Doddington Hall, situated on the western edge of Lincolnshire, six miles west of Lincoln, provides an opportunity to experience two major currents of architectural design that characterise the evolution of the English country house. The three-storey house was built between 1593 and 1600 for Thomas Tailor, registrar of the Diocese of Lincoln.¹ It remained unaltered throughout the seventeenth century, except for the garden, which underwent alterations in c.1648 under the ownership of Sir Thomas Hussey.² In 1759 John Hussey Delaval inherited Doddington estate and began to plan a remodelling of the interior of the house. Building works began in the spring of 1760 and were predominantly complete by the autumn of 1762, although additional works, including the reconstruction of the adjoining medieval church, continued until 1775.³ By the time the church was reopened Sir John Hussey Delaval had shifted his attention back to Ford Castle in Northumberland, where alterations had been taking place since 1761.³ How the works unfolded at Doddington can be understood from the surviving accounts and letters compiled by William Portes, steward to Sir John.⁵ From Portes’s letters and documentation we learn that, as at Ford Castle, no architect was employed for the job.⁶ Instead, Portes commissioned a team of craftsmen and directed the work according to Sir John’s personal instructions. Among those employed by Portes was Thomas Lumby, a master carpenter from Lincoln.⁷ Lumby, who acted as the principal contractor – issuing estimates and receiving payment for the surveyed works – had previously worked at Lincoln Cathedral under the direction of the architect James Essex and had evidently developed excellent joinery skills.⁸ However, although he was competent, Lumby was also habitually lazy and unreliable. Perhaps, had he not been as dilatory as records show, we might have seen more evidence of his creative mind.⁹

The completion date of the house, as indicated by the date 1600 embossed on the lead roof of the central cupola, followed the construction of a series of prodigy houses built for prominent figures of the period (fig. 1). They include: Worksop Manor (c.1580–6), built for George Talbot, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury; Wollaton Hall (1580–8), built for Sir Francis Willoughby; and Hardwick Hall (c.1591–7), built for Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury.¹⁰ While there is strong evidence to attribute the design of these three houses to Robert Smythson (1535–1614), there are no surviving records to connect Doddington Hall with Smythson, although there are stylistic traits that suggest he may have supplied the design.¹¹ The plan of Doddington is closely related to Worksop. Its design follows the typical H-plan arrangement and has no courtyard, just like Hardwick. Externally, Doddington is as rigorously symmetrical as some of the other schemes drawn by Smythson, namely Wollaton and Hardwick. However, whereas Worksop, Hardwick and Wollaton bear facades richly embellished with moulded stringcourses, statue niches and spires, Doddington’s facade is by contrast relatively plain. The articulation of stone quoins and mullioned windows, thoughtfully aligned to form a coherent set of elevations, conjure a degree of structural integrity akin to that experienced in building-culture of the early Renaissance. The distribution of the fenestration, centred around a system of rectangular panes, speaks for a generation of Elizabethan designers who increasingly employed their own ideas of classicism by way of abstraction, even if some of the more decorative features, specifically the round-headed arch and the two flanking Tuscan columns, appear to have received literal interpretations. Similarly, the three domed cupolas, all placed at equidistance so as to appear congruent with the rectangular bays below, impart an air of civility, while the relatively large windows looking towards Lincoln add a sense of purpose to the design. On the other hand, the use of polygonal profiles, similar to those shown in John Thorpe’s drawing for Noseley Hall in Leicestershire, serves as a clear indication that the castle-style towers of the late Middle Ages, whose chivalric connotations had played a dominant role in the English architectural vocabulary since their introduction in the thirteenth century, were still considered significant in the late sixteenth-century country-house movement (fig. 2).¹²

By the time Doddington was built, the particular desire to emulate the architecture of the Gothic-castle had already been revealed at Burghley House, Lincolnshire (1575–8), where Sir William Cecil erected his own design for a west front with projecting towers and polygonal cupolas on top.¹³ What makes Doddington distinguishable from other castle-house precedents, however, is the deliberate break between the straight, regular, three-storey module and the cupolas standing above – a division rendered more apparent with John Hussey Delaval’s removal of the semi-circular gables protruding from the parapet, which had previously disguised the ridges of the original roof, as captured in Johannes Kip’s engraving of 1707.¹⁴ Whether Sir John’s decision to remodel the parapet in 1762 carried a specific aesthetic intent or was simply part of a renewal of the roof is more difficult to confirm. In William Portes’s opinion, the alterations on the exterior made the house ‘look all round as if it were a new building’, indicating that they formed part of a response to the meet demands of the new elite for structural economy, compact living quarters and recreation (fig. 3).¹⁵

