| Blickling
Hall, Blickling, Norfolk 17th century
Notes in italics from North-West and South Norfolk by Nikolaus Pevsner |
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Blickling Hall. Built between
1616 and 1627 for Sir Henry Hobart, Lord Chief Justice, by Robert Lyminge,
who had designed Hatfield House some twelve years before ... It is one of
the major Jacobean houses in England, in scale and otherwise. |
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| Click on photos below to enlarge | ||||
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| South - East - North - West | ||||
| Originally,
i.e. up to c.1770, (the house) was open to
the N, the two wings forming a deep courtyard ... The house is of brick with stone dressings, two and a half storeys high, but three in the shaped gables and three and a half in the turrets. The principal sides face S and E. The S side contains the entrance. It has seven wide bays, bays one and seven belonging to the turrets. The main floor is the first, with tall windows with two transoms. They and the windows in the gables have strapwork decoration above the lintels (enlargement below). The main windows in the turrets however have pediments, and this chaste motif (which might be an alteration of c.1770) also occurs on the long E front, which is punctuated by five bay windows, three canted and two straight-sided. ... The bold chimney stacks have polygonal shafts with star tops. The N side was filled in by Thomas, William, and John Ivory of Norwich between 1767 and 1779, in harmony with the original. The first, second, sixth, and seventh bays are Jacobean, the Ivory's three centre bays have pedimented windows. The Ivorys also rebuilt the W side. ... |
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| The climax of the S facade is the doorway, the window above it, and the three-storeyed lantern turret which completes this middle axis. The doorway has detached Tuscan columns, Victories in the spandrels, and heraldry above the entablature. The window is given Ionic pilasters intermittently blocked, and the turret has intermittently blocked pilasters, then tapering pilasters, and finally an octagonal, open-sided lantern. These details look convincing enough, but the turret was rebuilt about 1820-30 and hardly according to original evidence. | ||||
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| STABLES and OFFICES looking a little later than the house, with their big Dutch gables, i.e. shaped gables ending in pediments. Yet the W range carries the trustworthy date 1624. So the Dutch gables are among the earliest in existence. | ||||
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The GARDENS extend chiefly to the E of the house. The parterre received its present form only in 1930. ... (Beyond,) a straight walk up to the TEMPLE, a small C18 building of three bays ... |
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| Map | ||||
| National Trust website for Blickling Hall | ||||
| More of Norfolk on Astoft | ||||
