Long gallery

In architecture, a long gallery is a long, narrow room, often with a high ceiling. In Britain, long galleries were popular in Elizabethan and Jacobean houses. They were normally placed on the highest reception floor of English country houses, usually running along a side of the house, with windows on one side and at the ends giving views, and doors to other rooms on the other. They served several purposes: they were used for entertaining guests, for taking exercise in the form of walking when the weather was inclement, for displaying art collections, especially portraits of the family and royalty, and acting as a corridor.

The windows of the long gallery are evident on the top floor at Astley Hall, Chorley.
The Long Gallery at Ham House; this only has windows at the ends.

A long gallery has the appearance of a spacious corridor, but it was designed as a room to be used in its own right, not just as a means of passing from one room to another, though many served as this too. In the 16th century, the seemingly obvious concept of the corridor had not been introduced to British domestic architecture; rooms were entered from outside or by passing from one room to another.

Hardwick Hall's long gallery, 1811, David Cox the Elder

Later, long galleries were built, sometimes in a revivalist spirit, as at Harlaxton Manor, an extravagant early-Victorian house in Jacobean style, and sometimes to house a large art collection, as at Buckingham Palace, which has a long interior space lit from above, called the Picture Gallery.

Examples

Haddon Hall's long gallery

Notable long galleries in the United Kingdom can be seen at:

References

  1. "The Long Gallery". Birmingham.gov. Archived from the original on 26 February 2006. Retrieved 9 September 2013.
  2. "Long Gallery". Burton Constable Foundation. Archived from the original on 14 May 2014. Retrieved 13 May 2014.
  3. "The home of Charlton House and Greenwich Heritage Centre - Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust (RGHT)". www.greenwichheritage.org.
  4. "Haddon Hall, The Long Gallery". Places to Go. David Ford. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 13 May 2014.
  5. "The Long Gallery". The House. Hatfield House. Archived from the original on 28 April 2014. Retrieved 13 May 2014.
  6. "Long Gallery". Syon House. Retrieved 13 May 2014.

Further reading

  • The 'Long Gallery': Its Origins, Development, Use and Decoration by Rosalys Coope in Architectural History, Vol. 29, 1986 (1986), pp. 43–72+74-84
  • "Gallery" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
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