Blenheim Palace

Blenheim Palace is a large and monumental country house situated in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. It is the only non episcopal country house, in England, to hold the title "palace". The Palace, one of England's greatest houses in every sense of the word, was built between 1705 and circa 1722. Its construction was originally intended to be a gift to the 1st Duke of Marlborough from a grateful nation in return for military triumph against the French. However, it soon became the subject of political infighting which led to Marlborough's exile, the fall from power of his Duchess, and the irreparable damage to the reputation of the architect Sir John Vanbrugh. Designed in the rare, and short lived, English baroque style, architectural appreciation of the palace is as divided today as it was in the 1720s. {{fn|1}} It is unique in its combined usage as a family home, mausoleum and national monument.

Interior

The internal layout of the rooms of the central block at Blenheim was defined by the court etiquette of the day. State apartments were designed as an axis of rooms of increasing importance and public use, leading to the chief room. The larger houses, like Blenheim, had two sets of state apartments each mirroring each other. The grandest and most public and important was the central saloon ("B" in the plan) which served as the communal state dining room. Either side of the saloon are suites of state apartments, decreasing in importance but increasing in privacy: the first room ("C") would have been an audience chamber for receiving important guests, the next room ("L") a private withdrawing room, the next room ("M") would have been the bedroom of the occupier of the suite, thus the most private. One of the small rooms between the bedroom and the internal courtyard was intended as a dressing room. This arrangement is reflected on the other side of the saloon. The state apartments were intended only for use by the most important guests such as a visiting sovereign. On the left (east) side of the plan on either side of the bow room (marked "O") can be seen a smaller but near identical layout of rooms, which were the suites of the Duke and Duchess themselves. Thus the bow room corresponds exactly to the saloon in terms of its importance to the two smaller suites.

Related Topics:
Etiquette - Audience - Sovereign - Bow - Suite

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Blenheim Palace was designed with all its principal and secondary rooms on the piano nobile, thus there is no great staircase of state: anyone worthy of such state would have no cause to leave the piano nobile. In so far as Blenheim does have a grand staircase, then it is the series of steps in the Great Court which lead to the North Portico. There are staircases of various sizes and grandeur in the central block, but none are designed on the same scale of magnificence as the palace. James Thornhill painted the ceiling of the hall in 1716. It depicts Marlborough kneeling to Britannia and proffering a map of the Battle of Blenheim. The hall is 67ft high, and remarkable chiefly for its size and for its stone carvings by Gibbons, yet in spite of its immense size it is merely a vast ante-room to the saloon.

Related Topics:
Piano nobile - James Thornhill - 1716 - Britannia

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The saloon was also to have been painted by Thornhill, but the Duchess suspected him of overcharging, so the commission was given to Louis Laguerre. This room is entirely muralled with details of Marlborough's heroic exploits, although among the many characters depicted are friends and servants of the Marlboroughs. Among them is the Duke's chaplain, Dean Jones, another enemy of the Duchess, although she tolerated him in the household because he could play a good hand at cards. Of the three marble door-cases in the room displaying the Duke's crest as a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, only one is by Gibbons, the other two were copied indistinguishably by the Duchess's cheaper craftsmen.

Related Topics:
Louis Laguerre - Chaplain - Crest - Prince - Holy Roman Empire

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The third remarkable room is the long library, (H), 180 ft long, which was intended as a picture gallery. The ceiling has saucer domes, which were to have been painted by Thornhill, had the Duchess not upset him. The palace, and in particular this room, was furnished with the many valuable artefacts the Duke had been given, or sequestered as the spoils of war, including a fine art collection. Here in the library, rewriting history in her own indomitable style, the Duchess set up a larger than life statue of Queen Anne, its base recording their friendship.

Related Topics:
Library - Saucer dome

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From the northern end of the library access is obtained to the raised colonnade which leads to the chapel (H2). The chapel is perfectly balanced on the eastern side of the palace by the vaulted kitchen. This symmetrical balancing and equal weight given to both spiritual and physical nourishment would no doubt have appealed to Vanbrugh's renowned sense of humour, if not the Duchess's. The distance of the kitchen from even the private dining room ("O" on the plan) was obviously of no consideration, hot food being of less importance than to avoid having to inhale the odour of cooking and proximity of servants.

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