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Sudbury Hall
Sudbury Hall - north-east view.jpg
The north-east facade of Sudbury Hall
General information
Status open
Type English country house
Architectural style Restoration-era English Baroque, Jacobean
Town or city Sudbury, Derbyshire
Country United Kingdom
Coordinates 52°53′11″N 1°45′55″W / 52.886338°N 1.765233°W / 52.886338; -1.765233
Construction started 1660
Completed 1680
Renovated 1969-1971
Renovating team
Architect John Beresford Fowler

Sudbury Hall is a grand old house in Sudbury, Derbyshire, England. It's known as one of the best examples of a "Restoration" mansion, built when King Charles II came back to the throne. This means it's a very important historic building.

Today, Sudbury Hall is also home to the National Trust Museum of Childhood. This museum is located in the part of the house where servants used to live in the 1800s.

History of Sudbury Hall

Sudbury Hall has a long and interesting past. It was first mentioned way back in 1086 in the Domesday Book, a huge survey ordered by William the Conqueror.

Who Built Sudbury Hall?

The Vernon family came to Sudbury in the 1500s through a marriage. The current house was built between 1660 and 1680 by a man named George Vernon. He was the great-grandfather of the first Baron Vernon. George Vernon used money from his marriage to build this amazing new mansion. He kept careful records, and it seems he might have designed the house himself!

George Vernon also created the village near the Hall. This village provided homes for his servants and workers. Many of these old buildings are still standing today.

Later Years and Changes

In the 1840s, Queen Adelaide, who was the wife of King William IV, rented Sudbury Hall for three years. Later, in the late 1800s, the house was made even bigger. The Sudbury Estate, which is the land around the house, grew to be very large.

In 1916, the 8th Lord Vernon passed away during World War I. Because of this, the family had to pay a lot of taxes on the estate. This was a big problem for many large estates in Britain at the time. To pay these taxes, the 9th Lord Vernon had to sell off some of the land and even some items from inside Sudbury Hall. However, he later managed to buy some land back to build homes for people in Sudbury village.

During World War II, a US Air Force hospital was set up near Sudbury Hall. After the war, this land became HM Prison Sudbury.

Sudbury Hall and the National Trust

More taxes continued to be a challenge for the Vernon family. In 1967, Sudbury Hall, along with many of its valuable contents and parts of the gardens, was given to the National Trust. This helped the family pay their taxes. The rest of the Sudbury Estate is still owned by the Vernon family today.

In 2020, Sudbury Hall closed for some big changes. The National Trust worked with 100 children to help redesign the house for young visitors. It reopened in 2022 as The Children’s Country House at Sudbury. Now, it has fun areas for dressing up, dancing, and even an escape room! You can also see funny speech bubbles next to old portraits.

Some people, including the Vernon family, have different opinions about these changes. They worry that the house has become too much like a "theme park." But the National Trust says these changes help children learn about the house's history in new and exciting ways. In 2023, the Children’s Country House at Sudbury won an award for being an amazing new exhibition.

Architecture and Design

Sudbury Hall was built during the "Restoration era," but its design also has features from an earlier style called Jacobean. You can see this in its grand Great Staircase and the Long Gallery. The house was designed so that the fancy rooms were on one side and the servants' areas were on the other.

The house is made of red brick and has a beautiful main entrance with columns and carvings. These carvings were made by a sculptor named William Wilson.

Inside Sudbury Hall

The inside of the house was finished in 1691. While there have been some small changes over the years, the interior was carefully restored in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The Great Staircase, designed by Edward Pierce, is truly special. It was built around 1676 and is one of the best staircases from that time in Britain. It has beautiful white-painted railings with detailed carvings of leaves and plants. The ceiling above the staircase has amazing plasterwork and paintings of stories from myths. Other plasterwork in the house was done by skilled artists like Robert Bradbury and James Pettifer. In the drawing room, there's a stunning carved fireplace decoration by a famous artist named Grinling Gibbons.

The part of the house that now holds the National Trust Museum of Childhood used to be the servants' wing. It was changed and made bigger in the late 1800s.

  • Architecture of Sudbury Hall
  • At Sudbury Hall 2023 084

    Rear of Sudbury Hall

  • At Sudbury Hall 2023 041

    Plaster ceiling by James Pettifer (1675)

  • Sudbury Hall 00 01 18 178000

    The Great Staircase by Edward Pierce (c.1676)

  • Sudbury Hall 00 01 15 014000

    The Great Staircase balustrade (detail)

  • The Long Gallery, Sudbury Hall-geograph-4669666

    The Long Gallery

  • The Saloon, Sudbury Hall-geograph-4669636

    The Saloon

  • At Sudbury Hall 2023 067

    The bedroom

Art Collection at Sudbury Hall

Sudbury Hall has a large collection of paintings, especially portraits of the Vernon family members. There are also other beautiful artworks.

Some important paintings include:

Sudbury Hall on Screen

Sudbury Hall has been used as a filming location for TV shows!

  • It was used for the indoor scenes of Pemberley in the 1995 BBC TV series of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
  • The unique dome on top of the house was shown in the opening credits of a children's TV show called The Book Tower.

See also

  • Catherine Pegge
  • George John Venables-Vernon, 5th Baron Vernon
  • Grade I listed buildings in Derbyshire
  • Listed buildings in Sudbury, Derbyshire
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