its use as a domain for the female members of the Pennant household. Much of the furniture is again by Hopper. The room has large gilt mirrors at either end. The author Catherine Sinclair, who visited in the 1830s, described one as "the largest mirror ever made in this country". The Ebony Room is named for its ebony panelling and furniture, although much is in fact ebonised rather than real. Dining Room and Breakfast Room These two rooms served a range of purposes. Their primary function as rooms for consumption alternated depending on whether the Pennants were receiving guests; the larger and more formal Dining Room was used when they were, the Breakfast Room when the family was alone at the castle. Their secondary function was to serve as picture galleries for much of the large collection of paintings assembled by Edward Douglas-Pennant; the other main reception rooms offering little space for picture hanging due to their design and decoration. Grand Staircase Cadw considers the Grand Staircase, "in many ways the greatest architectural achievement at Penrhyn." It took over ten years to construct, rises the full height of the house culminating in a lantern, its only illumination, and is built of a variety of grey stones decorated with "an orgy of fantastic carving". Haslam, Orbach and Voelcker think it Hopper's tour de force and see parallels with the contemporaneous approach in Gothic Literature, "antiquarian and anarchic, intended to play on the emotions as novels and poems were doing in words." Bedrooms The keep provided accommodation for the family, and important guests, arranged as a series of suites on each of its four main floors. In one of these is the slate bed, intended to accommodate Queen Victoria on her visit in 1859, but within which she refused to sleep. Many of the rooms are carpeted with high-quality Axminster Carpets and with walls papered in handmade Chinese wallpaper. Service structures Even by the standards of large, highly-variegated, 19th-century country houses, Penrhyn is exceptionally well provided for through its range of service buildings. Rooms within the house include a butler's pantry, a servants' hall, offices for the estate manager and the housekeeper, and the kitchen, with separate still room, pantry and pastry room. Many functions are allocated their own towers, all designed by Hopper to reinforce the impression of a multi-turreted castle. These include the ice tower, the dung tower and the