3-070-963 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Longleat, Wiltshire, the seat of the Marquis of Bath..., 1881. Stately home '...situated two or three miles from Warminster...in the district formerly known as Selwood Forest. An Augustine Friars' monastery once stood upon the site, but it was given in the reign of Henry VIII. to Sir John Thynne, ancestor of the present Marquis of Bath. The house is a grand and stately pile of mixed Italian and English Tudor architecture, the building of which occupied twelve years in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but it has since been much adorned and enlarged. The exterior is adorned with pilasters, cornices, and statues, of the Italian style. The park has a circumference of fifteen miles, containing 2000 acres of noble woods and plantations, a succession of lakes, with cascades, formed by the river Frome, and beautiful gardens and pleasure-grounds, laid out by [Capability] Brown, the famous landscape-gardener of the last century... The Marquis of Bath is Sir John Alexander Thynne...He succeeded his father, as fourth Marquis, in June, 1837, and in 1861 married the Hon. Frances Isabella Catherine Vesey, eldest daughter of the third Lord de Vesci. The Marquis of Bath has six children, his eldest son and heir, Lord Weymouth, being nineteen years of age'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.