Chevening

A much-expanded guide to the handsome architecture, sumptuous decoration and glorious gardens of Chevening, the grand country residence of Britain?s Foreign Secretary. Chevening stands in a magnificent park below the wooded escarpment of the North Downs in Kent. It has a history dating back around 800 years, but the house we see today is almost entirely the creation of seven generations of the Stanhope family, building on the original Lennard house of 1630. For 250 years the Stanhopes served their country as soldiers and statesmen, and at Chevening as patrons of architecture and art. This guide ? a much-expanded edition of the 2005 handbook ? highlights the contributions of the Earls and Countesses Stanhope to the building, furniture, pictures, gardens and landscape of Chevening. It also gives a short account of the family in the wider world in order to set their creations in context. 0The decoration and architectural features of each of the rooms ? from the Entrance Hall with its spectacular swirling staircase of c. 1721 to the sumptuous Tapestry Room with its rare Berlin tapestries woven by Huguenot crafstment in 1708 ? are described and illustrated, and important and unusual works of art highlighted.