The best Elizabethan houses were filled with the confidence and flamboyance of their prosperous age. These three incredible places are among the finest examples of the period left in England. And they are open to visitors.
The Elizabethans were prosperous and the houses they built showed their wealth. The motto of the time might have been: “When you’ve got it, show it off.” The period was one of the high points of English domestic architecture.
The intrigues, beheadings, and economic crisis at the court of Henry VIII were followed by the brief reign of Mary Tudor. She was known as the Bloody Mary for her penchant for creating Protestant martyrs. So by the time Queen Elizabeth I ascended to a kingdom marked by stability, prosperity, and growing confidence, people reacted as if a great weight had been lifted from them.
Wealthy landowners finally felt free to express themselves and built magnificent houses to show their wealth and power. The best houses incorporated a lot of glass (not a new technology but an expensive one), an extraordinary degree of ornamentation and more rooms for comfortable living, for example, living rooms flooded with light.
Architecture was not yet a recognized profession. The houses were designed by surveyors and master masons. Robert Smythson, the Queen’s Master Mason, was a highly sought-after builder whose style defined the stately mansions of the time. These three Smythson houses, all open to the public, are among the finest examples of his work.
Burton Agnes Hall
Burton Agnes Hall, near Beverley and the coast in East Yorkshire, is one of the few houses for which Smythson’s plans still exist, kept in the library of the Royal Institute of Architects (RIBA). The Elizabethan house was built on an estate dating back to the 1100s and which has been in the same family (changing hands only by marriage) for over 800 years.
The house, privately owned but open to the public for about six months a year, stands out for:
- Extraordinarily elaborate carving and ornamentation, particularly in the Great Hall
- One of the earliest examples of a ladder supported by Newel Post in England
- the Long Gallery – a type of room that made its first appearance in Elizabethan houses. The Long Gallery was the place where the ladies of the house could exercise, essentially pacing back and forth while gossiping, in bad weather.
Visitor facilities include a beautiful walled garden and a wooded garden with wildlife sculptures; A very good reasonably priced cafe and a home and garden store. The regular calendar of events includes a jazz festival at which Simon Cunliffe-Lister, the current occupant, is known for playing his sax.
See more photos of Burton Agnes Hall
Hardwick Hall
Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall is a saying that quickly grew up around the house that Smythson built for the serial widow and the fabulously famous 16th century celebrity Bess of Hardwick. The huge windows of the house, lit by candlelight from within, could be seen, like a lantern on a hill, from miles away. The windows were designed to bring light and views of the Derbyshire countryside into the house. Unlike earlier manor houses, which tended to turn their backs on the countryside and open, if at all, to interior courtyard spaces, Elizabethan houses, for the first time, addressed nature and the outside world in a way. more direct.
Bess of Hardwick, a married woman of modest origin, survived four husbands, accumulating fortunes, land, jewelry, and homes with each widowhood. She was also a canny businesswoman in her own right as a moneylender, property dealer, and investor in hardware stores, coal mines, and shop windows.
As befits the home of such a married woman, Hardwick Hall, now owned by the National Trust, is licensed for weddings.
Learn more about visiting Hardwick Hall
Longleat House
Longleat House, one of Smythson’s earliest projects and the first of the so-called “inside-out” houses, was completed around 1580. Queen Elizabeth I was invited there in 1574, even before it was completed.
Today the house, owned by the picturesque 7th Marquis of Bath, sits in the center of a Wiltshire estate that is home to one of Britain’s most famous family attractions – Longleat Safari Park.
If you don’t have children in tow, for the Safari Park, Wildlife Shows, Labyrinth and Adventure Park, it is possible to visit the house and gardens on your own (although you do not need to bring children to enjoy the famous Longleat lions, tigers and monkeys).
Longleat is known for its elaborate ceilings, most of which were added after the Elizabethan period, and for the murals painted by the current Lord Bath, which can be visited on a separate tour. The Great Room remains the most authentically early part of the house with a typically ornate and deeply carved Elizabethan fireplace.
If you visit the house, look for a particularly lurid souvenir from the early 17th century: the bloody vest King Charles I wore for his own beheading.
Look inside Longleat
