by arich background of hanging woods’. Some, but by nomeans all, of these ideas were implemented.

As a result of these changes, by the early 19th centuryHolkham had a more fashionable appearance – it was aninformal, ‘naturalistic’ landscape park. The house lookedout across open parkland ornamented with woods andclumps. Most of the original geometric elements had beensoftened or removed, although to the south of ObeliskWood – and thus out of sight of the hall – the great southavenue was allowed to remain.

In one respect, however, the park was unusual. Itssouthern section, that which lay to the south of ObeliskWood, consisted of arable fields rather than pasture – anarrangement that reflected ThomasWilliam Coke’s greatinterest in agricultural improvement. Indeed, it was herethat the Great Barn was built in 1790 to designs by

Wyatt. It served as the venue for the Sheep Shearings, anannual gathering of farmers and landowners at which thelatest ideas in agriculture could be demonstrated.

Evidently satisfied with what had been achieved,Coke seems to have done relatively little to the landscapein his later years. A new west drive was created around1830, the planting was embellished in a number ofareas and, most strikingly, between 1833 and 1839 a brickwall was constructed all around the perimeter of the park.This was a particularly formidable undertaking and it canhave served no very serious practical purpose given its

height – either in terms of keep-ing game within the park orunwelcome visitors out. It remainsthe longest park wall in EastAnglia.

By the time of ThomasWilliam Coke’s death in 1842,fashions had again moved on.Landscape parks remained thequintessential symbols of statusbut their planting became morecomplex and diverse. More im-portantly, geometric gardens nowreturned to favour and WilliamAndrews Nesfield, the mostimportant and successful of mid-19th century gardeners, created,with the architect William Burn,the imposing parterres andterraces which now grace the hall.

There were also changes inthe wider landscape. Perhaps themost striking came between 1845and 1850, when a tall monument

to Thomas William Coke, designed by the Norfolk ar-chitect William Donthorne and with reliefs depictingCoke’s activities as England’s leading agricultural im-prover, was erected on the site of an earlier lodge to thenorth of the hall. Opinion has always been divided aboutthis immense structure; Coke’s own daughter declaredthat it was ‘much too near and frightful, the wheat sheaflooking like a vulgar evergreen flower stuck on the top’.

What we see at Holkham today is thus a complexpalimpsest. Yet the design has an overall coherence, inpart because of certain continuities or idiosyncrasies ofplanting. In particular, holm oaks (Quercus ilex) wereplanted here right from the start, but then becamesomething of a Holkham speciality. Most of theremaining examples in fact date from the 19th century.Certainly, there is little in the Holkham landscape thatseems out of place or intrusive. It is a richly textured, vast,and awe-inspiring creation, and the perfect setting for themonumental architecture of the hall itself.

Portrait of Thomas William Coke, Esq. (1752-1842) in-

specting some of his South Down sheep with Mr Walton

and the Holkham shepherds by ThomasWeaver

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 byWilliam 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.

HOLKHAM | 15

By the early 19th century Holkham had a morefashionable appearance – it was an informal,

‘naturalistic’ landscape park

It seems likely that Thomas Coke, the effective creator ofHolkham Hall and its estate, must have started thinkingabout building a new house here while still a teenager onhis extended Grand Tour. It was on that tour that hestarted buying and commissioning both paintings andsculpture, and it was also then (in 1714, shortly after hisarrival in Rome) that he met and became friends withWilliam Kent, who was to have a crucial role atHolkham. Kent was then only atrainee painter, and it was notuntil the 1720s back in Englandthat his talents as an architectand designer of interiors,furniture and gardens began toemerge. Meanwhile, Coke hadmet Kent’s benefactor andpromoter, the third Earl ofBurlington, who appears to havebeen the third key creative mindin the equation.

Coke came of age and tookcharge of his inheritance in1718. He was a very rich youngman, but his extravagance (notjust in collecting but in hunting

and gambling) and his huge losses in the South SeaBubble of 1720 meant that he was soon short of readymoney; and although he started to enclose the heathlandaround the existing family house, Hill Hall, and turn itinto parkland, work on a new house did not begin until1734. Many people thought it an unpromising site; threeyears earlier Sir Thomas Robinson noted that Coke had‘no other temptation [to build there] than that his

ancestors lived there, and haveleft a large estate round anexceeding bad old house’. Therewas, he said, ‘not fifty pounds’worth of wood within two milesof the place’.

This may have been an exag-geration, but certainly Coke hadto do a great deal of planting.That same year, 1731, LordHervey wrote to the Prince ofWales that Hill Hall was ‘a mostunpleasant place, but [Coke]comforts himself with a park inembryo, and a Burlington housewith four pavilions on paper’.

The question of just who

The History and Architecture of the House

Above:A design byWilliam 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.

HOLKHAM | 18

HOLKHAM | 19

designed Holkham continues to divide scholarly opinion.The implication of Lord Hervey’s remark is that the orig-inator of the basic plan, with its constellation of fourwings around a central block, was Lord Burlington. How-ever, there exist undated designs in the British Library fora house without those wings. In these the plan of the cen-tral block is very like that of the present house, includingthe unique layout of the Marble Hall, and the elevationsinclude not only the great south portico pretty much asbuilt but also the quartet of corner towers. The drawingsare probably in the hand of Matthew Brettingham senior(1699-1769), the Norwich bricklayer-turned-architectwho was to superintend construction. But Brettinghamseems not to have had an original idea in his head, despiteclaiming responsibility for Holkham in the book hepublished in 1764, ‘The Plans, Elevations and Sectionsof Holkham in Norfolk’, and his claim was angrilydismissed by HoraceWalpole (son of Sir Robert Walpoleof neighbouring Houghton), who said he had seen Kent’sdesigns for Holkham ‘an hundred times’.

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

qualify the claim in the second edition of the Holkhambook in 1773, where he said that ‘the general ideas werefirst struck out by the Earls of Burlington and Leicester,assisted by Mr William Kent’, though he added that theyhad been ‘departed from in every shape’. The Earl, hesaid, ‘continued with uncommon diligence to improveand elucidate the first sketches of the plans and eleva-tions concerted with the Earl of Burlington andMr Kent;and in this he was guided by those great luminaries ofarchitecture, Palladio and Inigo Jones’.

Thomas Coke clearly had a very close involvement inthe evolution of the design and had definite ideas of hisown which he was well able to articulate, having hadsomething of an architectural training in Rome. On theother hand, it is evident from his correspondence that hefrequently sought advice and approval from Burlington,an architect in his own right and the leading aestheticarbiter of his generation; it may well have been Burling-ton who suggested the idea of the four wings, which inessence comes fromAndrea Palladio’s project for the VillaMocenigo near Venice. It is also clear that Coke badg-ered Kent for designs both for the house as a whole andfor the FamilyWing in particular. Kent died in 1748, withmuch work still to be done on the interior; but Coke andBrettingham 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 andthe Family Wing was built and occupied (1734-40)before work began on the main block. The aim then wasto get the south front completed, including the balancing

HOLKHAM | 20

Chapel Wing, so that if anything happened to Coke hissuccessor would not be tempted to make do with alop-sided composition. Next came the Kitchen Wing,and finally the Stranger’s Wing, on which a start wasmade in 1757. For some years work proceeded slowlythanks to cash-flow problems arising out of things likeelection expenses (Coke was first elected MP for Norfolkin 1721, at the age of 24) and the difficulties in collect-ing rents due. However, after the death of Coke’s only sonin 1753 he seems to have focussed on getting the housefinished as soon as possible and at whatever cost, andexpenditure soared. When Coke himself died in 1759,the project was very nearly complete and the finishingtouches were applied over the next few years by hiswidow, Lady Leicester.

