Belton House

Belton House is a country house near Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. Today it is owned by the National Trust, and is fully open to the public. The house was built between 1685 and 1688 for Sir John Brownlow. Internally and externally the mansion is considered to be one of the finest surviving examples of Restoration style architecture. During its 300 year history it has been home to the Brownlow family and their descendents the Cust family, who donated the house to the National Trust in 1984. The house retains many of its original furnishings, including plaster work, oriental porcelain, silver. The house is set within formal gardens and a series of avenues leading to garden follies within a greater wooded park.

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Belton House. The south front

Early History of Belton

Clarendon House the inspiration for Belton House designed by Roger Pratt

The 17th century stable block at Belton House is known to be entirely by William Stanton, and is of a less accomplished design than the main house.

The Brownlow family, a dynasty of lawyers, had begun to accumulate land in the area of Belton from approximately 1598, and the reversion of manor of Belton itself in 1609 from the Pakenham family, who finally sold the manor house to Sir John Brownlow in 1617. However, the old house near the site of the church in the garden of the present house remained largely unoccupied the family preferring their other houses elsewhere. John Brownlow, who had married an heiress, was childless and as a consequence was attached to his only two blood relations a great-nephew, also called, John Brownlow and a great niece Alice Sherard. Following the marriage of the two cousin when both were aged 16 in 1676. Three years later the couple inherited the Brownlow estates from their Great Uncle to together with an income of £9000 per annum and £20,000 in cash. They immediately bought a town house in the newly fashionable Southampton Square in Bloomsbury, and decided to build a new country house at Belton.

In 1685 work on the new house commenced. The architect thought to have been responsible for Belton chosen was William Winde. This presumption is based on the stylistic similarity between the completed Belton and Coombe Abbey by Winde, and also on a letter dated 1690 in which Winde is recomending a plasterer to complete the interiors. Whoever the architect it seems likely the inspiration for the design of Belton was Clarendon House, London designed by Roger Pratt and completed in 1647. This mansion (demolished soon after 1683) was one of the most admired buildings of its era due to "its elgant symmetry and confident and common sensical design" . However, wat is known for sure is that John and Alice Brownlow employed the master mason Wiliam Stanton to oversee the project, his second in command was John Thompson who had worked with Sir Christopher Wren on several of Wren's London churches, while the chief joiner John Sturges, had worked at Chatsworth under Talman, thus so competent were the builders of Belton, that it is thought Winde may have done little more than provide the original plans and drawings, leaving the interpretation to the master craftsmen. This theory is further born out, by the more provincial, but nevertheless less masterful design of the adjoining stable block which is known to have been entirely the work of Stanton.

Design of the House

Belton House, the north front. The 17th century double room design, enabled greater symmetry, between facades, while allowing the house to be compact and under the one roof

Belton is built of the local Ancaster stone, and designed in the "H" shape and architectural design which became popular in during the late Elizabethan period. However by the late 16th century it had evolved further than the "one room deep" ranges of the earlier houses, such as that at Montacute House. Placing rooms back to back, as at Belton permitted them to be not just better lit and heated but also better accesses and related to each other. Another advantage was that the double room depth allowed the house to be more compact, and under one more easily constructed simple roof. This design also allowed for greater symmetry between the facades.

The layout of the rooms at Belton is curious for a great house of the period. Following the restoration of the monarchy, it had become popular for large houses to follow the continental fashion of having a suite of state rooms consisting of a withdrawing room, dressing room and bedroom proceeding from either side of a central saloon or hall . While Belton does have at its centre a saloon, the Baroque arrangement of rooms was not employed. The design followed the older style of having reception rooms and bedrooms scattered over the two main floors. Thus the staircase was designed to be grand and imposing as it was part of the state route from the Hall and Saloon on the first floor to the principal dining room and bedroom on the second. This older concept can be more clearly seen at the Elizabethan Hardwick Hall. However, the lack of a fashionable and formal suite of state apartments did not prevent a visit from king William III to the newly completed house in 1695. The King occupied the "Best bedchamber" the large room with an adjoining closet, directly above the saloon, leading directly from the second floor Great Dining Chamber.

The principal entrance hall, reception and family bedrooms were placed on the first floor above a low semi-basement containing service rooms. The two principal entrances to the mansion in the centre of both the North and south facades were accessed by external staircases - originally a single broad flight on the north side, and a double staircase on the south. These staircases have since been replaced by the more simple designs illustrated on the plan (right)

Belton House. First floor. Unscaled plan for illustrative purposes only.

The second floor has a matching fenestration with windows of equal value to those on the first floor below. On these two floors the very latest innovation, sash windows, was used. While the semi-basement and attic storey had the more old fashioned mullioned and transomed windows thus indicating the lower importance of these floors in the social hierarchy of their occupants. Thus the two main floors of the house were purely for state and family use, the staff and service areas being confined to the semi-basement and attic floors. This concept of keeping staff and domestic matters out of site (when not required) was a relatively new concept which had first been employed by Pratt in the design of Coleshill House in Berkshire. The contemporary social commentator of the day Roger North lauded back stairs, of which Belton has two examples (C & P), as one of the most important inventions of his day .

