ij4 I'ARNHAM. 



This panelling was removed in 1810 and placed about the 

 passages and back staircase. It was thought, however, better 

 not to tear the passages to pieces in order to produce simply the 

 same effect. The dining-room was also built on to the western 

 wall of the house in 1810. It formed no part of the original 

 edifice, and, as it existed three years ago, was more like a whited 

 sepulchre than a room. It was a sort of double cube in shape, 

 with flat whited walls and ceiling, and three wooden mock Gothic 

 windows. There could be no impropriety in altering this and in 

 putting woodwork panelling inside the room with seats attached 

 to it. The wood sashes to the windows were also removed, and 

 were replaced with windows having stone mullions, brought, by 

 the permission of Lord North, from Wroxton Abbey. These 

 mullions date from the XVIIth. century, and have been contrived 

 so as to take the leadwork and the fine glass, painted with the 

 subject of St. George and the Dragon, formerly in Nonsuch 

 Palace, in Surrey, and which had been put there in the same 

 reign namely, that of Henry VIII. This room is thus lined 

 with Italian seats from the sacristy of a church outside Brescia, 

 and has a painted ceiling and a tiled chimney-piece, all about the 

 same date. 



The library windows were treated in the same manner as those 

 of the dining-room, by the removal of the wooden sash frames 

 (much decayed) and the substitution of stone mullions in their 

 stead, the corner stone piers and the rest of the stonework being 

 left to receive the fresh mullions ; other small additions were 

 made to the room, but in most respects it remains as it was. In 

 the drawing-room the frieze is Italian, painted by Pietro del 

 Vaga, the artist who painted the ceilings and other work in the 

 Doria Palazzo at Genoa. This was removed from one of the 

 churches in Genoa between 1875 and 1880, and was bought by 

 the present owner of Parnham in 1887. The chimney-piece in 

 this room is formed of a fine Istrian marble frieze, brought from 

 a palace in Venice some years ago, and the opening of the fire- 

 place is lined with tiles from Kashan, in Persia. The south 

 windows also have been made to harmonise with the n-al 



