Introduction

Penshurst Place, near Tonbridge in Kent, was originally built in the fourteenth century by a wealthy merchant and Lord Mayor of London, Sir John de Pulteney, and it has been the major residence of the Sidney family since 1552. At the heart of the house are three spectacular rooms: the original Baron's Hall (completed 1341), the Solar or State Dining Room (originally the withdrawing room of the medieval house), and the Long Gallery (completed 1607). The huge Baron's Hall, with soaring chestnut vaulting sixty feet above its stone flooring, is probably the most magnificent fourteenth-century English domestic room still in existence and offers a lasting monument to Pulteney's wealth and social status. Decorated in later Tudor style, the Solar and Long Gallery commemorate through their rich collection of family portraits the lives and public prominence of the Sidneys. As the contrasts between the pre-and post-Reformation elements of Penshurst's external architecture and interior decoration illustrate, generations of Sidneys have placed particular emphasis in their guardianship of this great house upon preserving the memory of both its illustrious royal history before their ownership and its focal role in the development of their own familial identity.