Portal:The arts/Featured article/April, 2007

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Holkham Hall.

Holkham Hall, Norfolk, England, is an eighteenth century country house constructed in the Palladian style for Thomas Coke 1st Earl of Leicester by the architect William Kent with advice from the architect and aristocrat Lord Burlington. Burlington's Chiswick House is the prototype for many of England's Palladian revival houses.

Holkham Hall is one of England's finest examples of the Palladian revival style of architecture, the severity of the design being closer to Palladio's ideals than many of the other numerous Palladian style houses of the period. The Holkham estate, formerly known as Neals, had been purchased in 1609 by Sir Edward Coke, the founder of the family fortune. It remains today the ancestral home of the Coke family, Earls of Leicester of Holkham.