Nostell Priory is one of the most important eighteenth-century buildings in northern England,
with a neo-Palladian exterior, and French and Neo-Classical interior. Moreover, it is one of the
most riclily documented houses in the National Trust portfolio, with a considerable hunily
archive of correspondence and a large collection of architectural drawings. This thesis provides
a design and construction history of Nostell, and focuses on the extant graphic and archival
sources. Such material provides a rare opportunity to write a monograph of a house, providing
a fuller account than lias hitherto been possible by exploring why and how it was built and
decorated, along with a comprehensive architectural drawings catalogue. Nostell appears in
general architectural texts by John Cornforth, Eileen Harris and others. These authors,
however, analyse Nostell witliin larger studies, and this thesis aims to provide a necessary
corrective, giving equal weight to questions of load context and patronage; architecture and
design; interior decoration and furniture. Issues of social, politiad and connoisseurial ambition
were the driving forces teliind the various phases of construction, which resulted in tensions
between the public and private uses of the house, as expressed through the architectural
ordering of space, and changes in room usage and decorative schemes. The number of creative
and executant contributions at N ostell it is impossible to attribute the design of the house to a
single author, resulting in a complex and fundamentally collaborative construction history. A
review of the works of both celebrated architects and lesser-known craftsmen, who worked at
Nostell - including James Moyser, James Paine, Robert Adam, Thomas Perritt, Joseph Rose
senior, Joseph Rose junior, Thomas Chippendale, and Antonio Zucclii - can elucidate how the
extant house came into being. It is hoped that this thesis will develop our understanding of the
building; the reasons for its construction; the manner in which this was undertaken; and thus
further inform its coaservation.