a brewery or, as at a Basildon, a laundry. This meant that at Basildon, hot food "en route" to the dining room had to cross an open courtyard in all weathers, be taken through the ground floor of the mansion up the back stairs, cross the second floor and then be laid behind a colonnaded screen in the dining room before being finally served. During the modernisations at Basildon in the 1950s, Lady Iliffe had a new and state of the art kitchen installed on the piano nobile in the former bedroom allotted to former ladies of the house (12 on first floor plan). This solved the problem of hot food. The new kitchen is now open to the public as a nostalgic 1950s set museum piece, containing kitchen appliances and food stuffs and packaging contemporary to the mid 20th century. This is shown in the same fashion as the remainder of the house. The Green Drawing Room is between the Octagon Drawing room and the new kitchen. It had always previously been used as a breakfast room or small dining room, less formal than the Dining Room itself. When the National Trust took over management of the house, the room was refurnished and displayed as a drawing room. The room has a moulded plaster neoclassical ceiling and is hung with green silk which was formerly curtains at Englefield House, Berkshire. The white marble fireplace in this room is one of the few original to the house. The second floor The second floor was designed to be of considerably less importance than the piano nobile below, which is indicated externally by the smaller windows. However, unlike in a Baroque house of just a few years earlier, it was not reserved for lesser guests, children and servants, as is evident by its approach from a monumentally grand staircase. Basildon and its future At the time of its building, the design of Basildon was already old-fashioned. From 1750s onwards large houses were being built without a rustic, and having the principal floor on the ground was becoming commonplace. Basildon, with its piano nobile, large portico denoting status, and main facade falsely elongated by fenestrated walls, was never innovative architecture, but, like many other houses, was built to bolster the status of its owner, the newly rich Sir Francis Sykes, keen for a political career. Basildon is not one of the great houses