Architecture at Burghley House : the patronage of William Cecil, 1553-1598

William Cecil held office for the first forty years of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and \nwas the most powerful man in England for most of that time. He was also its most \nimportant architectural patron. Not only was he the builder of three great houses, one of \nwhich was to become a royal palace, he also played a leading role in the direction of \nstate architecture undertaken by the Office of the Royal Works. Architecturally and \nhistorically therefore Burghley, his only surviving house, holds an important position. \nResearch has focused on extending the knowledge of the building history and how \nthis information can contribute to the understanding of the relationship between patron \nand building in patron-led architectural process. Above all, it stresses how the end \nproduct of this process was designed to function for the purposes of its political master. \nIn the historiography of the period Cecil's patronage has been stereotyped within the \npersistently low estimation of architectural patronage in England Consequently his \narchitectural experience, educational background and intellectual stature, all of which \nbear comparison with major contemporary European patrons, have tended to be \nmarginalized, and the more complex aspects of the architectural results to be \noverlooked. \nThe broader context of Cecil's overlapping private and institutional cultural \npatronage is explored to establish a profile of its nature and the role of Burghley House in \nhis political strategy. New documentary evidence, some in Cecil's own hand, has \nallowed a more precise understanding of Cecil as the principal intelligence directing and \ndetermining the building's form and plan. Analysis of the archaeology of the standing \nfabric in conjunction with RCHME's new measured plan of the ground floor has unlocked \na number of the mysteries of its architectural history, and revealed the sixteenth-century \nhouse as a remarkably lucid architectural entity in the concept of its form and plan. \nBurghley House has emerged as an important, if not seminal building in the \ndevelopment of the country house as a response to the changing pattern of hospitality, \nself-consciously designed for visiting peer groups and the corporate entertaining of the \nqueen and court. Its context is that of the imported court culture, as much as of the \nNorthamptonshire landscape. The sophisticated classical courtyard architecture with its \nimperial iconography drawn from classical literature reflects this duality. So too does the \ndevelopment of deer park and gardens simultaneously with the house. The evidence \nfurther suggests that the whole environment was planned not only as the ideal sociopolitical \namenity, but as a visually as well as physically inter-related complex.