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The courtyard, Burghley House
Lithograph: from 'Mansions of England in the Olden Times, Vol III', J. Nash (1839-49)
Source: RIBA British Architectural Library

Burghley was built on the foundations of an earlier house, unlike many other celebrated Elizabethan mansions. Consequently it has a courtyard, not unlike a Medieval cloister in plan. However, there the likeness stops. Burghley’s courtyard is an essay in ornament, its façades chock-a-block with Classical columns, pilasters and other sculptural fragments. It is as if an over-enthusiastic child has cut up an architectural pattern book and stuck the details on. Most conspicuous is the clock tower, its lower two storeys appearing like squashed Roman triumphal arches, the top obelisk a cross between a church spire and a pyramid.

Nash picks up on Burghley’s theatrical nature in this engraving, produced over two hundred years later, when there was a rage for all things Elizabethan. Such ostentation seems the perfect setting for a royal procession: here Elizabeth I leads her courtiers across the courtyard, closely followed by William Cecil, her chief advisor, and Burghley’s builder. What better place for her to stay in her progress around the land? And, perhaps, seeing her remarkably structured clothes, Burghley’s flamboyant architecture is more easily understood.