page_title: Kingston Lacy
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Kingston Lacy / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Sir Ralph Bankes (1631-1677)
context_page_description: Kingston Lacy is a country house and estate near Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England. It was for many years the family seat of the Bankes family who lived nearby at Corfe Castle until its destruction in the English Civil War after its incumbent owners, Sir John Bankes and Dame Mary, had remained loyal to Charles I.
  The house was built between 1663 and 1665 by Ralph Bankes, son of Sir John Bankes, to a design by the architect Sir Roger Pratt. It is a rectangular building with two main storeys, attics and basement, modelled on Chevening in Kent. The gardens and parkland were laid down at the same time, including some of the specimen trees that remain today. Various additions and alterations were made to the house over the years and the estate remained in the ownership of the Bankes family from the 17th to the late 20th century.
  The house was designated as a Grade I listed building in 1958 and the park and gardens are included in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens at Grade II. The house was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1982 after the death of Henry John Ralph Bankes, along with Corfe Castle. The house and gardens are open to the public.
context_section_description: After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the Bankes family regained their properties. Rather than rebuild Corfe Castle, the eldest son Ralph Bankes built a house on their other Dorset estate near Wimborne Minster. In 1663, he commissioned Sir Roger Pratt to design a new house to be known as Kingston Hall on the current site, based on Clarendon House which he had visited several times. Construction started the same year, and was completed by 1665.
  The design, like Pratt's other large country house Horseheath Manor in Cambridgeshire, was much influenced by Chevening. Like that house, the hall is two storeys high, though the great stair has been moved from the centre of the house" Instead the great stair and the back stairs are situated symmetrically on either side of the hall, on the main long axis of the house.
  Pratt's original plans have been lost, but extensive notes on his intentions have survived. On each of the two main floors he placed identical apartments about 20 ft (6 m) square at the four corners, each with two 10 ft (3 m) square closets at their outer end. This provided flexibility of use for the rooms. Two of the inner closets housed servants' stairs. The two ends of the bedroom floor were connected by a balcony supported by columns which may have served the additional purpose of helping support the north side of the cupola.
  Built of red brick with Chilmark and Portland stone dressings, the house has a compact, rectangular plan and has two main floors, plus a basement and an attic floor lit by dormer windows. On the south façade, there are eight casement windows in the basement and nine sash windows on each of the ground floor and first floor. The bay with the three central windows projects forwards slightly, and the central ground floor window is pedimented. The lead-covered hipped roof has a central flat section, surrounded by a balustrade with a cupola rising from its centre. The dormer windows are in a central, balustraded terrace of three, with an outlying window on either side. The house is entered from the north through a later mid-19th-century porte-cochère, while to the south there is a stone-flagged terrace with balustrade extending the full width of the building, and broad shallow steps leading down to the lawns. The east façade has a triple-arched loggia with access to the garden, while to the west there is access to the later 18th-century laundry and kitchen garden.
  The interiors were influenced by Inigo Jones, but executed by his heir John Webb, a fact confirmed many years later when the National Trust discovered Webb's plans during their formal takeover of the estate. The interiors mostly date from about 1835. The hall has a barrel-vaulted high ceiling with painted decoration and the dining room has panelled walls, tapestries and a decorated plaster ceiling. The library has a ceiling painting attributed to Guido Reni. The staircase is of white marble with turned balusters and a relief frieze, its ornamented ceiling being attributed to Giorgione.
  Sited centrally within the 164-hectare (410-acre) grounds, externally the new house was provided with 5 hectares (12 acres) of formal gardens and pleasure grounds; some of these were enclosed by walls, while a series of wide avenues radiated throughout the surrounding 159 hectares (390 acres) of parkland. The house is a Grade I listed building having been so designated on 18 March 1955.
caption: Sir Ralph Bankes, during whose life Kingston Lacy was constructed (by Sir Peter Lely)
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