The principal room is the large Marble Hall (J) at the centre of the south front. This room which takes it's name from the black and white marble tiles of its floor is the beginning of a grand procession of room, and corresponds to the former great Parlour or Saloon on the north front. The Marble Hall is flanked by the former Little Parlour (G)(now the Tapestry Room) and the Great Staircase Hall (L), while the Saloon (H)is flanked by two withdrawing rooms (F & K). While the Marble Hall and Saloon were at the centre of a small enfilade of reception rooms, they were in not intended to form the heart of a suite of state rooms in the Baroque fashion. Indeed one of the most important rooms the Great Dining Room (now the library) was quite separate on the floor above directly above the Marble Hall. The bedrooms are arranged in individual suites on both floors of the two wings (E * R etc.) which flank what is sometimes called the "state centre" of the house. The main staircase, set to one side of the Marble Hall, is one of the few things at Belton which as asymmetrically placed.

Bodily and spiritual need were architecturally balanced symetrically within the mansion, both the kitchen (A) and the chapel (M) were large two storied hall rising from the sem-basement to the first floor. This design not only provided a great and lofty space, but also allowed the the servants to worship in the chapel without leaving the service floor, while their employers would worship from a private gallery (N), complete with fireplace, overlooking the chapel on the first floor.

Gardens and the park

The "Italian garden", Orangery and Church. The Orangery and "Italian garden" were designed by Jeffry Wyatville in the early 19th century. The church contains the tombs of the Browlow and Cust owners of Belton House.

Looking along the Eastern Avenue towards Viscount Tyrconnel's Belmount Tower - a belvedere built between 1749 and 1751

In 1690 Sir John Brownlow was granted permission to enclose an area not exceeding 1000 acres to transform into a park. With the permission to enclose also came a grant to keep deer. There is evidence to suggest that some of this area though had been a park since at least 1580. The Park was laid out with avenues, including the still surviving Eastern Avenue which from the house east to west. Brownlow also had dug a large pond or lake and planted no less than 21,400 ash trees, 9,500 oak trees, and 614 fruit trees. It is thought that William Winde may have advised on the layout of the gardens. Closer to the house were designed a series of more formal gardens, these included canal ponds bordered by plantations containing symmetrical walks resembling the "rond-points" introduced by the landscape gardener André Le Nôtre.

Sir John Brownlow was succeeded at Belton first by his brother, who was content to permit Brownlow's widow, Alice, to remain in occupation. She spent the remainder of her life at Belton arranging advantageous marriages for her five daughters. On her death in 1721, the house passed to her husband's nephew (and also his son-in-law) Sir John Brownlow III (late Viscount Tyrconnel. Tyrconnel, a dilettante of no great intellect , was responsible for many of the architectural features which survive in the park and garden. Between 1742 and 1751 he had constructed a series of follies which included a Gothic ruin, cascade, and and a prospect or belvedere tower, known as the Belmount Tower.

20th century

When the Machine Gun Corps was established in 1915, its home headquarters and base training ground were established in the southern part of the park. The flat bottom and rising sides of the Witham valley here, where the river passes between the Lower Lincolnshire Limestone and the Upper Lias mudstone, made it possible to establish ranges and depot close to good communications in the form of the Great North Road and the east coast main line railway station at Grantham. The depot was closed in 1919 and land was restored to its owner, Lord Brownlow, as the process of removing the temporary buildings progressed.

Owners of Belton House

The funerary chapel of the owners of Belton House, in the church adjacent to the mansion

While Belton untill its acceptance by the National Trust was always in the owneship of kinsmen of its builder, it was often through tortuous descent, as three generations failed to produce a son. This caused ownership to pass sideways and sometimes backwards through the female line. The owners of Belton House have been:

• Sir John Brownlow II 1659 - 1697. Builder of Belton House
• Sir William Brownlow 1665 - 1702. Brother of above, permitted his widowed sister-in-law to retain Belton.
• Sir John Brownlow III 1690 - 1754 Created Viscount Tyrconnel 1718. Nephew and son-in-law of John Brownlow II
• Sir John Cust 1718 - 1770 Speaker of the House of Commons and nephew of Tyrconnel.
• Sir Brownlow Cust 1744 - 1807. Created Baron Brownlow 1776. Son of above.
• John, 2nd Baron Brownlow 1779 - 1853. Created 1st Earl Brownlow 1815. Son of above.
• John, (Eggerton-Cust), 2nd Earl Brownlow 1842 - 1867 Grandson of above.
• Adelbert, 3rd (and last) Earl Brownlow 1844 - 1921. Brother of above
• Adelbert Salusbury Cockayne Cust, 5th Baron Brownlow 1867 - 1927. 2nd cousin of above.
• Perigrine Cust, 6th Baron Brownlow 1899 - 1978.
• Edward Cust, 7th Baron Brownlow. Born 1936.

Trivia

• The house featured as Lady Catherine de Bourgh's residence, Rosings Park, in the BBC's 1995 television version of Pride and Prejudice.
• The house was the setting for the BBC's 1988 adaptation of Moondial[1].

External link

• Belton House information at the National Trust