The first sight of Holkham to the visitor approachingfrom the south along the four-mile avenue is unques-tionably one of the great experiences of country housevisiting in England. As Coke and his fellow designersintended, it impresses not just by the spreading vastnessof the composition but also by its nobility and restraint,with the massive central portico evoking the grandeur ofancient Rome. Closer to, however, it cannot be deniedthat there is a certain austerity (this would have been off-set by the gilding of the windows’ glazing bars), which is

at least partly due to the use of buff-coloured brick. Theoriginal intention was to use golden Bath stone, andCoke’s correspondence in 1734 records his discussionswith Ralph Allen, the quarry owner there; but the ideaseems to have foundered on the difficulty of finding shipsto transport the stone halfway round the English coast.The estate brickworks were already producing ‘white’bricks, and it was now decided that these would beacceptable for the house, the theoretical justificationbeing that, according to the ancient Roman architectVitruvius, this was the preferred building material of theRomans. The other justification was, of course, economic,and it is interesting to speculate whether, if stone hadbeen used, Coke could ever have had enough money tocomplete the house as intended. Getting on for threemillion bricks were used in an enormous variety of shapesand sizes – some 140 altogether. After 250 years of expo-sure to the harsh north Norfolk climate, the brickworkand its pointing (the joints were filled with white limeputty) are still in more or less perfect condition.

The design of Holkham, which quickly became aplace of pilgrimage for architects as well as aristocraticsightseers, was more influential than might be expectedfrom its remote location. Architects such as James Paineand Sir Robert Taylor picked up on its austere idiom and

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on the composition of the wings in particular. The idea ofhaving a quartet of towers with pyramidal roofs was alsoan eye-catching novelty, and appeared on several subse-quent major houses, notably Croome Court (1751-2) andHagley Hall (1754-60), both in Worcestershire. Themagnificent Marble Hall was a hard act to follow, butRobert Adam did his best in the Great Hall of Kedlestonin Derbyshire, with its columns of Derbyshire alabaster25 feet high.

Holkham is exceptional for many reasons – not leastthat it is essentially the project of one man, whose con-trolling intelligence saw it through from start to finish.But it is also exceptional in that it has been spared theneglect, alterations and sales that have afflicted so manyother great houses. This is partly because its owners sinceThomas Coke have mostly been long-lived and prudent.Three successive owners – Thomas William Coke andthe second and third Earls of Leicester – between themspanned almost two centuries, 1776-1941. The house hasnever been seriously neglected, and its owners haverespected both the fabric and the contents, carrying outmodernisation for the most part sensitively. For at leasthalf a century after Thomas Coke’s death the family wereso deeply in debt that there was no money to make

fashionable changes, although the house was always prop-erly maintained, both inside and out.

The main changes came under the second Earl, whoinherited in 1842 and died in 1909. He added the northporch (a necessary innovation given the bleakness of theNorfolk winter), installed plate glass windows (a less de-sirable development), and in 1849-55 created the gardenterraces to the designs of William Andrews Nesfield. Heinstalled central heating at great expense and tinkeredwith the picture-hangs and furnishing. Other innovationsincluded a new water supply, building a private gas worksfor lighting the house (1865), newWCs (1890s), and theaddition of the large conservatory, stable block andextensive domestic offices (all 1850s). In his old age hebought a new Daimler motor bus, whose repair in theyears 1905-8 cost more than maintaining the house. Thethird Earl installed electric light, using a private genera-tor, and updated the bathrooms, WCs and heating, aswell as tinkering further with the furnishing of the rooms.

It has been the great achievement of the seventh Earlto reverse the more unsympathetic changes of his ances-tors, notably by reinstating the correct 18th-centuryglazing to the windows and returning the state rooms asfar as possible to their original appearance.

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Surely the most magnificent entrance hall in England,this remarkable room appears to be the joint inspirationof three men: Thomas Coke, first Earl of Leicester, whobuilt the house; his friend Richard Boyle, the ‘architectearl’ of Burlington; and Burlington’s protégé WilliamKent, an architect and garden designer of genius. Itsessential elements – a lofty apsed space rising the fullheight of the house, with a screen of columns runningaround at first-floor level – are present in an early set ofplans from around 1726, perhaps based on a schemedrawn up for Coke by the Palladian architect ColenCampbell, and again in a drawing by Kent. In purely ar-chitectural terms the sources include the ancient RomanTemple of Venus and Roma, the so-called ‘Egyptian hall’described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius; theChurch of the Redentore in Venice (designed by AndreaPalladio); and the chapel of the palace of Versailles.

Features from all of these have been brought together ina brilliant synthesis, made all the more splendid by theuse of pink Derbyshire alabaster for the columns and thefacing of the lower walls.

However, comparison of Kent’s drawing with the hallas built shows it underwent considerable changes, withthe Corinthian order originally proposed being replacedwith an Ionic one copied from the Temple of Fortuna Vir-ilis in Rome, and the deep coving of the vault acquiringa pattern of coffering derived from the great dome of thePantheon, also in Rome. Two other crucial changes hap-pened while the room was under construction in 1757,when the columned screen running across the north (en-trance) side was pulled down (no doubt because it ob-scured too much light), and Kent’s horseshoe staircase,which would have curved up to either side of a colossalstatue of Jupiter, was altered to the present arrangement.

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.

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Although Coke, who had spent several formativeyears in Rome as a teenager, clearly intended the hall toevoke ancient Roman grandeur, some recent historianshave also suggested an additional, or alternative, inter-pretation, which is that aspects of the design refer to theTemple of Solomon in Jerusalem and therefore reflectCoke’s position as a leading English freemason. However,there seems to be no way of proving this since there areno written references to such a hidden ‘programme’ in hiscorrespondence, or indeed anywhere else.

The alabaster for the hall arrived by ship in June 1757,when a group of specialist masons set about fashioning itinto the columns; these are in fact not solid but consist ofload-bearing wooden cores with an outer sheath. The cof-fered vault is also not quite what it seems, being made ofwooden 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 onthe orders of his widow, copying one fromWilliam Kent’scelebrated staircase at 44 Berkeley Square in London.Lady Leicester, as she then was, commissioned a finemonument to her husband and herself for the church atTittleshall, some 12 miles to the south of Holkham, andshe ordered a cast of the monument’s bust of Coke (bythe great sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac) to be placedover the door leading from the hall to the Saloon. Overthe opposite door, the entrance from the north front, sheinstalled an inscription which reads: ‘This SEAT, on anopen barren Estate, Was planned, planted, built, deco-rated And inhabited the middle of the XVIIIth CenturyBy THO’s COKE EARL of LEICESTER.’

As in an ancient Roman building, the hall is embel-lished with classical statues and carved reliefs. Set intothe apse walls are four plaques, all additions of the early-19th century and collectively known as ‘ThomasWilliamCoke’s political reliefs’. From left to right they are ‘TheTrial of Socrates’, by RichardWestmacott; ‘The Death ofGermanicus’, by Thomas Banks; ‘Cosimo de Medici atthe gates of Florence’ (bought as a Michelangelo but ac-tually by Stoldo Lorenzi), and ‘The Signing of MagnaCarta’, by Francis Chantrey. The latter, dated 1832, sym-bolised Thomas William Coke’s firm support for the Re-form Bill of that year, which is why some of the figures inmedieval costume are identified as contemporary figures.At the north-west corner of the hall, by the door leadinginto the North Dining Room, is another Chantrey relief,this time presented in 1834 and commemorating twowoodcock which the sculptor killed with a single shotwhile ThomasWilliam Coke’s guest at Holkham in 1830.

Curious visitors started arriving to see Holkham Halllong before it was finished, and first sight of the MarbleHall always had the desired impact. A typical reactionwas that of Lady Beauchamp Proctor, visiting in 1764; itwas, she wrote, ‘the grandest thing of the sort in England’,although she also noted that it was the fashion to con-demn it since, looking at it from the top of the stairs, ‘itdoes certainly appear like a cold bath’. It is worth men-tioning, before leaving the room, that only the residentfamily, their guests and approved visitors would have usedthese grand stairs. The servants who ran Holkham wereinvisible in a corridor that runs behind the alabasterwalls, moving between floors by invisible service stairs.

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.

