Nostell Priory : history of a house, 1730-85

Nostell Priory is one of the most important eighteenth-century buildings in northern England, \nwith a neo-Palladian exterior, and French and Neo-Classical interior. Moreover, it is one of the \nmost riclily documented houses in the National Trust portfolio, with a considerable hunily \narchive of correspondence and a large collection of architectural drawings. This thesis provides \na design and construction history of Nostell, and focuses on the extant graphic and archival \nsources. Such material provides a rare opportunity to write a monograph of a house, providing \na fuller account than lias hitherto been possible by exploring why and how it was built and \ndecorated, along with a comprehensive architectural drawings catalogue. Nostell appears in \ngeneral architectural texts by John Cornforth, Eileen Harris and others. These authors, \nhowever, analyse Nostell witliin larger studies, and this thesis aims to provide a necessary \ncorrective, giving equal weight to questions of load context and patronage; architecture and \ndesign; interior decoration and furniture. Issues of social, politiad and connoisseurial ambition \nwere the driving forces teliind the various phases of construction, which resulted in tensions \nbetween the public and private uses of the house, as expressed through the architectural \nordering of space, and changes in room usage and decorative schemes. The number of creative \nand executant contributions at N ostell it is impossible to attribute the design of the house to a \nsingle author, resulting in a complex and fundamentally collaborative construction history. A \nreview of the works of both celebrated architects and lesser-known craftsmen, who worked at \nNostell - including James Moyser, James Paine, Robert Adam, Thomas Perritt, Joseph Rose \nsenior, Joseph Rose junior, Thomas Chippendale, and Antonio Zucclii - can elucidate how the \nextant house came into being. It is hoped that this thesis will develop our understanding of the \nbuilding; the reasons for its construction; the manner in which this was undertaken; and thus \nfurther inform its coaservation.