ABSTRACT
Charlotte Lybbe Powys was the daughter and heiress of a London surgeon and Berkshire landowner, John Girle. Her husband, Philip, owned an estate at Hardwick in south Oxfordshire, and her journals, published as Passages from the Diaries of Mrs Lybbe Powys chronicle her social life and her travels in England. The ceiling and ornaments round the panels all display such an elegant simplicity of neatness that Powys almost prefer this to any room at Fawley Court. On the left hand of the saloon is a large billiard-room hung with the most beautiful pink India paper, adorn’d with very good prints, the borders cut out and the ornaments put on with great taste by Broomwich, and the pink colour, besides being uncommon, has a fine effect under prints. There are numberless other more common rooms, but Mrs. Freeman’s own dressing-room must be mention’d as m.
