Hidden Rutland
traveller Celia Fiennes, poet Sir John Betjeman, novelist Sir Walter Scott and historian W G Hoskins all put pen to paper about their love for Stamford. The town was left virtually untouched by the Industrial Revolution and the bombs of the Second World War, and was designated England’s first conservation area in 1967. Scenes from the 1994 BBC adaptation of George Eliot’s Middlemarch were filmed here, as was the 2005 film Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley, and in 2006 The Da Vinci Code. A short distance from Stamford is Burghley (pronounced
Burley), one of England’s best-loved estates. This Grade I listed house was built between 1555 and 1587 for William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, who served Queen Elizabeth I. Lord Burghley’s complex Tudor masterpiece was designed with the express intention of impressing Queen Elizabeth. It
Above: The imposing entrance to Burghley House, designed to impress Elizabeth I. Inside, there are no fewer than 35 major rooms and 80 lesser rooms
has a spectacular Classical central courtyard featuring columns, obelisks and carved roundels. The rooms inside are no less impressive, in large part thanks to the 5th Earl and Countess’s prolific collecting of art in the 17th century. The centrepiece of their work is the Heaven Room, with wonderfully extravagant scenes of Classical gods painted by the Italian Baroque artist Antonio Verrio. Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown transformed Burghley
gardens in the 1750s, creating impeccably elegant land- scapes with sweeping vistas in his characteristic style. Shortly after this, the young English poet John Clare took a job as a gardener at Burghley. It was appropriate employment, perhaps, for a poet whose work was to focus on the romance of the natural world, and lament the destruction of the countryside as the Industrial Revolution took hold.
Lord Burghley’s complex Tudor masterpiece was designed with the express intention of impressing Queen Elizabeth. It has a spectacular Classical central courtyard featuring columns, obelisks and carved roundels
72 BRITAIN
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