Wollaton Hall is a country house standing on a small but prominent hill in Wollaton Park, Nottingham, England. The house is now
Wollaton Hall is a country house standing on a small but prominent hill in Wollaton Park, Nottingham, England. The house is now Nottingham Natural History Museum, with Nottingham Industrial Museum in the out-buildings. The surrounding park land is regularly used for large-scale outdoor events such as rock concerts, sporting events and festivals. Wollaton Hall was built between 1580 and 1588 for Sir Francis Willoughby and is believed to be designed by the Elizabethan architect, Robert Smythson, who was the architect of Hardwick Hall. The style is Elizabethan with early Jacobean elements. The floor plan has been said to derive from Serlio's drawing (in Book III of his Five Books of Architecture) of Giuliano da Majano's Villa Poggio Reale near Naples of the late fifteenth century, with elevations derived from Hans Vredeman de Vries. The architectural historian Mark Girouard has suggested that the design is in fact derived from Nikolaus de Lyra's reconstruction, and Josephus's description, of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, with a more direct inspiration being the mid-sixteenth century Mount Edgcumbe in Cornwall, which Smythson building is of Ancaster stone from Lincolnshire, and is said to have been paid for with coal from the Wollaton pits owned by Willoughby. Cassandra Willoughby, Duchess of Chandos recorded in 1702 that the master masons, and some of the statuary, were brought from Italy. The decorative but ludicrous gondola mooring rings carved in stone on the exterior walls offer some evidence of this, as do other architectural features. There are also obvious French and Dutch influences. The building consists of a high central hall, surrounded by four towers. Unfortunately, a fire caused damage to Smythson's interior decoration of some of the ground floor rooms, but little structural damage occurred. Remodelling was carried out by Wyattville in 1801 and continued intermittently until the 1830s. The gallery of the main hall contains Nottinghamshire's old
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