Althorp Estate

General information

Althorp has been home to the Spencer family for nearly 500 years, and contains a fascinating variety of pictures, furniture and ceramics, as well as boasting some fine interiors. Like many great country houses, it has benefited from the discriminating and varied collecting of generations of occupants, their marriages and chance provisions.

But the Spencers have also had the knack of going to the right people; its collection of portraits is particularly fine, and justly famous. As a record of a family, and as a record of English portraiture, it is outstanding. The roll-call of names - Rubens, Van Dyck, Reynolds, Gains-borough - will be familiar to everyone. But there are numerous rare and beautiful paintings by lesser-known artists which will appeal to casual visitors and connoisseurs alike.

In the decorative arts, from carpets to candelabra, there is much which is distinguished. Here are reflected not just the enthusiasms and idiosyncrasies of their collectors, but invariably the course of the arts and the epochs in which these pieces are found.

Likewise, the house itself is not the product of any one period, but has changed over the years. Its re-modellings naturally show the prevailing taste of the time, woven into a broader synthesis. The true medium for harmony, however, has been the house's continual ownership and occupation by the same family.