Burton Constable Hall

En un regard

Le château en bref

Burton Constable Hall is a large Elizabethan house in Holderness, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, north-east of Hull. Listed Grade I since 1952, it stands amid more than 120 hectares of parkland laid out by Lancelot "Capability" Brown. For over seven centuries the estate was the seat of the Constable family. Built in the late 16th century in red-brown brick, the house follows a roughly H-shaped plan around a courtyard open to the south. Its three-storey east front retains turrets and crenellated towers. Behind this Tudor shell lies a succession of interiors from different periods: a long gallery in the Jacobean taste, a Rococo great hall, Neoclassical drawing rooms, a Chinese room hung with wallpaper supplied by Chippendale in 1783, and a chapel fitted out in 1844. Renowned architects and craftsmen, including James Wyatt, the Lightollers and Thomas Atkinson, worked there in the 18th century. The house also holds the cabinet of curiosities assembled by William Constable, considered one of the best-preserved collections of its kind in an English country house. Since 1992 the Burton Constable Foundation, a charity, has owned and managed the house and park, which are open to the public in season. Descendants of the family still live in the south wing and retain the agricultural estate.