Petworth House was owned during the Middle Ages by the Percy family, Earls of Northumberland. In 1682 the 10th Earl’s only child, Elizabeth, married Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset; her inherited wealth allowed the couple to set about remodelling the house in a French baroque style, probably to designs by William III’s architect, Daniel Marot. Some of the foremost craftsmen of the day decorated the house, including the wood-carver Grinling Gibbons and the plasterer Edward Goudge. John Selde, a local mason, was responsible for much of the internal and external decoration, including the Duke’s crest of ‘keystones with carved wings’ which appear above each window. Petworth was remodelled again after a fire in 1714, when Louis Laguerre was commissioned to paint a magnificent series of murals for the grand staircase. The park, with its serpentine lake, is the work of ‘Capability’ Brown and is arguably his finest remaining landscape.

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