of the family, and this was joined to the main part of the hall by a corridor. Waterhouse also designed the chapel and a clock-house, and rebuilt most of the stabling. The work began in 1870, took 12 years to complete, and cost £803,000 (). The library was long, the dining room with its ante room was long, and the octagonal great hall contained an organ. For the interior, Henry Stacy Marks painted a frieze of the Canterbury Pilgrims for the morning room, Gertrude Jekyll painted panels for the drawing room, and in other rooms were paintings by Gainsborough, Stubbs and Reynolds. Pevsner wrote that it "was an outstanding expression of High Victorian originality", and added "this Wagnerian palace was the most ambitious instance of Gothic Revival domestic architecture anywhere in the country". The Daily Telegraph described it as "one of the most princely and beautiful mansions that these islands contain". During both World Wars, parts of the hall were used as a hospital. In 1943, the Britannia Royal Naval College moved to the hall from Dartmouth when the college there was bombed. It moved back to Dartmouth in 1946, after which the hall was used as an officer cadet training school until the end of National Service in 1958. Dennys Hall and the present hall By 1960 the hall needed repair and decoration, and dry rot was found in the roof. In 1963 Robert Grosvenor, 5th Duke of Westminster, decided to demolish the main part of the Waterhouse building and the private wing, retaining the chapel, clock tower and stables. A new building was commissioned by the Duke who appointed John Dennys, his wife's brother-in-law, as architect. Dennys had earlier worked on Saighton Grange on the Eaton estate. The intention was to build a modern, manageable home. The result was a rectangular, flat-roofed building, faced with white Travertine, its "whiteness [being] a stark contrast to the softness of the Cheshire landscape". Its construction began in 1971, it took less than years to build, and cost £459,000 (). The exterior had a central porte-cochère on the entrance front. The house followed an asymmetrical plan, with two storeys plus a basement containing a swimming pool. A central two-storey hall gave access to the principal rooms, with the main reception rooms being on the first floor. The decor included wall coverings in silk and woodblock floors. As the hall was considered to