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Powering The Estate

Artificial Sunshine in the Historic House

Until the Victorian era candles were the main form of lighting. These, like the oil lamps that replaced them, made the servants a lot of work! Some examples can still be seen in our Lamp Room. Vast amounts of coal would be burned to heat the house, stored in bunkers in South Courtyard.

The Engine House

Resembling a railway station, this 1860s building has a ‘fireproof’ iron roof. Coal gas made here was stored in a gasometer nearby. This gas piped to the Hall was the first type of large-scale artificial lighting here. Gaslights lit the Great Hall, Chapel and several corridors. Gaslights on giant urns lit The West Front.

Electricity arrived in the 1900s when petrol-fuelled dynamos were put in the engine house. The petrol was stored indoors – a huge fire risk!

Once commercial electricity was available, the engine house fell out of use. By the 1970s it held a model railway - industry on a very different scale!

The Piggery

This 19th century Fold Yard has had many uses, with its design changing along with its use quite regularly.

The 20th Century saw it alter a great deal as it became the piggery which it is now named for.

Wood / Potting Shed

We believe this small, one-room store was built shortly after the Engine House. Its white and red-brick pattern echoes that of the engine house next door, which it would have served throughout the 19th and 20th Century.

Once electricity arrived, the potting shed held switchgear and batteries for the Engine House’s generators.

Gardeners Cottage

Designed c.1760 by Thomas Lightoler, this building's large bricked-up arch hints at the house's history as the estate's slaughter house.

The building stands next to the site where the Hall's hunting kennels used to be, in the heart of what was once a bustling yard full of the sounds of carts and carriages, carthorses and hunters, hounds and engines all combined.

Today, the cottage forms part of the Foundation's staff accommodation, and is therefore private.

In this section

English Landscape

Medieval Burton Constable

Georgian Landscape Architecture

The Whale Belt

Restoring Our Woodland