Internally, the plan of the house is not as rigorously symmetrical as the exterior. The ground floor comprises a central porch that leads directly into the Great Hall, on the side where a screened passage, almost certainly constructed with a timber screen, formerly stood. The kitchen and office rooms are connected by a corridor running the length of the buttery and pantry; a similar example of this arrangement survives at Montacute, Somerset, where an equally significant house was built for Sir Edward Phelips in c.1598, possibly to the design of William Arnold.¹⁶ On the north side of the ground floor, beyond the high end of the Great Hall, are two rooms with the main staircase between them. As demonstrated by the eighteenth-century inventories taken at Doddington, the north-west chamber facing the ‘pleasure’ garden, previously used as a Parlour, was later transformed into a Dining Room, once the earlier ‘wainscot’ panelling was replaced with a more up-to-date eighteenth-century scheme.¹⁷ Meanwhile, the smaller room on the opposite side of the stairs, formerly known as the Drawing Room, became the Parlour (the ‘Green Parlour’) after the mid-eighteenth-century remodelling (figs. 4 and 5).

As with nearly all doorways in the house, the original Tudor doorways facing the stairs hall were made square and fitted with bolection-moulded casings matching the dado rails and cornicing around the house. Most of the doors were replaced with raised-and-fielded-panelled leafs and were painted white or mahogany, depending on the colour scheme of each room. Those facing the great hall were painted mahogany and fitted with pulvinated friezes and broken pediments on top, presumably to give prominence to the principal points of entry and to highlight the significance of the space. Curiously, the north-west doorway, seemingly connecting the Great Hall with the north-west Dining Room, is not an opening but rather a dummy fashioned in the same manner as the adjoining doorways to give the impression the plan is completely symmetrical. Of all the eighteenth-century alterations, arguably the most ambitious was the reconstruction of the timber staircase (the ‘Best Stair Case’), which was planned in May 1760 and completed in October 1762.¹⁸ Here, Lumby revealed his eye for structural economy by introducing a new set of stairs, in the Imperial style, that rise by a single flight and return by a double one, thus maximising the span of each flight and eliminating the need for more than one intermediate landing.¹⁹ The result is remarkably effective considering the stair tower was originally built to accommodate an open-well staircase with quarter landings, which by design minimises the width of each flight, as demonstrated with the Great Staircase at Ham House, Richmond upon Thames, an early seventeenth-century house whose plan is related closely to Doddington (figs. 6 and 7).²⁰

Upstairs, the largest portion of the first floor is occupied by the Drawing Room, formerly the Long Dining Room, which has almost the exact same plan as the Great Hall below.²¹ During the remodelling the scheme of plasterwork on the ceiling of this room was made similar to that in the Great Hall, although the entrances were not furnished with highly ornate doorcases. Instead, a chimneypiece with lugged-and-shouldered sides was made the central feature, allowing for the surrounding walls to be systematically decorated with carved gilt sconces, mirrors, papier-mâché ornamentation and recent paintings of members of the Delaval family. By the mid-eighteenth century the two apartments directly south of the Drawing Room were used as guest accommodation – the adjacent room, now known as the Yellow Room, was furnished with tapestry hangings, while the smaller rooms beyond served as additional bedchambers.²² Within the north range, on the same level as the Drawing Room, are two identical apartments, both of which were intended as high-status chambers. The room facing the rear garden, now known as the Holly Room, was occupied by Lady Hussey Delaval in the 1760s and was also furnished with woven tapestries. This room was later referred to as the ‘Yellow Worked Chamber’ in the 1786 inventory, since it also contained a four-post timber bed with yellow hangings on it.²³ The chamber facing the church, now known as the Tiger Room, was occupied by Sir John and was described – also in 1786 – as the Tapestry Room, as it contained another set of tapestry hangings depicting a wild boar and a lion.²⁴ Although we know more about the history of these tapestries, owing to a recent programme of research and conservation, the owner’s motivation for rehanging them in these particular rooms is subject to further debate (figs. 8–10).²⁵