Material Maketh Man: Sir John Delaval and the Doddington Hall Tapestries

You’re looking at Doddington Hall’s East front, having just been admitted through the gatehouse. The house is 6 miles from Lincoln and was built around 1595, probably by architect Robert Smythson (of Hardwick Hall fame). It’s now privately owned and partially open to the public.

Doddington has never been sold, and has never been emptied, so it’s a real treasure trove for visitors and researchers alike. It’s crammed to the rafters with ‘material histories’ (the stories that objects from the past can tell us about those who owned them).

John Hussey Delaval owned Doddington between 1759 and 1808, having inherited it from his mother’s family. When he moved in, he commissioned widespread renovations, including adding a grand new staircase, and reconfiguring three rooms decorated with antique tapestries.

John inherited seven rooms with tapestries, but he reduced this to three by 1760, keeping only the best quality of the tapestries available. He clustered those rooms around a new and fashionable first-floor drawing room – a luxurious space for entertaining and influencing guests.

Two tapestry rooms remain at Doddington Hall today. The hangings in both rooms date from the 1600s and depict scenes of country life, and moments from the Trojan Wars respectively. Conservation showed that most had been heavily altered, repaired, and reconfigured in the 1760s.

In fact, only 4 out of the 17 pieces of tapestry in these rooms were not heavily altered. Some tapestries were cut into large sections and stitched to others to cover bare wall. Others were cut into smaller pieces, that were then used as patches to repair damaged tapestries.

This room was designated as the ‘best bedchamber’, for use by guests. The rural life tapestries in here that were in the best condition (those with the fewest alterations) were hung on the wall that was most clearly visible from the bed – the room’s defining piece of furniture.

The tapestries in a poorer condition were repaired with patches cut from those in the Yellow Bedroom. Where possible these repairs were concealed, for example by placing the joins behind furniture, or in corners that 18^th century candlelight would have lit only dimly.

Where this wasn’t possible, repairs were disguised. Here, a large hole in a tapestry has been concealed by nailing a matching piece over it. The patch’s bottom edge has been folded up carefully, so that the scroll design aligns as closely as possible with the tapestry beneath.

Located beyond the drawing room, this bedroom was in a part of the house used by the Delaval family rather than their guests. Conservation showed that the Trojan War tapestries here were of a poorer quality, and that they had been sacrificed to repair the Holly Bedroom tapestries

As before though, the most complete tapestry appears on the wall that was best lit, and most visible from the bed. This shows that the position each tapestry was hung in was carefully managed during John’s renovations, in order to amplify their strengths and hide their faults.

The alterations that John ordered to these two tapestry rooms reveal that he saw his house as a showcase of his social standing. Tapestries in the ‘best bedchamber’ were repaired by sacrificing tapestries in a family bedroom, but not vice versa, showing the former’s precedence. 

The relationship between rooms is also notable. Heirloom tapestries in the bedrooms showed that John came from an established landed family with inherited wealth, while an up-to-date drawing room next door showed off his fashionable tastes, funded by his own, independent wealth.