Holkham Hall

Hi all, sorry I've been bad at blogging over the past few days...I had a Country House presentation today (my last one! wheee!), I have an African Art one next week and then 3 papers right at the end, so I'll be pretty busy from here on out.

But talking about Country Houses, my class went to Holkham Hall last week, and it was CRAZY. I've been to biggish houses, like the Vanderbilt Mansion in NY, but this was the biggest "house" I've ever seen. It took 10 minutes of driving through the estate to even get to the house. I think it has something like 25,000 acres, and it used to have it's own railway station, but that has since flooded.

This is the main hall. If you go up the stairs, you can look out the window and see a monument to one of the Earl's that lived there. If you turn around and look out the stateroom window, you can see an obelisk on the exact same axis...they apparently planned this out! The ceiling is pretty dramatic too, we walked in and gaped at it for awhile.

We also got to go in the guest rooms, which the public can't normally see. We couldn't go in the chapel because Keira Knightley was filming a movie there; they use the house a lot for movies (a lot of times they shoot at a bunch of different houses and then stick them all together as one country house). This guest bedroom is the "Red Parrot room" and it has an AMAZING bathroom with probably a six foot long bathtub. One of my friends asked, and it's only 1500 pounds a night (that's 3000ish dollars for you American currency fans), so you can keep that in mind for your next holiday. It's used mostly when they have hunting parties there on the weekends.

The library was also really cool, it reminded me a lot of Beauty and the Beast. It was empty of tables and things because they were filming in there too, so we got to see the secret passage behind one of the bookcases! It was used by servants if they had to get upstairs quickly; you just pull part of the bookcase away from the wall. The house is closed to visitors for the winter, so it was really nice that it was just us so we could see a lot more.

I'm kind of skipping the staterooms and state bedrooms, but this is the main state bedroom...if they had royalty staying, this is where they would stay. That's why there is a crown on top of the bed; the bed is SO tall, too. And lastly, this is the kitchen, I love all the copper pots. The current Earl (he and his family still live in one of the wings) had all the staff members painted and these all hang in the kitchen. So there is a housekeeping painting, and a gardeners painting, etc. I thought that was kind of cool.

We talked about the gardens a bit, but it was too cold to really do much out there. The best part was their man made lake with a lot of ducks, and a herd of deer that hang out on the lawn. We all kind of walked around in shock...looking at these buildings in books is one thing, but they don't seem as massive as they really are. So my new life plan is to marry a lord/earl/duke and manage his art collection. My American friend in the class wants to marry a lord/earl/duke so she can use his stables and horses. It's nice to know we have goals.