who had worked at Blenheim Palace and at many of the new college buildings being built in Oxford. The basic layout of Compton Verney in the 1730s can be reconstructed from the surviving evidence, which includes two inventories dating from this period. It was a courtyard house, entered from the east (as today), through an archway with a cupola in the now-lost east wing. The main apartments were in the west and south wings, with the servants’ quarters on the north side where the service buildings were. The west wing was dominated by the Great Hall, which probably occupied the same site as the original medieval Hall built in the 1440s. The Great Staircase (now lost) led up from the Hall to the main apartments above. The Stable Block Stables were built to the north of the house in 1735 by architect James Gibbs; these can still be seen today. Extensive formal gardens were also added to the north and south, and the main approach to the house ran east to west, with an ornamental canal on the west lawn. A visitor, John Loveday of Caversham, described the house in 1735, writing: After both sons died, the estate was inherited by George’s great-nephew, John Peyto Verney, (1738-1816) subsequently 14th Baron, who was also fortunate enough to inherit the neighbouring estate of Chesterton, thus raising the family’s income to a substantial £4,000 a year. This additional income and his marriage in 1761 to the sister of Lord North (from nearby Wroxton Abbey, Oxfordshire) may have been what encouraged John Peyto Verney to improve the estate and completely remodel the house as George had done. Robert Adam remodelled John commissioned the prominent Scottish neoclassical architect, Robert Adam, to propose alterations to Compton Verney. Adam’s proposed remodelling was much more extensive than anything that had taken place before. His drawings of the ground, first and attic storeys show what was to be retained from the original building and what was demolished. Three of the four sides of the original courtyard house (the east, north and south wings) were to be torn down, and Adam proposed the addition of a portico on the new east front and the reconstruction of the north and south wings, giving the house its present U-shape. The building work for Adam's alterations was carried out from about 1762–1768, supervised by the Warwick architect and mason, William Hiorn, who was