FPS Summer Outing 2023: Baroque Splendour at Drayton House & Burghley

Rarely available to visitors, Drayton House, in Nottinghamshire, is best known for its famous inventories of 1710 and 1724, drawn up for Lady Betty Germain. Drayton has been a family home for over a thousand years. With a building core dating from the 1300s under Simon de Drayton, the house’s substantial transformation begun in the 1650s by Henry, 2nd Earl of Peterborough, a close friend of James II and Ambassador in France on two occasions. The scheme was completed after his death in 1697 by his daughter Mary Howard, 7th Baroness Mordaunt, and her second husband, Sir John Germain (who later married Lady Betty in 1706). Reputedly an illegitimate brother of William of Orange, Germain hired thanks to his royal connections many of the craftsmen working for the king at Hampton Court: the architect William Talman, the French ironworker Jean Tijou and cabinet-maker Gerrit Jensen. The house has a unique spiral cantilever oak staircase and a superb embroidered State Bed both of c.1700, and Asian lacquer of the same period. Drayton passed to the Sackville family in 1770, but only two rooms were changed, both decorated in the Adam manner. Our tour will be led by Bruce Bailey, F.S.A. For more information on the park, house and collection see John Cornforth, ‘The home of Colonel and Mrs. Stopford-Sackville, parts I-IV’, Country Life, May-June 1965, where the Wedgwood garniture acquired in 1774 is illustrated.

Lunch will be served in the Orangery overlooking the Rose Garden at Burghley House.

The afternoon will be spent at Burghley, an example of an Elizabethan ‘prodigy house’ built for Sir William Cecil, 1st Lord Burghley, Lord High Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth I between 1555 and 1587. It was remodelled by John Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter in the late seventeenth century, having spent considerable time in Florence. The Earl commissioned The Heaven Room in 1694 and The Hell Staircase between 1696 and 1697 from Antonio Verrio. Eighteenth-century alterations are visible in the suite of Georgian rooms, ordered by the 10th Earl. There is an internationally important collection of Chinese and Japanese export porcelain, much of which is recorded in the 1688 Devonshire Schedule of Deed. Curator Jon Culverhouse has arranged for a selection of some of the highlights of the famous European ceramic collection to made available to us. The Collection has been well published and is also available online https://collections.burghley.co.uk/

Departure is promptly at 8:30 am from the Rembrandt Hotel, 11 Thurloe Pl, London, SW7 2RS (South Kensington tube), directly across from the Victoria and Albert Museum, where we will also be returning.

Book your tickets here.

For any payment queries or food allergies, please contact: Sophie van der Goltz sophie.vondergoltz@bonhams.com
Bursaries are available, please email FPSmailing@gmail.com