Lanhydrock

Lanhydrock was built in 1630-42 for the Robartes family who rose from merchants and bankers to the peerage as Barons of Truro and then Earls of Radnor. The house was partly destroyed by fire in 1881 and was rebuilt by Richard Coad, an ex-pupil of George Gilbert Scott. Almost all that survives of the 17th-century interiors is the 116-ft gallery and its superb barrel-vaulted ceiling containing 24 main panels depicting incidents from the Old Testament. The plasterwork, almost certainly completed by 1642, has been attributed to the Abbots of Frithelstock near Bideford, whose work appears in many country houses in Devon and Cornwall. Meanwhile, Coad’s neo-Jacobean interiors are a splendid expression of late Victorian comfort and prosperity.

Lanhydrock, Cornwall

This collection has 26,433 items online

After a fire in 1881 Lanhydrock House was transformed from a dated Jacobean pile to a state-of-the-art Victorian country seat. Featured in the rebuild were extensive, well-stocked, kitchens and comfortable servants quarters as well as opulent and functional family rooms. The house incorporated modern technologies and moral segregation making it one of the best examples of the Victorian and Edwardian 'upstairs and downstairs' way of life. Amongst the 54 rooms open to visitors are a Dining Room laid out for dinner, an atmospheric Billiard Room, Smoking Room and Drawing Room and a 35m long Gallery which survived the fire. This spacious room with its ornamental plasterwork ceiling contains the National Trust's most important library comprising of the scholarly working collection of the 1st Earl of Radnor (1606-85)

View full collection