Qualla: Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire

Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Green, CC BY-SA 2.0. Some country houses survive because they were sold; the new owners had something to prove and so kept the place polished. Doddington Hall survives because it was never sold. Built between 1595 and 1600, it has passed by inheritance through every generation since - daughter to son-in-law, niece to cousin, never on the open market - and the contents of its rooms still reflect the choices of every family that lived there. The tapestries on the walls of the Holly Room have not moved since 1762. The pictures, the porcelain, the furniture - none of it was bought to fill the place. It accumulated, the way things accumulate in any house lived in by the same family for four hundred years.

Image: Richard Green | CC BY-SA 2.0

Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire: Smythson's Last Project

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. The architect was Robert Smythson, the great Elizabethan builder behind Longleat in Wiltshire, Wollaton Hall in Nottinghamshire, and the extraordinary Hardwick Hall - "more glass than wall" - in Derbyshire. Doddington was one of his final commissions, designed in the closing year...

Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire: The Inheritance Tree

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. Track the ownership and you trace a particular kind of English continuity. Tailor's son inherited, then his granddaughter Elizabeth Anton, who married Sir Edward Hussey of Honington. Their son Sir Thomas Hussey inherited in 1658, and on his death in 1706 the Hall passed through c...

Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire: The Holly Room

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J.Hannan-Briggs, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sir John Hussey-Delaval's 1761 redecoration is the deepest interior change the Hall ever absorbed. The rooms in the centre block were given crisp Georgian proportions, light coloured walls, and the kind of refined plasterwork that the Lumbys of Lincoln specialised in. The most sp...

Image: J.Hannan-Briggs | CC BY-SA 2.0

Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire: The Gardens

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Havercroft, Public domain. The six acres of walled and wild gardens around the Hall are listed grade II* on the national Register of Historic Parks and Gardens - a level of recognition reserved for the most significant historic landscapes. There is a parterre, a wild garden, a kitchen garden that still sup...

Image: Keith Havercroft | Public domain

Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire: A Living Inheritance

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. Daniel Codd's book Haunted Lincolnshire claims Doddington Hall is haunted. Most country houses of this age make the same claim, and the Birches who live there now take the suggestion with the same matter-of-fact tolerance their ancestors did. What is undisputable is the depth of ...

Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0