The Normanton Room

This room, at the head of the staircase, takes its name from the early eighteenth-century state bed, formerly at Normanton Park in Rutland, now demolished. This magnificent bed dates stylistically from c.1710, and so is likely to have been commissioned by Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Lord Mayor of London, rather than Normanton Park itself, which was built for Sir John Heathcote by Richard Jupp in 1735–40.

The Normanton State Bed underwent major conservation work in 2014. Read more about the bed, its history, and the conservation project here.

The pictures here are mainly by twentieth-century artists – Peter Greenham, Jane Dowling, John Ward (a portrait of the present Lord Faringdon and his family, painted in 1978), Sir Edmund Fairfax-Lucy, Emily Patrick, Ken Howard, Peter Kuhfeld, Allan Gwynne-Jones and Emilie Gwynne-Jones – and have been bought in the last few years by the Trustees of the Faringdon Collection. The standout picture is an exceptionally large painting by Graham Sutherland, Conglomerate (no. 74), painted in 1970 and purchased by the Trustees in 1973.

The furniture includes a set of four giltwood armchairs with oval backs, and a settee upholstered in nineteenth-century Beauvais tapestry. An early eighteenth-century French chasuble is on a stand beside the bed. The late eighteenth-century chimney-piece was introduced by the 2nd Lord Faringdon in the 1930s.

The Estate Office,

Buscot Park, Faringdon,

Oxfordshire SN7 8BU.

Telephone: 01367 240786

Email: estbuscot@aol.com