Moor Park (house)

Moor Park is a Grade I listed Palladian mansion set within several hundred acres of parkland in Hertfordshire, England. It is called Moor Park Mansion because it is in the old park of the Manor of More. The original house was built in 1678–9 for James, Duke of Monmouth, and inherited by his wife, Anne Scott, 1st Duchess of Buccleuch after he was beheaded. Before her death in 1732, Benjamin Hoskins Styles, who had made a fortune in The South Sea Company before the notorious Bubble burst, purchased it; the current appearance of the mansion can be traced to him.

The house was remodelled for Styles in the 1720s. The principal architect was Giacomo Leoni , who was initially assisted by the painter Sir James Thornhill. Leoni refaced the house with Portland stone and added its great Corinthian portico on the south front and Tuscan colonnades (since removed). Inside, Thornhill was commissioned to paint the Great Hall and the Grand Stair , complete with a dome in imitation of that at St. Peters, Rome. However, Thornhill quarrelled with Styles and left the project before its completion. The paintings on the Grand Stair date from 1732 and depict the Origin of the Seasons from Ovid's Metamorphoses by Francesco Sleter, a Venetian artist who studied under Jacopo Amigoni. All that remains of Styles' work on the Grand Stair is a single panel over a doorway,...
Read More