Armorials above front entrance to Hengrave Hall
English: Detail above the door at Hengrave Hall. The house is notable for an ornate oriel window incorporating the royal arms of Henry VIII, the Kitson arms and the arms of the wife and daughters of Sir Thomas Kitson the Younger (Kitson quartered with Paget; Kitson quartered with Cornwallis; Kitson quartered with Darcy; Kitson quartered with Cavendish). Under left window; OPUS HOC FIERI FECIT TOME KYTSON M(ILITE) (Thomas Kytson, Knight, made this work happen) In centre IN DIEU ET MON DROIT (God and my right the motto of the English crown) Around coat of arms HONI SOIR QUE MAL Y PENSE (the motto of the order of the garter) To right ANO DNI M.CCCC TRICESIMO OCTAVO (1538). The central bay was completed by Sir Thomas Kitson- as the Latin inscription declares- in 1538. It shows the English and French coats of arms quartered and supported by lion and dragon under the English crown with Sir Thomas Kitson's coat of arms under a knight's helmet in the barackets below. Those on either side must have been added by his son the second Sir Thomas (1540- 1603) around 1582. The family coat of arms are combined with those the husbands of two of his daughters: Margaret’s with those of Sir Charles Cavendish whom she married in 1582 the year of her death and Mary’s with those Thomas Darcy Earl of Cavendish. The lower left hand field shows the coat of arms of the second Sir Thomas Kitson (1540-1603) quartered with those of his wife Elizabeth Cornwallis (1546-1628) the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Cornwallis of Brome. The central bay celebrated Henry VIII's efforts at peace-making in Europe which had culminated in the meeting with Francis I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold near Guisnes in Jun 1520 and Sir Thomas's knighthood in 1533. The decoration at the sides must have been undertaken by the second Sir Thomas around 1582 to commemorate the death of his daughter Margaret in child-birth. On the opposiite side he showed not his own coat of arms but those another daughter - Mary - who had married at about the time of her sister's death. Her marriage ended not in death but in separation in 1594 because of Thomas Darcy's jealousy of her beauty vivacity success at court and suspected adultery. That the addition was prompted by Mary's death in 1582 is suggested by the colour of the unicorns supporting her coat of arms - they are usually white not black as here for mourning. The main coats of arms at the sides are both supported by the hand of god - absent from the central panel - while the angels in the lower brackets are smaller less assertive and no longer wear Roman armour. In their account of the restoration of 2001 Purcell, Miller and Tritton note that Hengrave Hall's Oriel window is equal in splendour to similar features at Windsor Castle and Hampton Court. A lack of documentary evidence meant that work to establish the original colour scheme had to start from scratch. Over 200 paint samples were carefully lifted to reveal eight different paint schemes. There was just enough of the earliest decoration for specialist conservators to be confident about the colours used by the Elizabethan craftsmen. Modern acrylic paints were matched to these pigments (Source: Recording Archive for Public Sculpture in Norfolk & Suffolk[1])