My #countryhousepic today shows Aqualate Hall, #Staffordshire as it existed in 1686. The house was built about 1600, perhaps engulfing the gatehouse of its mid C16 predecessor. The forecourt of c.1670 has busts on piers, in the manner of the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford.
In 1689 Aqualate Hall passed by marriage from the Skrymshers to the Baldwyns, and there were two phases of remodelling in the C18, c.1730 and c.1770, leaving the house looking like this at the end of the century
In 1796 Aqualate was sold to the trustees of Sir John Fenton Fletcher Boughey (1784-1823), 2nd bt.,, who came of age in 1805 and brought in John Nash to remodel the house as a fantasy palace with buttresses, battlements and ogee domes.
Inside, Aqualate Hall had its main rooms arranged around a top-lit fan-vaulted gallery with a staircase at one end. With the exception of the gallery, the interiors were largely classical.
In 1910, Aqualate Hall was largely destroyed by a terrible fire, which left the house a smoking shell. Only the older part of the house was salvaged and tidied up, but it still had some of Nash's flair and excitement.
Finally, in 1927-30 Aqualate Hall was again remodelled for Ethel Morris (née Boughey) by W.D. Caröe, who turned the house into a rather bland subdued Tudor pile: a rather sad replacement for the epic fantasy of the Nash house.
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