Gothic Rebuilding
It is the north and west ranges of the house that have never received the architectural acclaim they deserve, remodelled circa 1750 to a design by the architect Thomas Iremonger, with battlements and ogee topped windows, they are a form of gothic known as Strawberry Hill. This style predates the so-called invention of Strawberry Hill Gothic at Horace Walpole's house by nearly twenty years.
The interior of the house was also remodelled at this time, when a suite of magnificent state rooms were created with remarkable rococo ceilings, and superb marble fireplaces. One fireplace is of especial note carved by Sir Henry Cheere. The 60-foot-long (18 m), panelled, Great Hall with its huge fireplace is the largest room in the house.
Read more about this topic: Hampden House
Famous quotes containing the words gothic and/or rebuilding:
“The gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern when we come close to them; but the gothic gets away.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)