Mentmore Towers (Rothschild Mansion), Great Hall

Mentmore Towers is a 19th century English country house in the village of Mentmore in Buckinghamshire. The house was designed by Joseph Paxton and his son-in-law, George Henry Stokes, in the revival Elizabethan and Jacobean style of the late 16th century called Jacobethan, for the banker and collector of fine art, Baron Mayer de Rothschild as a country home, display case for his collection of fine art and as an assertion of status. The mansion has been described as one of the greatest houses of the Victorian era. In keeping with the contents intended to be displayed within, the interiors take their inspiration principally from the Italian Renaissance, although the house also contains drawing rooms and cabinets decorated in the gilded styles of late 18th century France. Historically it was first known simply as 'Mentmore'. The design is closely based on that of Robert Smythson's Wollaton Hall. It is a Grade 1 listed building.Mentmore was the first of what was to become a virtual Rothschild enclave in the Vale of Aylesbury, as later, other members of the family built houses at Tring in Hertfordshire, Ascott, Aston Clinton, Waddesdon and Halton. Since 1846 Baron Mayer de Rothschild had been slowly buying land in the area.