The Mystery Cat Of Shugborough Hall

‘For picturesque grounds and garden furnishings few houses can compete with Shugborough’; no mean praise from Sir Nikolaus Pevsner himself in his The Buildings of England series, covering Staffordshire.

- 

‘Coming upon them,’ he writes, ‘is an experience which will never to be forgotten.’ Wise words for this assembly of 18th-century architectural fancies that picturesquely people the park and garden of the great house. It is a handsome neoclassical pile, which, although looking all of a piece, in fact dates from between 1693 to 1806.

Surrounding it, like an enchanted architectural skirt, there are buildings great and small – all of them created with the serious scholarly influence of Thomas Anson, who owned the house and was a founder member of the Society of Dilettanti. Establishing the club to promote the study of ancient Greek and Roman architecture and art, Anson and his companions – with such famed figures as James ‘Athenian’ Stuart and Nicholas Revett – practised what they preached with aplomb: going on Grand Tours galore and, over the years, compiling three volumes of The Antiquities of Athens, with drawings of the principal buildings.