The 'exuberant Elizabethan frontispiece, which was executed for Sir Piers Legh VII in about 1570 ... one of the earliest instances in England of the classical orders being superimposed on a tower in this way. There are strong similarities in the detail to old Somerset House in London, built twenty years earlier, but the mason was sufficiently provincial to disregard the rules of classical architecture, particularly by placing a column above the middle of the central pediment' (Rothwell, <i>Lyme Park</i> 6).
The scrolled pediment and Baroque statue of Minerva above were early 18th c. additions.
The 'exuberant Elizabethan frontispiece, which was executed for Sir Piers Legh VII in about 1570 ... one of the earliest instances in England of the classical orders being superimposed on a tower in this way. There are strong similarities in the detail to old Somerset House in London, built twenty years earlier, but the mason was sufficiently provincial to disregard the rules of classical architecture, particularly by placing a column above the middle of the central pediment' (Rothwell, <i>Lyme Park</i> 6).
The scrolled pediment and Baroque statue of Minerva above were early 18th c. additions.