Burghley House Stamford
Burghley House near Stamford in Lincolnshire is one of the grandest and most complete Elizabethan country houses in England, a great mansion built between 1555 and 1587 by William Cecil, the first Lord Burghley and the most powerful minister of Elizabeth I's reign, whose combination of the extraordinary architecture, the outstanding art collection and the Capability Brown park landscape creates one of the most complete and most rewarding English country house experiences available. The house is the ancestral home of the Cecil family, Marquesses of Exeter, and continues in family occupation.
The exterior of Burghley House is one of the most spectacular architectural compositions of the Elizabethan age, the great south front with its symmetrical towers, the decorated chimneys disguised as columns and obelisks and the ornate roofline creating a display of architectural ambition that sought to express in stone the power and sophistication of its builder. The combination of Gothic and classical elements in the facade reflects the transitional nature of Elizabethan architecture, which was absorbing the influence of the Italian Renaissance while remaining rooted in the English medieval tradition.
The interior contains one of the finest collections of Italian Old Master paintings assembled in any English country house, including works by Veronese, Tintoretto and other sixteenth-century Venetian and Italian masters. The Heaven Room and Hell Staircase, painted by Antonio Verrio in the 1690s in a programme of baroque ceiling painting of considerable ambition, are the most celebrated interior spaces. The park was landscaped by Capability Brown in the 1750s and hosts the annual Burghley Horse Trials.