PARNHAM. 13 1 



Renaissance in architecture, and to embody it in the first place 

 in such buildings as exist still in the two Universities of Oxford 

 and Cambridge, and subsequently in the palaces built for 

 Henry VIII. , whose love of art, however, does not seem to 

 have arisen from his knowledge of, or from any personal appre- 

 ciation of it, but rather, perhaps, in a sort of rivalry with his 

 Continental contemporaries. The style thus introduced became 

 altered to suit the English tastes and habits, and, although losing 

 much of its original beauty, gained in other ways by adapting 

 itself to the domestic life of the people. Thus there were many 

 splendid houses built such as Knole, near Sevenoaks, and 

 Penshurst (in Kent), and Cobham, Hardwick, and Haddon (in 

 Derbyshire), Hatfield (in Herts), and many others still remaining, 

 though terribly disfigured by the hands of the recent restorer. 

 During the last century some hundreds of these splendid 

 examples of former magnificence have disappeared, mostly to 

 give place to the unmeaning adaptation of a Greek Temple, 

 with a fa9ade like the portico of a building originally designed 

 for heathen worship in a hot climate, neither the use nor the 

 climate having the least resemblance to our own. 



Parnham, although a house of much less pretensions than those 

 ' mentioned above, dates still earlier than most of them appear 

 to do. 



In the time of Henry VII. it was a manor of the Strode family, 

 who owned a large part of Dorsetshire then and for long after- 

 wards. In the reign of Henry VIII. the Sir Robert Strode of 

 that date "re-edified and enlarged" the house and built the 

 present front very much as it now stands. He appears also to 

 have added a gate-house and a courtyard to the buildings, both 

 of which have since disappeared. At what time, or under what 

 circumstances these buildings were formed, or when they were 

 destroyed, there is unhappily no record to show. As it was left 

 in Henry VIII. 's reign so it remained until the end of the last 

 century, when, having passed by the marriage of the heiress and 

 last of the Strodes with .Sir William Oglander, of Nunwell, in the 

 Isle of Wight, it became a possession of this family, and at the 



