The spirit of the age

In the first of two articles, John Goodall revisits the splendours of this celebrated house created in the mid-18th century by Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester

- John Goodall

Holkham Hall, Norfolk, part 1 The seat of the Earl of Leicester

HOLKHAM HALL is one of those rare buildings that seems to embody the spirit of the age in which it was created. Its outward appearance, set in spreading parkland, answers the popular ideal of a great nobleman's seat. So, too, does the sumptuous interior, which not only preserves most of its original collections and furnishings, but much associated documentation. Added to which, exemplary recent stewardship of the house means that there are few places a modern visitor can get so close to the realities of life on the grand scale in 18th-century Britain.

Such riches have, naturally, attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, not least by figures such as John Cornforth, former Architectural Editor of COUNTRY LIFE, and, more recently, by the former archivist of the house, Christine Hiskey, in her own magisterial history titled simply Holkham (2016). This pair of articles draws heavily on such work, but it also seeks to stand back from it and, with the help of new photography, offer a short, fresh overview of the story by which this familiar and celebrated building came into being.

The present hall is the creation of Thomas Coke, the eldest of five children born into a prosperous gentry family in 1697. Shortly before his 10th birthday Thomas was left as an orphan and his considerable inheritance passed into the guardianship of four relatives. His patrimony was substantially derived from the estate amassed five generations earlier by the notable lawyer and politician Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634). It included a concentration of property in north Norfolk, with a house at Holkham, but also land across the wider kingdom from Staffordshire to Kent.