Boughton House

About

Boughton House is a country house in the parish of Weekley in Northamptonshire, England, located about 3 miles (4.8 km) north-east of Kettering. It is situated within an estate of 11,000 acres (4,451.5 ha). The present house was built by Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu (d.1709), immediately after 1683 when he inherited the estate from his father, whose own grandfather Sir Edward Montagu, Lord Chief Justice, had bought it in 1528.

The 1st Duke had served as the Ambassador to France during the 1670s and was much influenced by contemporary French architecture and garden design, especially by the Palace of Versailles, which style he reproduced at Boughton. It is now one of the seats of the builder's descendant Richard Montagu Douglas Scott, 10th Duke of Buccleuch and is famed for its beauty, its collections, and for having survived virtually unchanged since the 17th century. While possessing a medieval core, its exterior evokes a 17th-century French chateau, causing it to be termed The English Versailles (a moniker also applied to Petworth House in Sussex, amongst others).

The magnificence of the collections at Boughton is explained by the ducal family surname Montagu-Douglas-Scott...