Euston Hall

Euston Hall is a country house, with park by William Kent and Capability Brown located in Euston, a small village in Suffolk located just south of Thetford, England. It is the family home of the Dukes of Grafton.

Euston first appears in the Domesday Book in 1087 as a manor belonging to Bury St. Edmunds Abbey. In 1578, Elizabeth I stayed at the manor hall with the Rookwood family on her way to Norwich. The estate, in near ruin, was purchased in 1666 by Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington and Secretary of State to the newly restored King, Charles II. He constructed a grand house in the French style, built around a central court with large pavilions on each corner. Charles II paid the first of several visits to Euston in 1671. John Evelyn, the diarist, was amongst the large court that accompanied the King.

In 1672 Charles II arranged a marriage between nine-year-old Henry FitzRoy, his illegitimate son by Barbara Villiers, and Isabella Bennet, the Earl of Arlington's five-year-old heiress. FitzRoy was created 1st Duke of Grafton in 1675, and the young couple went through a second wedding ceremony in 1679 when Isabella had reached the age of twelve, then the minimum legal age to marry with consent. The Duke and Duchess inherited Euston Hall in 1685. In about 1750 their son, the second Duke, decided to re-model the house and employed Matthew Brettingham, who supervised the execution of William Kent's and Lord Burlington's design of Holkham Hall in Norfolk. The domes at Euston were replaced by the low pyramid roofs seen today, and part of the house was refaced. In 1902, a disastrous fire destroyed the south and west wings and the fine Verrio ceilings. The house was soon rebuilt on the same plan, but later the south wing, and most of the west wing, were pulled down by the Tenth Duke in 1952.

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