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The door at the north-west corner of the Marble Hallcolonnade leads into a series of rooms of rather austeresplendour, in which walls of bare plaster are relieved byisolated accents such as chimneypieces, doorcases, nichesand sculpture. This was the novel style of interior decora-tion pioneered by Thomas Coke’s friends Lord BurlingtonandWilliam Kent, for instance in Burlington’s celebratedlittle villa at Chiswick. At Holkham these rooms referback to classical antiquity but also to the works of anEnglish 17th-century architect greatly admired by Burling-ton and Kent, Inigo Jones. In the North Dining Room (asin many of the other state rooms) Jones was the inspira-tion for the design of the ceiling, which has a circulardome with a perpendicular height of eight feet, while thewalls have busts of Roman emperors. Thomas Coke, whodevised much of the detail of the interiors of his house,was very fond of placing paintings and pieces of sculpturein symbolic pairs; thus, in this room, a bracket to the leftof the apse, representing the ‘good’ emperor Marcus Au-relius, is balanced to the right by one of the definitely bademperor Caracalla, one of the most bloodthirsty tyrantsin Roman history. A bust of Aelius Verus (who wasadopted by the Emperor Hadrian as his successor but neverruled) over the left-hand chimneypiece stares across atthe head of an unidentified goddess over the right-handchimneypiece.

The chimneypieces themselves are elegant specimensin white Carrara marble and Sicilian jasper, carved by theleading London sculptor Thomas Carter. The centralplaques represent scenes from Aesop’s fables, perhaps in-tended by Coke to illustrate how the weak can frustratethe intentions of the powerful. On the left, bees fend off

a bear that is trying to steal their honey, while on the righta sow defends her litter from a marauding wolf; interest-ingly, the nose of the sow was broken off by a badly-behaved early tourist, some time before 1768.

Carter also put together the imposing buffet table inthe apse, possibly following a design by John Vardy (aprotégé of William Kent) dating from circa 1756; heused porphyry legs with lions’ paws, and a green marbleslab sent from Rome by Matthew Brettingham junior in1754. The top is cut to fit the curve of the apse. Under-neath sits a vase of red Cornish granite, carved from ablock presented to Coke on his wedding by the Earl ofMount Edgcumbe.

The mahogany and gilt dining chairs are part of a largeset provided by the Soho cabinetmakers Paul Saundersand George Bradshaw in the mid-18th century. Aroundthis period there was a phobia about cooking smells,which meant not only that dining rooms were usually along way from the kitchen (as here) but also that theycontained no fabrics that could absorb smells. Conse-quently these chairs were originally upholstered in redleather and instead of a carpet the room had a painted oilcloth, probably representing a Roman mosaic pavement.The chairs would have been placed against the walls, anddismountable dining tables would have been moved inwhen required from a room hidden behind the apse.

The present table was made around 1835 by theLondon firm of Johnstone, Jupe and Company, and canbe expanded to allow the insertion of extra leaves bymeans of a mechanism underneath. It now stands on a fineFrench Savonnerie carpet of about 1820, with a boldscrolling pattern.

The North State Dining Room

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Passing from the North Dining Room and through theadjoining North Tribune, the visitor enters a short link-ing room that connects with the Stranger’s Wing. This isthe north-western of the four satellite pavilions to themain house, and was where family guests were – and stillare – usually accommodated. The last part of the house tobe built, it was begun in 1757 and was completed in the1760s by Lady Leicester, after her husband’s death. Likethe Family Wing, it was planned for maximum conven-ience, with the rooms on the main floor arranged arounda central staircase so that servants could service themeasily from the basement. Originally there were threeapartments here, each comprising a bedroom and twodressing rooms, and many guests commented favourablyon the arrangements, especially the provision of waterclosets – in the 18th century considered a great luxuryrather than a necessity.

The Parrot Bedroom takes its name from the strikingpainting to the right of the bed of parrots and macaws. Itis by the celebrated Flemish painter Frans Snyders (1579-1657), a pupil of Pieter Brueghel the younger and assis-tant to Rubens. The other notable painting here, overthe chimneypiece, is the ‘School of Van Dyck’ portraitof the second Earl of Warwick. In the room beyond, nowa bathroom, the walls are hung with fine tapestries, partof a set supplied by Paul Saunders at a cost of £366 2s 6d.The scenes, after designs by the great French artistAntoine Watteau (1684-1721), depict aristocrats enjoy-ing themselves.

The visitor leaves the Stranger’s Wing via the centralstairwell, where hang two important full-length portraits:James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond, by VanDyck, and the late-18th century politician (and closefriend of Thomas William Coke) Charles James Fox, bySir Joshua Reynolds.

The Parrot Bedroom

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.

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The North Tribune

From the Stranger’s Wing we return to the NorthTribune, which is one end of the tripartite sequence ofrooms that takes up the west side of the main house. Thisis really a much-enlarged version of the tripartite galleryin Lord Burlington’s Chiswick villa, though whether thebasic idea here was also Lord Burlington’s is not entirelyclear. In both cases the central room is rectangular withapses at each end, while the flanking rooms are domedoctagons (at Chiswick one is octagonal and the othercircular). The architecture is austere, only a little relievedby the gilding of doorcases and mouldings, and the mainpurpose was to display Thomas Coke’s outstanding col-lection of antique sculpture. This had been acquiredpartly by Coke himself while in Rome, and partly subse-quently by Matthew Brettingham junior, who was inRome on his behalf in 1747-54. Some of the items camefrom important private collections such as that of Cardi-nal Albani, some from a shady dealer called BelisarioAmadei, and others from Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, theleading restorer of antiquities in Rome and the man re-sponsible for most of the repairs to Coke’s acquisitions.Coke led the way in 18th-century England in building upsuch a collection; others followed, but as few had hisresources it remained unsurpassed.

In the North Tribune the niches are occupied by two

of Coke’s favoured pairings. Two full-length statues rep-resent paradigms of female virtue – Agrippina, whosearched tirelessly for justice for her murdered husbandGermanicus, and Juno, the mother of the gods and thedeity of matrimony. Two represent personifications ofmale vice – Lucius Antonius, a powerful figure in Re-publican Rome whom Cicero called a robber and a mon-ster, and the emperor Lucius Verus who was notorious forhis addiction to drunkenness, gambling and debauchery.

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

The Statue Gallery

The Gallery contains the cream of Coke’s collection, dis-played in niches or on wall brackets. The setting is suit-ably Roman, with the rich coffering of the apses copiedfrom the Temple of the Sun and Moon, as illustrated byPalladio in his ‘Four Books of Architecture’. The hand-some chimneypiece is copied from one at Wilton Housewhich was thought in the 18th century to be by InigoJones; it was made by Joseph Pickford, who did a gooddeal of work in the house.

The highlight of the sculpture collection is perhapsthe statue of Diana as goddess of hunting, which occu-pies the second niche on the left. The story goes that itwas acquired by Coke himself at great trouble and

(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.

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expense: it is said that the Italians realised its importanceand he was briefly arrested for trying to export it withouta licence, although this version has been challenged.Whatever the truth of the matter, Coke included thestatue in the background of his portrait by Casali, paintedin 1757, which can be seen in the Chapel lobby. Anotheroutstanding work is the statue of Marsyas (in the penul-timate niche on the left), who according to legend wasordered by Apollo to be flayed alive for his temerity inchallenging the god’s musical supremacy. The statue wasacquired by Brettingham from Cardinal Albani’s

collection, still apparently in the untouched state inwhich it had been excavated, ‘encrusted over with theTatar of the Earth’. On its arrival in England, the collec-tor Charles Townley described it as ‘incomparably thefinest male figure that has ever come into this country’.Among the busts, the finest is probably that of Thucy-dides (the first on the window wall), which is a Romancopy of a Greek original. Thucydides, who lived betweencirca 460 and 400 BC, was the greatest of ancient Greekhistorians; his ‘History of the Peloponnesian War’ be-tween Athens and Sparta was the first recorded account

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

In addition to its function as a gallery, this room wasreferred to in 1757 as the ‘Chambre d’Assembly’ forguests. Its architectural austerity was offset by whitedamask curtains, and by seat furniture of mahoganypicked out in gold, upholstered in dark blue leather (thishas recently been renewed), supplied by Saunders andBradshaw in 1757. Between the windows are two finegilded sidetables in the manner of William Kent. Apartfrom socialising here, guests with a classical background(which in the 18th century would have been all educatedgentlemen) could amuse themselves by identifying thestatues and trying to work out the theme of the collec-tion. 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 pro-gramme; insofar as the sculpture here has a theme, it maybe one of fruitfulness and plenty, suggested by statues ofyoung Bacchus (god of wine), Venus (goddess of fertil-ity), Apollo (the sun god), Neptune (the sea god) andDiana (goddess of the hunt). This might have provideda metaphor for the productivity of the estate outsidethe windows.

