The Holly Bedroom

The Holly Bedroom is one of the rooms, next to the Drawing Room, that John decorated with the antique tapestries he inherited with the house. It is one of the two tapestry interiors from John's time that have survived, and appears much as it did in his lifetime. The tapestries in this room are Flemish, and date from the 1600s. They would have been imported to England and hung at Doddington Hall by John's ancestors. A tapestry is a woven picture. These tapestries depict peaceful scenes of country life, including a man hunting with a falcon, a man playing bagpipes while a dog dances on its hind legs nearby, and an itinerant pedlar carrying his wares in a pack on his back. The other surviving tapestry room - the Yellow Bedroom (not shown here) - displayed tapestries showing scenes from the Trojan Wars. The tapestries in both rooms were found, through conservation work, to have been in poor condition when John Delaval had them hung during his renovations. All had been altered, reconfigured and repaired, for example by stitching pieces of tapestry together, and sewing on patches to repair holes.