barony of Willoughby de Broke. Very little is known about this early house at Compton Verney. A drawing by Wenceslaus Hollar of about 1655, published by William Dugdale, shows a great hall, a long south wing with gabled dormer windows and chimneys looking down to the lake. It had octagonal turrets at either end, kitchens to the left (south west) and a chapel. The first surviving inventory of the house, which dates from the middle of the English Civil War in 1642, describes a house of thirty rooms (including a hall, two parlours, seventeen bedrooms, an armoury and study as well as servants’ quarters and outbuildings), furnished with velvet, tapestry and pictures to a total value of £900. A silk and wool embroidery showing Lucretia’s Banquet may have been one of the original pieces hanging in the Great Hall from this period. Records show that this was sold in 1913 to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Richard and Margaret's only son, Greville Verney (c.1586 - 1642), the 7th Baron Willoughby de Broke and 15th Baron Latimer held tenure of Compton Verney from his father's death in 1630 until his own death in 1642. At this time the house was passed to Greville Verney (1619 - 1648). Upon his death, tenure then passed to Sir Greville Verney (1649 - 1668) and then on to William Verney (1668 - 1683) the 10th Baron Willoughby de Broke who died aged 15 with no heir. The title went into abeyance until William's great-uncle Richard Verney (1621-1711), who inherited the estate in 1683, decided to exert his claim to the barony. In 1695 the House of Lords accepted the claim and Richard Verney became the 11th Baron Willoughby de Broke. Georgian In 1711, George Verney (1661–1728) the 12th Baron Willoughby de Broke, inherited the estate and decided to rebuild the house and re-landscape the gardens. This was a period when medieval houses were being remodelled in the classical style, and new country seats such as the Duke of Marlborough’s Blenheim Palace in nearby Woodstock were being built. George commissioned an extensive reconstruction of the earlier house, whilst preserving much of the plan of the original building. The new design that was commissioned – the basis of the house which we see today – has been convincingly attributed by architectural historian Richard Hewlings to the Oxford master-mason John Townesend (1678–1742) and his son William,