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BOUGHTON HOUSE, NORTHANTS 



FlG. 135. Boughton House. One of the State Rooms. 



made his house and its surroundings of a magnificence suitable 

 to his dignity. 



An ancestor had already, in the middle of the sixteenth 

 century, built a fine house at Boughton, with a great hall covered 

 by a roof of unusual beauty and excellence, and with wings and 

 adjuncts of considerable extent. Ralph, Lord Montagu, pro- 

 ceeded to overlay this old house with his new work so completely 

 (see plan, Fig. 132) that it is only here and there, on the removal 

 of panelling, or in the course of some minor alteration such as 

 must from time to time occur in these old houses, that traces of 

 the original building can be found. Fortunately the roof of the 

 hall was preserved, but it was hidden, and remains hidden, by a 

 new plaster ceiling on which Cheron painted a large and elaborate 

 composition. The old house was taken as the nucleus of the 

 new, but it was extended in various directions, especially on the 

 north side, where a range of state rooms was erected with two 

 boldly projecting wings (Fig. 133). It is this part of the house 

 which is reminiscent of Versailles, if the lofty windows and 

 Mansard roofs can really be said to remind one of that vast and 