Lady Beauchamp Proctor, visiting for the first time in1764, was embarrassed by the scanty clothing of some ofthe statues in the gallery – ‘indeed they were quite inde-cent’ – and criticised the clumsy way in which some hadbeen repaired with new noses, fingers or arms.

The South Tribune

Whereas the niches in the North Tribune contain stat-ues, here they have bookshelves for some of the largestvolumes in the great Holkham library. These include overone hundred volumes of rare maps, and early-19th cen-tury volumes with illustrations of European birds, manyexecuted by Edward Lear. Altogether the library has over10,000 printed books and hundreds of manuscripts, manywonderfully illustrated and with fine gilded bindings.

The panel over the window, with the date 1753 be-neath an earl’s coronet, is a reminder that we are now onthe south front of the house, which was completed someyears before the north side. The chandelier here is thepair 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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Library Passage

From the South Tribune a short link leads one through tothe FamilyWing. Hanging in the link, or Library Passage,is a large painting entitled The Vision of Aeneas in theElysian Fields. It is of particular interest in that it wascommissioned in Rome by Thomas Coke while still ateenager, and the artist Sebastiano Conca (1679-1764)was required to incorporate the figure of the young Cokehimself. He is on the left in the guise of Orpheus, pluck-ing his lute. Orpheus was able to enchant not just ani-mals and birds with his music but also trees and evenstones – just possibly a reference to what Coke hoped oneday to achieve in his creation of an Arcadian park on theNorfolk coast.

Classical Library

Originally this was the ante-room to the private apart-ments, but in the early-19th century over 700 printedbooks were moved here from the attic. Most of them arein Latin, hence the name of the room, but here also arearchitectural volumes such as William Kent’s Designs of

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

Over the chimneypiece is [Philip?] Reinagle’s portraitof Thomas William Coke – ‘Coke of Norfolk’, the firstEarl of Leicester of the second creation – surrounded byportraits of his first wife and three daughters. To the rightof 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 ofWales (1707-51); a great patron of the arts, he was theeldest son of George II and would have been king as Fred-erick I had he not predeceased his father. Just how theobject came to be at Holkham is not known.

Manuscript Library

This was originally Thomas Coke’s dressing room, but ac-quired its present title when it became a repository formanuscripts in the early-19th century. In Coke’s time thecollection was curated by Domenico Ferrari, who hadbeen his tutor in Rome. The most striking feature is the

The Libraries

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canvas over the chimneypiece, Francesco Trevisani’s por-trait of Thomas Coke, painted in Rome in 1717. He isshown seated on an extravagant baroque chair, with clas-sical – perhaps antique – sculpture in the background.Coke was then aged twenty, and a year later, immediatelyon his return to England, he married Lady MargaretTufton, whose oval portrait is top left.

Long Library

The Family Wing was the first part of Holkham to bebuilt, being begun in 1734 and completed in 1740. Tobegin with it was attached by a covered passage to the oldmanor house, and it enabled the family to live in com-fort and style while the main mansion was going up – aprocess not completed until the late 1750s. Having sucha wing also meant that, when the main house was fin-ished and furnished, the family need never be inconve-nienced by visitors, however grand. Like the Strangers’Wing, it was planned with the main emphasis on con-venience, the rooms serviced via the central staircasefrom the basement; that was where personal servants likethe valet and lady’s maid had their rooms, with the but-

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

The wing was decorated and furnished in the 1730s,and the guiding mind was undoubtedly that of WilliamKent, who produced a detailed design for the decorationof the Long Library; the inspiration for the ceiling wasthat of the library of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice,which Kent and Coke had visited together in 1714. Thiswas always the main living room in the wing, proof of theimportance for Thomas Coke of his books and manu-scripts, and as such a precursor of the ‘social library’ thatwas to become fashionable in English country houses ofthe late-18th century. Apart from the painted decorationsuggested by Kent for the ceiling cove but not executed,everything is pretty much as he intended, including thebuilt-in bookcases, the pedimented overmantel (nowwith a Roman mosaic of a lion attacking a leopard,brought back by Thomas William Coke from his GrandTour in 1774) and the white and gold colour scheme.There were never curtains to the windows, which havesliding shutters, and the furniture was originally uphol-stered in black leather, which must have produced a verystylish, if not particularly cosy, effect.

The Long Library isWilliam 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.

HOLKHAM | 36

From the Long Library a vista of over 400 feet runsthrough the south front enfilade as far as the chapel inthe far wing. The intervening rooms were all state rooms,decorated with the greatest possible magnificence andintended for show rather than daily use. The sequencebegins with the Drawing Room, which early accountsrefer to as an ante-room to the Saloon next door. Thewalls here and in the South Dining Room were hung withthe same crimson cut velvet (now replaced with a copy),supplied by Robert Carr in about 1755. Apart from beinga good background to hang paintings against, such fab-rics were always very expensive and were statements ofwealth, expected to last a long time.

Thomas Coke accumulated his picture collection intwo main phases. As a young man in Rome he acquiredpaintings that either had subjects from Roman historyand mythology or else were typical ‘veduti’ (generalisedlandscape views) of the kind acquired by most GrandTourists. In the second phase, by which time the con-struction of Holkham was well under way and his mindwas turning to its decoration and furnishing, he employedMatthew Brettingham junior as his agent in Rome (1747-54). Picture-hanging in the state rooms began around1754 and was completed after Coke’s death by his widow.Coke did not adopt the usual practice of arranging paint-ings by school or period, but concentrated rather on con-tent, symbolic or otherwise. Works had to appealaesthetically, but they were also meant to entertainguests, whether by inviting them to work out thesymbolic theme of a room or by conveying Coke’s view ofhistory or politics. To some extent the hangs wereachieved by trial and error, and paintings were undoubt-edly moved around right from the start. Nevertheless,Holkham’s arrangement of paintings was probably morecarefully thought out than in any other English house ofits period, and it remains one of the best documented andbest preserved not just in England but in Europe.

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

Leicester. At the centre, in a splendid carved frame, is theMadonna in Glory by Pietro de Pietri (1671-1716),which is juxtaposed with two marble busts of Romanemperors: on the left the bloodthirsty Caracalla, shown asa frowning brute, and on the right Marcus Aurelius.Despite his innocent boyish face, Marcus Aureliuspersecuted the Christians, so it may be that this ensembleis meant to symbolise the triumph of Christianity overpaganism. Above, to left and right, are two bird paintingsby the Dutchman Melchior Hondecoeter (1636-95),which were purchased by Coke from the collection of SirRobert Walpole at a sale in 1748. These too are highlysymbolic, since they represent William III’s wars againstLouis XVIII, with different birds symbolising differentcountries (the cock for France, goose for England, storkfor Holland and so on). There is also an allusion here toWilliam III’s alliance with England and thereby to theGlorious Revolution which placed him on the throne,and beyond that to the classic theme of BritishProtestant liberty versus Catholic absolutism. The hangis completed by two landscapes. That to the left of thechimneypiece is by Gaspar Poussin (1615-75), while thatto the right is by the great French artist Claude Lorraine(1600-82). The latter is not just a landscape but illustratesthe story of the lute-playing contest betweenMarsyas andApollo (dressed in blue).

