Boughton House

[3] The 1st Duke had served as the Ambassador to France during the 1670s and was much influenced by contemporary French architecture and garden design, especially by the Palace of Versailles, which style he reproduced at Boughton.

[4] It is now one of the seats of the builder's descendant Richard Montagu Douglas Scott, 10th Duke of Buccleuch and is famed for its beauty, its collections, and for having survived virtually unchanged since the 17th century.

While possessing a medieval core, its exterior evokes a 17th-century French chateau, causing it to be termed The English Versailles[5] (a moniker also applied to Petworth House in Sussex, amongst others).

The art collection includes many notable paintings such as The Adoration of the Shepherds by El Greco, Thomas Gainsborough’s portrait of Mary Montagu, a celebrated series of grisailles by Van Dyck, and Breaking Cover by John Wootton.

The original house was a monastic building but Sir Edward Montagu, Lord Chief Justice to King Henry VIII, purchased it in 1528 just prior to the Dissolution of the Monasteries and began to convert it into a mansion.

[8] The noted diarist Chips Channon, who was a guest in 1945, wrote: "It is a dream house with a strange, sleepy quality, but its richness, its beauty and possessions are stupefying.

In keeping with the French style of its exterior, Boughton House is set amidst a highly impressive formal, yet arcadian garden of strict geometry, designed on the golden ratio.

Vast swathes of turf, planes of reflecting water, strong lines of trees and linear earth forms create an intellectually meditative landscape indicative of the Age of Enlightenment and the idea that a garden could be a journey of the mind, yet acknowledge the natural world.

The 2nd Duke, who had been nicknamed John The Planter, swept away the previous ornamental parterres, multiplied the avenues of elms and planes, and developed the role of water which structures the garden.