The Bury

The Bury

Country house built in the early 18th century, around 1740, for Edward Gilbert (1680-1762), who succeeded to the estate in 1724 and rebuilt the chancel of the Parish Church in 1727, when he was recorded as 'of the Bury'.

The north façade, interior of the north hall, and the polygonal flanking wings bear the date '1767' on two rainwater heads, one on the south-east inscribed with 'MB' for Mary Bowes, daughter of Edward Gilbert and widow of George Bowes of Gibside, Durham. This phase is attributed by Pevsner, following Peter Leach, to James Paine the Elder (1716-1789), who had designed the mausoleum for George Bowes in 1760-1761 and was engaged on Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire, around 1760-1770.

A large south range was added in 1887 by Castings for Lord Glamis, replacing a two-storey service wing. The west drawing room dates to 1938, designed by Louis de Soissons. The building is of red brick with stone dressings and slate roofs; the 19th-century portions have red brick with black brick diaper and steep slate roofs.

The original house is a three-storey, five-window-wide square structure facing north with a pitched roof expressed as a front pediment. When the symmetrical two-storey polygonal wings were added to east and west in 1767, projecting to the north, the front was refaced. The entrance is now flanked by an irregular two-storey 19th-century range running southward with a three-storey south cross-wing terminated at the east by a four-storey tower.

The north front displays tuck-pointed red brick with a chamfered stone plinth, a painted stone plat-band at first-floor level across the wings and centre, and a second-floor band across the centre at the level of the painted modillioned eaves cornice of the wings. The centre has a painted cornice and pediment. The windows are recessed sashes with flat gauged arches, stone sills, and plastered reveals. The second floor has three-over-three panes; first-floor windows in the centre were cut down in the early 19th century to nine-over-nine panes; ground-floor windows have six-over-six panes with a central half-glazed door in a triangular pedimented Ionic door case.

The flanking wings have three-over-three pane sash windows to the first floor and six-over-six to the ground floor. The canted projections with reserved sides on the north side of both wings and on the east side of the left-hand wing feature a central round-arched recess with a moulded round-arched head to a sash window, impost blocks, a sill extended across the recess, and a baluster below the opening. Early 18th-century flush-box sash windows with segmental arches survive on the west side of the main block beyond the projecting wing.

The east front has a pedimented entrance porch on Tuscan decorated columns with Bowes-Lyon arms in the pediment. A projecting gabled section to the right incorporates an oriel window in its centre. A half-octagonal bay projects to the left. Windows are mullioned and transomed with leading and flat gauged arches. The parapeted tower has a two-storey balustraded oriel. A high garden wall with rusticated piers extends south and then west, terminating in a Tudor-arched gateway.

The interior of the north range contains a segmental decorated plaster vaulted hall occupying the entire centre, with apses at each end screened by columns in Adamesque manner. The Music Room to the west has a moulded dado and cornice, damask-hung walls, a semi-circular bay to the north, and a fireplace surround carved with flutes. The more elaborate drawing room in the north-east pavilion features semi-circular bays to the north, south, and east, with elaborate plasterwork and a chimneypiece following the concave curve of the south bay, decorated with tapering pilasters. The ceilings are similar to Paine's work at Brocket Hall.

The extensive formal woodland garden to the north features three main alleys radiating from the house entrance in the French manner.