Issue 48 AUG 25 web - Flipbook - Page 24
The Creation of Pandora
by Sir James Thornhill,
Wollaton Hall
Chroma Conservation were approached to assess the condition of the ceiling in the South State Staircase
at Wollaton Hall in Nottingham in 2022 and in 2024 (working with the conservation architects Purcell)
their conservation treatment began. Upon completion, as a result of their efforts, in June 2025 this
incredible building qualified to be removed from Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register.
Built in the 1580s, Wollaton Hall has been home to
industrialists, barons and even Batman, where the
house was used in the Dark Knight Trilogy of films by
Christopher Nolan. Wollaton Hall is a classic prodigy
house dubbed “the architectural sensation of its age”.
The ceiling was painted around 1700 by Sir James
Thornhill, England’s greatest Baroque decorative artist.
Thornhill famously went on to decorate the Painted Hall
of the Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich, started in
1707, and the dome inside St. Paul's Cathedral in 1715,
but his career started at Wollaton Hall.
Built between 1580 and 1588 for Sir Francis Willoughby
(who was not a courtier but paid for it with the proceeds
of coal mining) and was designed by the Elizabethan
architect, Robert Smythson, who had by then completed
Longleat in Wiltshire and was to go on to design
Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire.
The ceiling painting depicts The Creation of Pandora
who, according to Greek mythology, was the first mortal
woman, formed out of clay by the gods.
The Titan Prometheus was once assigned the task of
creating mankind. He was later unhappy with the mean
lot imposed on them by the gods and so stole fire from
heaven. This angered Zeus and he commanded the other
gods to create the first woman Pandora, endowing her
with beauty and cunning. He then had her delivered to
Prometheus' foolish younger brother Epimethius as a
bride. Zeus gave Pandora a storage jar (pithos) as a
wedding gift which she opened, releasing the swarm of
The general plan of Wollaton is similar to these, and was
widely adopted for other houses, but the exuberant
decoration of Wollaton is distinctive, and it’s possible that
Willoughby played some part in creating it. The style is
an advanced Elizabethan with early Jacobean elements,
some even say it’s Fantasy Gothic.
Photograph by Andy Marshall
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Conservation & Heritage Journal
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