Ickworth

I have spent considerable time searching place names in Canada, the United States, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, even India and the Bahamas. Not surprisingly, the UK is the only place in the world that has an Ickworth. Ickworth is an impressive great house and garden, dating from the 1700s, about 4 miles from Bury St. Edmonds. Only in Britain could a positively icky name like Ickworth name a place, particularly a grand place. People who know British place names will not be surprised. The founder of Ickworth, Lord Hervey, was a lucky man. He was the third born--first got the title and the estate, second became a military man--and our hero got to be a churchman [sic], but, because of his connections, presumably, not just any churchman. He got to be Bishop of Derry, in (then) Ireland, the richest bishopric in the land, and, as often happens, he grew wealthy, doing well while doing good. While this was going on, his two elder brothers conveniently died, and Bishop Hervey shortly became the fabulously wealthy Lord Hervey. He had been much impressed by his Grand Tour as a young man and thus wanted to recreate an Italian villa in east Anglia, along with Italianate gardens to match. Thus Ickworth. Lord Hervey did not live to see Ickworth finished, but his son continued the dream, and the rest is history, and more...and a silly name.

This is a pano shot...the place is huge; the left wing is where the family lived,
the rotunda originally was to become a "public" museum, Britain's first
(although one never knows what the British aristocracy means by "public"),
now it holds the "state" rooms, dining, library, withdrawing, etc.; service was in
the curvy right wing basement, and the right hall never was finished out...it became
storage, etc., and now houses all the National Trust's shoppes, reception,
membership, resto, bookshop, etc.

Garden view of the rotunda

Helpful model of what Hervey may well have had in mind...

We did the tour of the so-called state room, in the rotunda; here in the silver
room

Interesting collection of silver fish (I swear I am not making this up)

There's even a book on the Ickworth silver

There's so much stuff they cycle stuff in and out of display, using storage rooms
like this

Curvy hall way connecting the rotunda with the right
(west?) hall; note the long planks were cut to exactly fit
the curvature of the hall, each 10 meters or more long

State dining room with family pix

Certainly the best painting there, a real Velasquez

Grand Tour chess board done by one of the Ladies

Angelica Kauffman's portrait of Lady Elizabeth Cristiana
Hervey, aka Bess, aka Mrs. Foster; Mr. Foster was not a
nice guy; Bess fled to Bath where she chanced to meet
Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire; and her husband,
the Duke...and the rest is one of the greatest menage a trois
incidents of history

In Kauffman's portrait, Bess is wearing a a miniature, thought to be of Georgiana;
after the latter died, Bess married the Duke; watch the The Duchess, great movie
that would have been an even greater TV series; Kauffman herself is interesting...
a highly regarded female painter in 18th century, one of the founders of the Royal
Academy...

Reynolds' portrait of one of the sea-faring Herveys

In the library, a real treasure, one of only a dozen or so copies of the House of
Commons Journals, from QE1 up to the Georges; this is one of several shelves of it

Now in the underside of it all; Ickworth in the later 19th century was producing
its own electricity, via a "water-gas" internal combustion machine, with considerable
plumbing; huge batteries, etc.

Carpenter's bench

The actual kitchen was in another building; this is the "warming up" kitchen
in the basement of the rotunda, dishes from which were sent up via dumbwaiter 

Staff dining hall

Why I never got into Downton Abbey (click to enlarge)

Ditto

Ditto again

The gardens were formal, Renaissancy, "Italianate," and not very interesting

Except for the Stumpery, which was the largest we've seen (it's a Victorian thing)

Ick!