In Wiltshire, near Warminster, Longleat is far more than a great house: it is a manifesto. Built in the 1570s by Sir John Thynne, it is widely regarded as the first truly Renaissance house in England and the founding example of the Elizabethan "prodigy house" — those palaces of the high nobility, with their vast glazing and symmetrical façades, that transformed English domestic architecture.
John Thynne's manifesto house
The estate rose on the ruins of a dissolved Augustinian priory; its name comes from a leat, the artificial watercourse that once fed a mill. In 1541 it was bought for Sir John Thynne (c. 1515-1580) — a former steward to the Duke of Somerset turned great landowner — for the modest sum of £53. An earlier house, set within the priory buildings, was gutted by fire in April 1567. Thynne then resolved to rebuild entirely: the work, carried out in stages, was effectively complete by 1580, the very year of his death.
Longleat was not the work of one man. Thynne was its patron and chief designer, but he gathered a remarkable team: the mason-architect Robert Smythson — who would become the age's greatest architect —, the French carver Alan (Allen) Maynard, the mason Adrian Gaunt and the royal master mason Humphrey Lovell. From this collaboration came something wholly new: symmetrical façades articulated by superimposed classical pilasters (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian) and pierced by great projecting windows. The symmetry and flood of light broke radically with the medieval manor built around a courtyard and a great hall.
The birth of the prodigy house
Longleat is regarded as the prototype of the "prodigy house" — the prodigious residences the Elizabethan nobility built to dazzle, and above all to receive the queen on her royal "progresses." The house went up in four successive phases, the last wrapping the building in a perfectly regular outer skin: strikingly, the great hall — though fitted with its screens passage — can no longer be read from outside, because every room bows to the symmetry. The medieval hierarchy of volumes gives way to classical order. Longleat also turns outward: instead of folding in on an inner courtyard, it opens through its windows onto the surrounding landscape.
Here, for the first time, Smythson applied a coherent architectural language that he would go on to perfect at Wollaton Hall and Hardwick Hall. Longleat thus opened the way to a whole golden age of English architecture. (The present park, redesigned by Capability Brown in the 18th century, replaced the original surroundings: the Renaissance interest lies in the house itself.) Look for: the symmetrical Elizabethan façades and their great windows, the great hall with its minstrels' gallery.
Did you know?
Longleat launched a fashion that cost the English nobility fortunes: the "prodigy house," built less to live in than to dazzle the queen. Hosting Elizabeth I on her progresses was an honour so ruinous — one had to lodge her and her whole court in unheard-of splendour — that some lords beggared themselves raising palaces worthy of a visit that, at times, never came.
Renaissance notes
Longleat stands near Warminster in Wiltshire. Its Renaissance interest lies in the Elizabethan house itself and its façades; the period gardens do not survive, the park having been recomposed in the 18th century.
Quiz
- Who had Longleat built (completed around 1580)?
- Sir John Thynne
- Cardinal Wolsey
- Henry VIII
- Which architect worked here, before Wollaton and Hardwick?
- Robert Smythson
- Inigo Jones
- Christopher Wren
- What does Longleat inaugurate?
- The Elizabethan "prodigy house" (symmetrical façades)
- The artillery fort
- The skyscraper