The other paintings in the room include, placed overthe doors, four landscapes by Jan Frans van Bloemen (1662-1749), also known as Orizonte. On the side walls are full-length portraits of two key members of the Coke family: onthe left (above the document appointing him attorney-gen-eral to Queen Elizabeth I), Sir Edward Coke, painted byMarcusGheeraerts (1562-1636) in his robes as Chief Justiceof the King’s Bench [?] under James I; and on the right,ThomasCoke in the robes of theOrder of the Bath, paintedby Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745). Originally therewould have been no family portraits in any of the principalrooms – something probably unique in an English countryhouse of the period, and certainly emphasising Coke’s

Drawing Room

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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 suppliedin 1757 by Benjamin Goodison. The frame incorporatesthe scallop shell, associated with the birth of Venus out ofthe waves, and the alabaster top was sent from Rome byMatthew Brettingham. Above the table is a spectacular

mirror made by the London carver James Whittle, whoset up a celebrated partnership with his son-in-lawSamuel Norman in 1755.

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

The room is full of antique references, but here the effect is

warm and sumptuous rather than cool and architectural

The Saloon

The grandest room in the house after the Marble Hall,the Saloon could either be reached ceremonially up themarble staircase or else by the circuit which visitors maketoday. The room is likewise full of antique references, buthere the effect is warm and sumptuous rather than cooland architectural. The gilded coffering of the lofty ceil-ing is copied from that in the Basilica of Maxentius inRome, with at the centre of each octagonal panel a sun-flower emblematic of the sun god Apollo. Over the en-trance door is a bust of the goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter,whose statue visitors were originally intended to pass ontheir 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 boughtin 1755, when 244 yards cost the considerable sum of£195 – the equivalent today of over £17,000. The pre-dominant plum colour has darkened over the years, butoriginally it would have toned with the marble in thetwo chimneypieces. These have carved tablets with de-liberately contrasting subjects: that on the left is the per-sonification of Astronomy, denoting the disciplinedknowledge of the heavens, while that on the right hasCybele, mistress of untamed nature, with unharnessedand ferocious lions. They were supplied by ThomasCarter 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).

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Holkham’s arrangement ofpaintings was probably morecarefully thought out than inany other English house of itsperiod, and it remains one ofthe best documented and bestpreserved not just in Englandbut 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 ofWhittle and Norman.

Brettingham acquired the magnificent tops for the twoside tables; made of mosaic and dated to 123-125 AD,they were bought from Cardinal Furietti but had suppos-edly been excavated at the Emperor Hadrian’s villa atTivoli. They are supported on carved storks withoutstretched wings, in positions usually taken by eagles.Between the windows are splendid pier glasses, probablyby Whittle and Norman, which each combine two ovalmirrors and scrolling candle sconces. The two imposingtorchères are William IV period; two more, now in theLandscape Room, were originally also in the Saloon.

Mrs Lybbe Powys visited Holkham in 1756 and notedthat this room was just being completed, ‘with manycapital pictures standing there to be put up’. The presentpicture hang is not entirely the original one, althoughthe two overmantel paintings (in frames possibly de-signed by John Vardy) were commissioned in Rome byCoke in 1714, when he was only 19, and he must have

conceived them as a pair. That on the left is by AndreaProcaccini (1671-1734) and depicts the Rape of Lucretia,while that on the right is by Giuseppe Chiari (1654-1727) and is of Perseus and Andromeda. The contrast istherefore between female humiliation and female salva-tion 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 VanDyck’s great equestrian portrait of ‘The Duc d’Arenberg’,who was imprisoned for eight years in 1634 on suspicionof siding with the Protestant nobility of the Netherlandsagainst their Spanish Catholic rulers. Coke bought it onhis way back to England in 1718, perhaps seeing itspotential for a political allusion. He acquired the mag-nificent Rubens of ‘The Flight into Egypt’ (which wasoriginally painted for the Jesuit church in Antwerp) in1745, probably intending to pair the two, although theyhave hung in the Saloon only since 1827.

HOLKHAM | 41

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Although this has been known as the South Dining Roomsince the 19th century, in the 18th century it was referredto as a drawing room. Strictly speaking it was the first roomin a sequence of four which together formed a grand apart-ment for exalted visitors too important to be housed in theStranger’s Wing.As in the Drawing Room, the ceiling and chimneypiece

here are both inspired by the designs of Inigo Jones, whilethe frieze running around the room, with its pairedgriffins, has a Roman antique motif culled (like a numberof others used in the house) from Antoine Desgodetz’s ‘LesEdifices Antiques de Rome’, published in 1682. The silkwall hangings also match those in the Drawing Room andform a rich backdrop for several outstanding paintings.Over the chimneypiece is Thomas Gainsborough’s superbportrait of ‘Coke of Norfolk’, a perfect example of how theimportant English aristocrat liked to be painted as a sim-ple country gentleman with his dogs, whereas his Frenchcounterparts would have been depicted in expensive silksand lace ruffles. Equally fine in a very different vein is theportrait of the young Coke on the left-hand wall, paintedwhile he was in Rome by that quintessential Grand Tourartist Pompeo Batoni (1708-87). He is shown wearing ‘VanDyck’ costume, which according to a family story recordswhat he wore to a fancy dress ball given by the ‘Young Pre-tender’ (also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie) to mark hismarriage to Princess Louise of Stolberg; supposedly theportrait was commissioned by the young princess, whofound Coke more appealing than her ageing husband.Opposite the Batoni is a painting by the Baroque

painter Guido Reni (1575-1642), showing the biblical storyof Joseph attempting to escape the embrace of Potiphar’swife. Taken together with the painting to the left of theGainsborough, depicting a ‘Reclining Venus with Musi-cian’, and busts on the chimneypiece representing a vestalvirgin and the beautiful but promiscuous Faustina, it hasbeen suggested that the subtext of this room is ‘bodilytemptation and sin’. According to this theory, the Land-scape Room which follows offers repentance, leading to re-demption in the Chapel. Hanging between the windowsis a superb mirror made by the local carver James Miller inimitation (though not an exact copy) of that in the Draw-ing Room by the London carver James Whittle. Below is astriking side table probably designed by John Vardy (it canbe compared with the buffet in the North Dining Room),in which a marble slab of ‘giallo antico’ marble and a friezeof green-veined Egyptian marble are supported on ostrichlegs – the ostrich being a Coke family crest.

The South Dining Room

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Although it formed part of the principal guest apartment,this has been known as the Landscape Room ever since itwas created in 1756. It is likely that Thomas Coke had set-tled the picture hang by the time of his death in 1759, andas such it is recorded in the inventory of 1760. The seventhEarl of Leicester has recreated that hang, and has also hadnew crimson damask woven for the walls and sofas, usinga 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 themuse landscape as the setting for biblical or mythological sto-ries – for instance, Domenichino’s ‘Rocky Landscape withthe Sacrifice of Isaac’, or Luca Giordano’s ‘St John the Bap-tist Preaching’.The outstanding feature of the room is the collection of

no fewer than seven paintings by Claude Lorrain, of whichthree incorporate scenes from classical mythology, onefrom the Bible and one from the poet Tasso. Claude wasprobably the landscape painter most sought after by Eng-

lish collectors, not least because his idyllic views providedthe models which many patrons attempted to emulate inthe creation of their own parks and gardens. Coke boughtat least two Claudes on his Grand Tour, another two in1749/50, and Matthew Brettingham acquired two morefrom Cardinal Albani’s collection in Rome in 1752; on thelatter occasion Coke also authorised him to spend whatwas necessary to secure the two paintings by Claude-JosephVernet 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 itsgreat display of paintings by Claude Lorrain but for theunique opportunity it gives to turn from the Italianatelandscapes on its walls and see through its Venetianwindow the English classical landscape sweeping up to theobelisk’. The room makes an interesting comparison withthe Cabinet at nearby Felbrigg Hall, another Grand Tourcreation of much the same years, although with lessoutstanding pictures.

