ABSTRACT
Daniel Defoe described the splendour of the interiors at Cannons soon after their completion: ‘the lodgings are indeed most exquisitely finished, and if I may call it so, royally furnished’ (published 1724-26).1 These same interiors, however, were also strongly criticised for their tastelessness. The aesthete and writer Horace Walpole (1717-97) who, in 1791, inherited Houghton Hall, Norfolk, declared after his visit to Cannons in July 1744 that: ‘Cannons was always the great standard of bad taste: ‘tis now the ruins of it’.2 In addition, Alexander Pope was believed to be referring to the ornate dining room at Cannons in his poem about ‘Timon’s Villa’ (see pp. 153-62) where:
The rich Buffet well-colour’d serpents grace, And gaping Tritons spew to wash your face. Is this a dinner? this a Genial room? No, ’tis a Temple, and a Hecatomb.3
