Kingston Lacy

Kingston Lacy is a country house in the county of Dorset in the UK. This classified as a cultural monument is a fine Grade I manor house is located five kilometers north-west of Wimborne Minster and is famous for its rich art collection.

History

1634 acquired Sir John Bankes of Corfe Castle. The castle was destroyed in 1646 but in the English Civil War, so that his son Ralph in 1663 had built a new, Kingston Hall manor house called a family seat at Wimborne Minster. In the following centuries, the house served as the country seat of the Bankes family. The adventurer and Egyptologist William John Bankes spent his life in the first half of the 19th century in order to acquire works of art and antiquities, which he now Kingston Lacy family seat in accumulated mentioned.

Under Walter Ralph Bankes and his wife Henrietta, who survived her husband after his death in 1904 at 49 years, the house was a splendid meeting place in the Edwardian era in which even Edward VII in Kingston Lacy was a guest. Her son Ralph Bankes died childless in 1981 and bequeathed the manor house with all the furniture and all the art treasures and 64 km ² of land owned by the National Trust, this was the greatest gift that has been received by the Organization. However, Kingston Lacy was in need of restoration, so the restorers of the National Trust for five years needed to restore the house in the state of about 1900. The mansion is open to visitors from March to October and is considered a model for the work of the National Trust.

Plant

The design for the 1665 -built completed original house dates from Roger Pratt. In the 1780s, Henry Bankes the Younger by the architect Robert Furze Brettingham rebuild. His son William John Bankes was 1835-1841 by Charles Barry remodel the house in the style of a Venetian palazzo. The existing brick walls were paneled in light Caen stone, the house received a dome, the balustrades and the striking Eckschornsteine ​​. Inside, a magnificent staircase in Carrara marble was built, that leads from the loggia into the exquisitely decorated reception rooms. The library and the salon date from the reconstruction of the late 18th century From these spaces. The ceiling fresco of the library, the separation of day and night, comes from the Renaissance painter Guido Reni. In the salon is one of the largest collections of family portraits in the UK. The space is further decorated with paintings by Rubens and valuable furniture and porcelain.

• The Egyptian Room showing the antique collection of William John Bankes to the bronze cats and other grave goods from Egypt belong. The collection is the largest private collection of Egyptian antiquities in the UK.
• The Spanish Hall was designed by William John Bankes for its collection of Spanish paintings that he has collected over the course of his life. The gilded ceiling and the gold -plated leather wall coverings come from Venetian palaces.

The collection of paintings of the house including works by Rubens, Van Dyck, Titian, Tintoretto, Jan Brueghel the Younger, Veronese, Reynolds, Lely and Kneller.

Garden

The old, formal landscaped garden was transformed in the 1780s into a landscape garden. The entrance to the mansion is from the east over a four- kilometer avenue of over 700 old houses. The trees were planted in 1835 and therefore must be replaced for safety shortly. The house itself is surrounded by an eight -acre park, which is in the north and east of spacious lawns with scattered trees. On the east side there is a parterre garden is landscaped in 1899 with the four seasons performing statues. Behind it an applied 1835 series Lebanon Cedar extends to the east. From the same time also a scale in raised beds fern garden. In the south, the house is a wide, bordered by trees lawn, in the center of which one from the 2nd century BC Egyptian obelisk is derived, which was erected in 1827 by William John Bankes there extends.

The southeast of the garden lying, applied at the beginning of the 20th century Japanese tea garden has been recently restored. This was one of the largest garden restoration garden projects of the National Trust.

The garden is delimited in the south partly by a Ha -Ha, on a 3200 acre pasture and parkland with intact farm plants belonging to Kingston Lacy. In this park there is also, about 2 km north-west of the manor house, the Iron Age, about 2500 years old, Hill Fort Badbury Rings.