As a result, he is often overlooked today, remembered principally for his Palladian remodelling of numerous country houses, many of them situated in the East Anglia area of Britain.

As Brettingham neared the pinnacle of his career, Palladianism began to fall out of fashion and neoclassicism was introduced, championed by the young Robert Adam.

Born in Norwich, into a family of craftsmen, Brettingham worked initially as a surveyor, gaining experience through jobs for the city's civic authorities.

Drawing inspiration from Italian urban palazzo, and from Andrea Palladio's rural villas, he created a style and arrangements of rooms perfectly suited to the lavish entertaining undertaken by the mid-18th century nobility.

[2] His early life is little documented, and one of the earliest recorded references to him is in 1719, when he and his elder brother Robert were admitted to the city of Norwich as freemen bricklayers.

[6][2] His work on the Shirehouse, which was in the gothic style and showed a versatility of design rare for Brettingham, was to result in a protracted court case that was to rumble on through a large part of his life, with allegations of financial discrepancies.

[7] In 1755, the case was eventually closed, and Brettingham was left several hundred pounds out of pocket—several tens of thousands, in present-day terms—and with a stain—if only a local one—on his character.

[15] His design was very much in the Palladian style of Holkham, though much smaller: a large principal central block linked to two flanking secondary wings by short corridors.

In 1743, Brettingham began work on the construction of Hanworth Hall, Norfolk, also in the Palladian style, with a nine-bay façade of brick with the centre three bays projected with a pediment.

[2][19] In 1750, now well-known, the architect received an important commission to remodel Euston Hall in East Anglia, the Suffolk country seat of the influential 2nd Duke of Grafton.

While keeping the original layout, Brettingham formalised the fenestration and imposed a more classically severe order whereby the pavilions were transformed to towers in the Palladian fashion (similar to those of Inigo Jones's at Wilton House).

Brettingham also created the large service courtyard at Euston that now acts as the entrance court to the mansion, which today is only a fraction of its former size.

[22] Over the same period his country-house work included alterations at Moor Park, Hertfordshire;[23] Wortley Hall, Yorkshire;[24] Wakefield Lodge, Northamptonshire;[a] and Benacre House, Suffolk.

This period marks a turning point in his career, as he was now no longer designing country houses and farm buildings just for the local aristocrats and the Norfolk gentry, but for the greater aristocracy based in London.

[28] One of Brettingham's greatest solo commissions came when he was asked to design a town house for Edward Howard, 9th Duke of Norfolk in St. James's Square, London.

[29] Completed in 1756, the exterior of this mansion was similar to those of many of the great palazzi in Italian cities: bland and featureless, the piano nobile distinguishable only by its tall pedimented windows.

This arrangement, devoid of pilasters and a pediment giving prominence to the central bays at roof height, was initially too severe for the English taste, even by the fashionable Palladian standards of the day.

Thirty years before a prospective design for a new Kedleston Hall had been drawn up by James Gibbs, one of the leading architects of the day,[41] but Curzon wanted his new house to match the style and taste of Holkham.

[42] The design by Brettingham, similar to that of Holkham Hall, was for a massive principal central block flanked by four secondary wings, each a miniature country house, themselves linked by quadrant corridors.

[49][50] The rectangular mansion that Brettingham designed was built in the Palladian style on two principal floors, with the state rooms as at Norfolk House, arranged in a circuit around the central staircase hall.

[52] In 1761, he published his plans of Holkham Hall, calling himself the architect, which led critics, including Horace Walpole, to decry him as a purloiner of Kent's designs.

"[61] George Wardlaw Burnet's entry in the 1885 Dictionary of National Biography concluded, "Exhibiting no great novelty of conception, it must be admitted he displayed knowledge and skill equal to those of any architect of his time".

[3] That he enjoyed success in his own lifetime is beyond doubt—Robert Adam calculated that when Brettingham sent his son on the Grand Tour (1747), he went with a sum of money in his pocket of around £15,000 (£3.04 million in 2025), an enormous amount at the time.

[28] However, part of this sum was probably used to acquire the statuary in Italy (documented as supplied by Matthew Brettingham the Younger) for the nearly completed Holkham Hall.