1. Classical landscape with man fishing in foreground and man with several

goats beyond – NICOLAS POUSSIN.

2. Wooded landscape with St John baptising the Saviour – FRANCESCO

GRIMALDI.

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

4. Rocky cliff with three figures – SALVATOR ROSA.

5. Rocky landscape with sacrifice of Isaac – DOMENICHINO.

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

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

on hills beyond – NICOLAS POUSSIN.

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

and viaduct to left – NICOLAS POUSSIN.

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

(called ORIZONTE).

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

– NICOLAS POUSSIN.

11. St John the Baptist preaching – LUCA GIORDANO.

12. 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.

13. Classical landscape with figures reclining by a pool. Fishermen in foreground

– ORIZONTE.

14. Classical landscape with a river valley, a castle on rocky hill beyond –

NICOLAS POUSSIN.

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

– CLAUDE-JOSEPHVERNET.

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

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

17. Landscape with Apollo guarding the herds of Admetus and Mercury

stealing them – CLAUDE LORRAINE.

18. Landscape with a story fromTasso showing the fleeing Erminia coming

fully armed from the JordanValley meeting a shepherd and his children –

CLAUDE LORRAINE.

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

also figures with a dog – CLAUDE LORRAINE.

20. Landscape with a waterfall. Figures in foreground with viaduct and castle

on cliff beyond – CLAUDE-JOSEPHVERNET.

21. Landscape with Argus guarding Io with two nymphs by pool below a

waterfall – CLAUDE LORRAINE.

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

LORRAINE.

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The Landscape Room

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Chapel CorridorA short link connects the central block with the south-east or ChapelWing, which Thomas Coke constructed atthe same time to make sure the all-important south frontwas not left lopsided. The Chapel Corridor containsseveral notable works of art. On the window wall are twofull-length portraits of Thomas Coke, first Earl of Leicester,and his countess in coronation robes and in the Earl’s casewearing the chain of the Order of the Bath (he was one ofthe first 38 knights created when the Order was revived in1725). The artist was Andrea Casali (1705-84), who cameto England in 1748. Coke points to his much-prized earl’scoronet, awarded by George II in 1744, while in the back-ground is another prized possession, the statue of Diana,goddess of hunting which has always been displayed in theSculpture Gallery. On the opposite wall is a tapestry, oneof the series after Watteau which otherwise hangs in theParrot Bathroom of the Stranger’s Wing.

ChapelThe interior of the Chapel is mainly the design ofMatthew Brettingham senior, who for the lattice patternof the ceiling adapted the same Roman source, theTemple of the Sun and Moon, that had been used in theapses of the Sculpture Gallery. The lower walls aresheathed in alabaster, while on the upper walls assorted

paintings with biblical subjects are embedded in plasterframes. The tripartite altarpiece has in the centre GuidoReni’s ‘Assumption of the Virgin’ (a surprisingly Catholicchoice for a Protestant household), flanked by paintingsof St Cecilia and St Anne. Dated 1764, they are the workof Giambattista Cipriani (1727-85), a Florentine artistwho came to England in 1755, was employed by neoclas-sical architects such as William Chambers and RobertAdam, and was a founding member of the Royal Academy.Further paintings, more easily seen, are hung in thegallery, most notably that over the chimneypiece whichis a copy of Raphael’s famous portrait of Pope Leo X withtwo of his cardinals. The artist in this case was GiorgioVasari (1511-74), who studied under Michelangelo but isbest known for his ‘Lives of the Most Eminent Painters,Sculptors and Architects’ (1550) – the first serious workof art history ever published. To the right of the Vasari is‘The Penitent Magdalene’ by Francesco Mazzuola (1503-40), usually called Il Parmigianino, who was born inParma and worked under the influence of Raphael.

The gallery acted as the family pew for the Cokes andtheir guests, while the household sat below in the body ofthe chapel, reached directly from the servants’ quarters.Until World War II, morning prayers – compulsory forboth family and staff – were taken here every day at 9am,conducted by Lord Leicester. Nowadays Sunday servicesfor the parish of Holkham are held here betweenNovember and Easter; for the rest of the year they takeplace in the parish church.

(left) The chapel was designed by Matthew Bret-

tingham. 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.

HOLKHAM | 47

This was the climax of the state apartment, theoreticallyreserved for the use of the most important guests, and itis certainly distinguished by the lavishness and sheer ex-pense of its decoration.

The three-colour cut velvet used for the bed hangingsand upholstery was much the most expensive in thehouse, 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 upin 1758, but the room was unfinished at Thomas Coke’sdeath and his widow recorded that she spent £389completing it. The tapestries on the walls represent theFour Continents. Three of them, made in the late 17thcentury by the great Flemish weaver Albert Auwercx,were acquired in France by Thomas Coke: to the left ofthe chimney breast is America, to the right Africa and,

on the wall facing the bed, Europe. The remaining wallspace was completed with tapestries woven in Soho forSaunders and Bradshaw, based on designs made speciallyby Francesco Zuccarelli: on the window wall, in threesections, Asia (these are prominently signed ‘P. Saun-ders/Soho’), and flanking the bed panels of Sleep andVigilance.

Other motifs in the room seem to point towards thetheme of marital bliss. The chimneypiece (made byThomas Carter in the style of William Kent) has a cen-tral tablet of two lovebirds, and above it the large paint-ing by Gavin Hamilton, commissioned for the room andinstalled 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 thestyle of William Kent and have beautiful alabaster tops.

Green State Bedroom

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The Green State Closet was the last room in the stateapartment, while the North State Closet was attached tothe North State Bedroom and would have been ap-proached from the opposite direction. Both were filledwith smaller works of art, predominantly Grand Tour sou-venirs, which were probably hung without any particulartheme in mind. Typical of these are the four paintingsover the Green State Closet chimneypiece, which areItalian scenes by Vanvitelli. Also here are three small al-tarpiece designs by Sebastiano Conca (whose enormouspainting, ‘The Vision of Aeneas in the Elysian Fields’,hangs in the Library Passage), and ‘The Death of Cleopa-tra’ by William Kent – a reminder that he was a not-ter-ribly good painter before he ever became an architect anddesigner. Both rooms have attractive small chimneyp-ieces, that in the Green State Closet being boldlydesigned and almost Art Deco in feel.

The most notable work of art in these rooms can beseen over the chimneypiece of the North State Closet.Painted by an otherwise unremarkable Renaissance artistcalled Bastiano da Sangallo (1482-1551), it is the mostcomplete surviving record of the great fresco whichMichelangelo planned but never executed in the hall ofthe Palazzo della Signoria in Florence. He got as far asdrawing a vast cartoon of the Battle of Cascina, depictingnaked Florentine soldiers surprised by Pisans whilebathing, and it was this that Bastiano copied before it wasdismembered 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 thefirst Countess of Leicester’s dressing table, brought herefrom the family’s house in London along with a numberof other pieces.

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.

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In the 18th century this formed part of the second-smartest apartment, named after Thomas Coke’s friendthe Duke of Grafton, and would have been approachedfrom 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 ofWales’s feathers,although no visit by that gentleman to Holkham isrecorded. The chimneypiece was yet another made byThomas Carter; the unusually neoclassical appearance ofthe side panels (not in his usual style) is accounted for bythe fact that they are copied from an antique fragmentrepresenting ‘instruments of Roman sacrifice’, found inthe garden of the Villa Medici in Rome. The centraltablet represents the ‘Birth of the Poet Lucan’, as depictedin Montfaucon’s book ‘L’Antiquité Expliqué’, publishedin English in 1731-3.

