Lyme Park, Cheshire
This collection has 4,578 items online
Throughout 2019 we asked Lyme's visitors which items from our beautiful collection they would like to know more about. These are the items which they selected.
This Elizabethan house was developed and extended in c.1725-35 by Giacomo Leoni for Peter Legh, whose family had held land here since the 14th century. Leoni’s solution to the problem of ‘modernising’ an Elizabethan courtyard house was to turn the courtyard into an arcaded ‘cortile’, an Italianate courtyard. On the south front, his giant portico, raised on a rusticated ground storey and topped with lead statues of Venus, Neptune and Pan, may owe something to Colen Campbell’s Wanstead House, although it is chiefly indebted to Palladio. Inside, one finds a mixture of styles, including Elizabethan plasterwork, chimney pieces and panelling; 16th-century stained glass (installed in the 19th century); very good late 17th woodcarving; an exuberant Baroque ceiling above the staircase; and early Wrenaissance work by Wyatt in the dining room.
Throughout 2019 we asked Lyme's visitors which items from our beautiful collection they would like to know more about. These are the items which they selected.