Houghton Hall, house, stables and park, Norfolk

Under gloomy skies, here is the house built for the first de facto PM of England, Sir Robert Walpole.

Built in Palladian style it was begun in 1722 by Colen Campbell, James Gibbs added the domes, William Kent designed the interiors and Thomas Ripley completed it.

The parklands contain traces of the original Houghton village, removed from proximity to the House, the current park is by Charles Bridgeman in the 18th Century style.

Walpole established the Whigs in power for 50 years and is normally dated as serving as PM from 1721 to 1742 - longer than any PM since. Opinions on him differed violently then as now. He was attacked in the Beggar's Opera by John Gay, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding and Samuel Johnson.

Lord Chesterfield wrote:
In private life he was good natured, Chearfull, social. Inelegant in his manners, loose in his morals. He had a coarse wit, which he was too free of for a Man in his Station, as it is always inconsistent with dignity. He was very able as a Minister, but without a certain Elevation of mind...He was both the ablest Parliament man, and the ablest manager of a Parliament, that I believe ever lived...Money, not Prerogative, was the chief Engine of his administration, and he employed it with a success that in a manner disgraced humanity...When he found any body proof, against pecuniary temptations, which alass! was but seldom, he had recourse to still a worse art. For he laughed at and ridiculed all notions of Publick virtue, and the love of one's Country.

On the contrary, Edmund Burke said:
He was an honorable man and a sound Whig. He was not, as the Jacobites and discontented Whigs of his time have represented him, and as ill-informed people still represent him, a prodigal and corrupt minister. They charged him in their libels and seditious conversations as having first reduced corruption to a system. Such was their cant. But he was far from governing by corruption. He governed by party attachments. The charge of systematic corruption is less applicable to him, perhaps, than to any minister who ever served the crown for so great a length of time. He gained over very few from the Opposition. Without being a genius of the first class, he was an intelligent, prudent, and safe minister. He loved peace.....

Houghton is certainly a large and expensive construction.