Qualla: Burton Agnes Hall

Burton Agnes Hall: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Glazzard, CC BY-SA 2.0. The story the Boyntons told for centuries goes like this. Anne Griffith, the youngest daughter of the man who built Burton Agnes Hall, was attacked walking home one evening by men who wanted her gold ring. She lived just long enough to make her sisters promise that her head would be kept inside the house she loved. The promise was not kept. She was buried whole. Strange noises began. Doors slammed. The sisters had her body exhumed, took the skull, and bricked it into a wall of the Great Hall. The disturbances stopped. Every later attempt to remove the skull, the family said, brought the noises back, until eventually the skull was returned and walled up for good. Nobody now knows exactly where in the house it lies.

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Image: Paul Glazzard | CC BY-SA 2.0

Burton Agnes Hall: A Plan from Smythson, Maybe

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Sir Henry Griffith built the present hall between 1601 and 1610 after the Crown made him a member of the Council of the North. He worked from designs attributed to Robert Smythson, the Elizabethan architect whose other houses include Hardwick and Wollaton. A surviving Smythson pl...

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Image: Public domain

Burton Agnes Hall: The Long Gallery

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tom Corser, CC BY-SA 2.0 uk. The main facade is built a storey higher than the rest of the house so the second floor could carry a Long Gallery running its full length. Wagon-roofed, richly plastered, the gallery is the showpiece of the interior, and Francis Johnson restored its ceiling in two stages between...

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Image: Tom Corser | CC BY-SA 2.0 uk

Burton Agnes Hall: Three Thousand Plant Species

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy Beecroft, CC BY-SA 2.0. The walled flower garden is laid out with a games motif. A central chessboard is paved in black and white. Other gardens around it are themed by colour and games, draughts, snakes and ladders, hoop toss, each one a self-contained room of plants. The whole estate holds three thous...

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Image: Andy Beecroft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Burton Agnes Hall: Stuteville to Cunliffe-Lister

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Glazzard, CC BY-SA 2.0. Roger de Stuteville built the first manor house on this site in 1173, the same one that survives as the Norman ruin next to the Elizabethan hall. The Welsh Griffith family inherited the estate in 1457 and held it through to Sir Henry, who built the Elizabethan house. His daughter...

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Image: Paul Glazzard | CC BY-SA 2.0