Wollaton Hall: Context three-quarter view from the northeast

Sir Francis Willoughby began a great house at Wollaton, near Nottingham, in 1580. Robert Smythson became the surveyor, and, having moved to the Midlands, he remained at Wollaton for the rest of his life. The combination of Willoughby's ambition and learning and Smythson's genius produced one of the great houses of Elizabethan England, a house that effectively set the standard for other powerful Midlands patrons. Remodelling was carried out by Wyattville in 1801 and continued intermittently until the 1830s. Today it is a natural history museum.