The Mystery Cat Of Shugborough Hall

‘For picturesque grounds and garden furnishings few houses can compete with Shugborough’; no mean praise from Sir Nikolaus Pevsner himself in his The Buildings of England series, covering Staffordshire.

‘Coming upon them,’ he writes, ‘is an experience which will never to be forgotten.’ Wise words for this assembly of 18th-century architectural fancies that picturesquely people the park and garden of the great house. It is a handsome neoclassical pile, which, although looking all of a piece, in fact dates from between 1693 to 1806.

Surrounding it, like an enchanted architectural skirt, there are buildings great and small – all of them created with the serious scholarly influence of Thomas Anson, who owned the house and was a founder member of the Society of Dilettanti. Establishing the club to promote the study of ancient Greek and Roman architecture and art, Anson and his companions – with such famed figures as James ‘Athenian’ Stuart and Nicholas Revett – practised what they preached with aplomb: going on Grand Tours galore and, over the years, compiling three volumes of The Antiquities of Athens, with drawings of the principal buildings.