Bridge For Design October 15

TOP: Worcester Lodge, designed by William Kent, stands at the beginning of the three
mile Great Avenue
LEFT: Abundant plants placed in the windows of this dining room lead the eye out into
the lush greenery of the garden
crowning the north front and its flanking cupolas, all constructed from
wood painted to look like stone (for lightness). His other work on the
north front included adding giant rusticated pilasters to the Gibbs
pavilions, echoed in those flanking the front door.
Badminton was further aggrandised by the sixth Duke of Beaufort,
who employed Jeffry Wyatville, from the famous Wyatt dynasty of
architects, in 1809-13. Wyatville’s main alteration was the creation
of the Great Drawing Room, with its Order of the Garter-themed
plasterwork ceiling and magnificent neoclassical Italian chimneypiece,
designed by James Byres for the Dowager Duchess of Beaufort, widow
of the fourth duke, in 1773. Wyatville also rebuilt the staircase; its
ramps seem to rise up in all directions through the centre of the house.
Here and elsewhere the walls are lined with family-portraits - nearly
two hundred in all. Some of the earliest portraits are hung in the Family
Dining Room, which has striking yellow arabesque wallpaper designed
by Thomas Willement, who supplied stained glass to the church in
the mid-nineteenth century. Two other rooms on the east front are
also hung with Willement wallpaper; the East Room (hung with late
seventeenth – and early-eighteenth-century portraits) and the Duchess’s
Sitting Room. The latter has a charming portrait of the fifth duke as a
boy with his tutor by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
88 Bridge for Design October 2015