Opening the shutters

In the second of two articles, John Goodall looks at the way in which this major Georgian house was awakened from sleep as a modern home and place of entertainment

- John Goodall

Wolterton Hall, Norfolk, part II The former home of Keith Day and Peter Sheppard

THE 18th-century writer, connoisseur and creator of Strawberry Hill, Horace Walpole, was not an admirer of his uncle and namesake, the builder of Wolterton. In his correspondence with friends, the younger Horace makes numerous allusions to the dirtiness, meanness and poor taste of the older. He did quixotically, however, think very highly of his uncle's country seat. It was, he suggested, 'one of the best houses of the size in England'.

As described last week, Wolterton was completed in 1741 under the direction of architect Thomas Ripley. Walpole's qualification over its size was a comment on the way in which the building had been conceived; not as a conventional country house with spreading wings, but as a compactly planned building.

That original house was both enlarged and adapted in the subsequent ownership of the Walpole family, who proved determined custodians of it through a difficult 20th century. As illustrated in the present article, however, the house reflects a transformation brought about since 2016 by its recent owners Keith Day and Peter Sheppard. They sold the house last year and this article is a visual record of the remarkable interiors they created.

Following the death of Wolterton's builder in 1757, the property passed to his son, yet another Horatio or Horace. He had married a daughter of the 3rd Duke of Devonshire, Lady Rachel Cavendish, and was ennobled in 1806 as Earl of Orford. This title had previously been bestowed on his uncle, the statesman Robert Walpole, and had become extinct with the death in 1797 of his youngest son, Horace Walpole of Strawberry Hill.