The painting over the chimneypiece, showing a youngman serenading a lady, is thought to be by the Florentinepainter Lorenzo Zacchia (1524-87). To the left of the bedis a portrait of Thomas Coke’s great-grandfather SirWilliam Heveningham. He was one of the judges whosigned the death warrant of Charles I, but at the Restora-tion of Charles II he escaped the gruesome fate of hisfellow judges, being imprisoned for life rather than exe-cuted thanks to the efforts of his wife. On the oppositewall, to either side of the door, are portraits by JonathanRichardson of, on the left, Thomas Coke, and on theright, his wife and Edward, their only son. Edward’s deathat the age of 34, though a tragedy for his parents, mayhave been a blessing for Holkham, since he was a drunkardand gambler who maltreated his wife and would probablyhave frittered away his inheritance.

The North State Bedroom

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

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Apart from a fine French Régence amaranth wood com-mode with gilt mounts, and an important suite ofWilliamKent seat furniture, the main feature of the room is theexceptional set of Brussels tapestries, probably woven byGerard Peemans in the late 17th century. There are fourof them, each representing two months of the year withappropriate Zodiac references, so the summer months ofMay to August are missing from the sequence. They arefull of fascinating detail, with winged female figures torepresent the Zodiac and motifs and scenes alluding tothe particular season.

The panel on the chimneypiece wall, dealing withJanuary and February, is framed by festoons of dead gameand fish; in the background are men skating, while im-mediately to the right of the chimneypiece a cat has man-aged to get hold of three fish. The figure of Aquarius thewater-carrier has largely been cut away to allow for thedoor, but Pisces is represented by a figure gathering largefish into her crimson robe.

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

mour, seems to be taking a prancing ram for a walk; thisside of the composition is framed by military emblems –perhaps a reference to the fact that this was a favouredtime of year to embark on military campaigns. Taurus isrepresented by a figure seated on a Bull, which in classicalmythology also represents the story of Europaabducted by Jupiter in the guise of a bull. Flowers announcethe onset of Spring, garlanding Europa and the bull andframing the right-hand side of the composition, while inthe 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 pea-cock. In the centre Sagittarius sits astride a prancing cen-taur, and Capricorn stands with a goat. In the backgroundare wintry scenes, and snowflakes descend.

Finally comes September and October, an incompletepanel thanks to the presence of the door. Within a framecomposed of fruits of various kinds, Libra carries scales inone hand and a cornucopia in the other. What remainsof Scorpio is shown clutching a scorpion. In the back-ground is a scene of wine-making.

The North State Sitting Room

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The Old Kitchen

This kitchen first came into use in 1756. Mrs Lybbe Powys,visiting in that year, was clearly impressed: ‘Such an amazinglarge and good kitchen I never saw, everything in it so niceand clever.’ Refurbished in the 1850s, when the massiverange was installed, it continued in operation right up to theoutbreak of World War II.

Huge numbers of people were fed from the kitchen. Inthe middle of the 19th century there were sixty servants inthe house alone. Even between the wars there were at leasttwenty-five servants living and working in the house,together with the large Leicester family who entertainedlavishly and often. In a typical month in the 1920s, forinstance, food consumed included 250lbs of meat, 300lbs ofbacon, 54lbs of tea and 500 loaves. The servants ate off thepewter which is now displayed on the wall and dates fromabout 1815. The vast number of copper pots, pans, mouldsand other utensils were used in everyday cooking.

On the wall is a portrait of Coke of Norfolk by SamuelLane (1780-1859), rescued from the Corn Hall in Norwichbefore it was demolished in 1964. More unusual, however, isthe series of group portraits of the Holkham staff, commis-sioned by the present Earl of Leicester to continue a longEnglish tradition of such portraits. Five, all painted byAndrew Festing, hang above the pewter display. The earliest,painted in 1993, represents Lord Leicester (then ViscountCoke) at his desk in the estate office, surrounded by the headsof the various departments at Holkham, and wasintended as a tribute to three of the men, who retiredtogether that year. Other paintings depict the farm staff, build-ing maintenance department, forestry department and gar-deners, the house staff and finally the estates and finance staff.

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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.

HOLKHAM | 54

The much-travelled Arthur Young, writing in 1768, con-sidered that Holkham was the largest and best countryhouse in England, architecturally finer than rivals suchas Blenheim, Wilton or Sir Robert Walpole’s Houghton(which he thought internally magnificent but heavy). Healso felt that it was the most convenient of the majorhouses he had seen, ‘so admirably adapted to the Englishway of living, and so ready to be applied to the grand orthe comfortable stile of life’. This was due partly to theway in which separate specific areas were allotted to thefamily and to visitors, but also to the way in which theground floor – the servants’ domain – was organised. Thesupervising architect Matthew Brettingham, in his bookon 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 theplan’.

A great deal of thought was devoted by Thomas Coketo ensuring that the ‘service’ aspect of the house workedwith maximum convenience and efficiency. Althoughthe plan was devised so that the servants could go abouttheir business unobtrusively, moving between floors byhidden staircases, the ‘downstairs’ part of the house wasspacious and well-lit, not sunk into the ground as was

often the case in houses of the period. Even the roomswhere servants slept were in general sufficiently spaciousand pleasant to be capable of conversion into family orguest accommodation in the 19th century.

Different areas of the ground floor were the domain ofparticular staff, according to their function. The butler,for instance, had his suite of bedroom, pantry and plateroom at the south-west corner of the main house, withimmediate access to both the state rooms above and tothe Family Wing. The south-east corner was the house-keeper’s kingdom, where amongst other duties she super-vised the still room, laundry, dairy and the housemaids.The north-east corner was the steward’s area, and nearbywas the Steward’s Room, where senior servants ate –usually five or six, but sometimes more if there was a bighouse party. The Kitchen Wing contained not only thekitchen but also the Servants’ Hall (both of them dou-ble-height spaces), where about 25 lesser staff ate, super-vised by the house porter. The food here and in theSteward’s Room would have been considerably hotterthan that served ‘upstairs’ to the family and their guestsin the distant dining room. Stairs next to the Servants’Hall led up to rooms occupied by the footmen and othermale servants, including a gallery where they stored their

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

HOLKHAM | 55

uniforms and powdered their hair. Not until the early-20th century, however, was there a bathroom, in whichthe kitchen maids were allowed to take a bath once aweek. Gas lighting and heating were introduced ‘down-stairs’ in 1865, whereas the family and state roomscontinued to be lit by candles and lamps for anotherhalf-century.

Early Visitorsto HolkhamEven before the Hall was finally finished in the early1760s it was becoming a tourist attraction for upper-classvisitors. Some of these would have been friends of thefamily, but an increasing number came to satisfy their cu-riosity about a house whose reputation spread veryquickly. Lady Hervey, visiting in 1765, summed up theparticular reason why fellow aristocrats were so keen tosee the interior, which was that ‘the utmost magnificenceand elegance is blended with all the conveniences possi-ble’ – a combination which was both novel and veryprobably not available in their own houses.

Lord Bath is one of the earlier visitors recorded, in1747, at which point the Family Wing was certainlyoccupied but the main house was very much a buildingsite. Mrs Lybbe Powys and her party, visiting in 1756during the family’s absence, was typical of a growingbreed of well-heeled travellers who made extended expe-ditions to see the sights of an unfamiliar part of the country.She and her friends were not only shown the house butalso given a ‘breakfast’ of fruit and cakes. At this stagethere was no entrance fee, but visitors were expected totip the staff handsomely. The number of visitors grew soquickly that Lady Beauchamp Proctor, returning for asecond look in 1772, was unpleasantly surprised to findthat she had to wait for at least an hour with a crowd ofcomplete strangers while a previous party went round.

Interest in Holkham had by that stage been fuelledby the detailed account that Arthur Young published in1768, and this was followed by the first proper houseguide, published in 1775 by a Norwich bookseller (withpermission from Wenman Coke, who had just inheritedon Lady Leicester’s death). In that year it was stated thatthe house could be visited ‘any day of the week, exceptSunday, by noblemen and foreigners, but on Tuesday onlyby other people’.

Not until the early-20thcentury, however, wasthere a bathroom, inwhich the kitchen maidswere allowed to take abath once a week

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The Holkham Estate

In his book ‘England’s Greatest Houses’, Simon Jenkinsdescribes Holkham as one of England’s twenty greatesthouses. He wrote: ‘It is the perfect English house fromthe Golden Age of the Grand Tour, surviving intact in itsoriginal setting and with the founding family still incustodianship... there is none finer.’ However, Holkhamis much more than a beautiful house set in glorious northNorfolk. It is a diverse collection of thriving rural busi-nesses that continues to grow as a major contributor tothe local economy, and provides secure employment formore than two hundred people who live and work here.

A visitor to Holkham usually comes to see the parkand the hall, and to have a look round the Bygones Mu-seum, the History of Farming Exhibition, perhaps buy akeepsake from the Gift Shop or have a cup of tea and apiece of cake in the Stables Café. This is just the tip ofthe iceberg. There is a great deal more to Holkham thanthe hall and its outstanding art colledtion. It is ‘belowthe surface’ that much of the fascination of Holkham lies.Do visitors wonder who feeds the park’s deer, cuts thegrass, prunes the trees and bushes, tends the flowers, evenwho cleans all the windows?

Holkham has a proud agricultural history – after all,the family’s claim to fame for many people is from his-tory lessons at school. ThomasWilliam Coke, first Earl ofLeicester (of the second creation), a politician and avidagriculturist, became known as ‘Coke of Norfolk’. Hisadvanced methods of animal breeding and husbandry,and his lifelong work to improve – and increase the valueof – the land at Holkham through the use of crop rotationhave been taught to generations of children. It is thislegacy that drives the innovations of today.

To give an idea of the scope of the estate, there are16 tenanted farms ranging over an approximate 6,100hectares (61 square kilometres). There is a further 1,850hectares farmed ‘in-hand’ by the Holkham FarmingCompany. The spread of crops grown on Holkham landis varied – sugar beet and barley are the main crops, butwheat is grown on the better land along with break cropssuch as beans, peas and potatoes. The estate has recentlyset up a joint venture to develop a sizeable vegetableproduction operation.

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

the herd are fattened and butchered locally and the meatfrom them and from the deer that are regularly culled onthe estate is sold through estate outlets such as theVictoria Hotel, the Globe Inn and Holkham Foods Ltd.

The estate owns and maintains more than three hun-dred houses, many of them listed by English Heritage.Wherever possible these houses are let only to peoplewho live and work locally. This includes six almshousesthat were built recently in the local village of BurnhamMarket – the first almshouses built in the country for overtwo hundred years. They are currently let to retired em-ployees of the estate.

But the biggest activity at Holkham is leisure andtourism, and this is predicted to grow over the years. It isestimated that over 500,000 people visit Holkham Beacheach year and there can be as many as three thousandpeople staying at PinewoodsHoliday Park in the nearbytown of Wells-next-the-Sea.These visitors make a crucialcontribution to a changing localeconomy, which is increasinglyreliant on visitors.

Holkham has played host tovarious large open-air concertsas well as many smaller andmore intimate recitals in theMarble Hall. Stars of the calibreof José Carreras and Elton Johnhave come to Holkham to giveconcerts on the lawns in front of

the hall, and Julius Drake, the renowned pianist, givesregular recitals.

Every two years the park is given over to the HolkhamCountry Fair, an enormous undertaking that regularlywelcomes over 40,000 people into Holkham over theweekend it is held.

All of these events need organisation and Holkhamhas the ability to attract and retain excellent staff. Theestate employs over two hundred people from the localarea and plays a major part in the community. There isa harmonious co-existence between the estate andsurrounding villages and many local families havesupplied workers to Holkham for several generations.A thread of continuity runs through all that Holkhamdoes, which links the past with the future in a dynamicway. The estate is determined to preserve rural values and

rural life, but to balancethese with the need to becommercial – not alwaysan easy task.

And the legacy andheritage of this great es-tate have to be preserved– the current members ofthe Coke family describethemselves as custodians,not just owners. LordCoke and his familymoved into the hall in2007 when his father, theseventh Earl of Leicester,

Far left:Holkham Hall is a perfect backdrop for concerts.

Below: The Nature Trail in the Park is very popular with visitors.

HOLKHAM | 58

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

There are contemporary challenges to be faced: cli-mate change and the need to develop sustainable energyto power the hall and all the estate buildings is para-mount. Also, Holkham’s place on the north Norfolk coastbrings its own set of problems. The predicted sea levelrise and the threat of flooding cannot be ignored. The es-tate is looking at using ground-source heating or biomass

furnaces instead of conventional methods to power itselfin the future.

Holkham in the 21st century is a dynamic andprogressive estate. All who work here are conscious of thehistory that brought them here. The standards that theyhave inherited from their predecessors drive the searchfor excellence in all aspects of estate management, andtheir determination to give visitors the best possible‘Holkham’ experience.

Clockwise: Various businesses

on the Estate include The Vic-

torai Hotel ,The Globe Inn in

Wells-next-the-Sea. Holkham

Linseed Paints. Pinewoods

Holiday Park and farming.

StablesYard 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.

HOLKHAM | 59

Conservation at Holkham

HOLKHAM | 60

For many people the main attraction of Holkham is thebeauty and magnificence of its setting. The hall stands ina 5,000-acre park, surrounded by deer and a nine-mile wall.Holkham Beach is widely recognised as one of the loveliestin England; but the estate is comprised of much more thanthese notable landmarks. The extent to which the estateworks to look after the natural environment may notalways be apparent or understood. If the seemingly naturallandscape were left unmanaged it would quickly revert toscrubland; the cattle and sheep that graze the marshes playan important role in sustaining the habitat as well as thelocal economy. All the estate’s livestock and the deer thatgraze the park are processed by a local butcher in Wells-Next-the-Sea, who supplies most of the hotels along thecoast as well the estate’s own Globe and Victoria Inns.

The estate employs nine gamekeepers and four woods-men, who work to preserve natural habitats and to main-tain the trees, the hedgerows and the wider landscape.Looking after the landscape involves controlling pests suchas rats and rabbits that cause damage to crops andhedgerows; rabbits can destroy a field in a matter of daysand thousands are culled annually. More than 25 per centof the estate’s land is allocated for the conservation of wildspecies. This benefits game birds such as the grey partridgeand pheasants, which are shot in sustainable numbers inthe winter, but visitors will also notice the unusual num-bers of song birds such as skylarks, bullfinches and housesparrows, which thrive on insects living in the hedgerowsand on field margins that are a deliberately kept free fromharmful pesticides.

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.

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Walled garden project

The massive six-acre walled gardens to the west of thehall date back to the late 1700s – and 2010 sees thebeginning of a project to renovate them.Magnificent Italian iron-work gates frame the

entrance to the walled gardens, which are subdividedinto eight sections and known as ‘rooms’. The gardenshave been closed to the public since 2005, whenthey were last used as a nursery. In Victorian timesthey provided a constant and varied supply of flowersand exotic fruits for the hall. Their transformationwill take up to five years and visitors will be able tosee our gardeners at work as they revitalise thismagical place.

In the second section of the gardens there is anenormous stand of Victorian greenhouses which havebeen 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 ex-treme temperature fluctuations; these too will saved.A working area has been designed as a vegetable

garden and together with the cut flower garden thesewill provide produce for the hall and the estate’s twoinns. At the far end of the gardens is an open area forweddings and other events, and a perennial wildflower meadow which offers a spectacular display aswell as a refuge for wildlife.

HOLKLHAM | 62

Designed and published by Arie & Ingrams Design.Text written by the RogerWhite, Prof.TomWilliamson, Michael Daley, D.P. Mortlock, Christine Hiskey.

Photographs by Harry CoryWright, Christopher Drake, Divid Kirkham/Fisheye Images. Michael Daley. June Buck/Country Life Picture LibraryPrinted by Clifford Press

CopyrightThe Earl of Leicester, Coke Estates Ltd 2010.