in 1768 and a year later married Theresa Robinson. Her husband's interests included drinking and gambling but Theresa, her sister, Alice and her brothers Frederick and Thomas took an interest. They advised on the embellishment of the house via correspondence with Theresa. She is crediited with making Saltram a "showpiece of South West England. The six years until Theresa's tragic early death are considered Saltram's golden age. The house owns ten portraits by Joshua Reynolds. Robert Adam was commissioned in 1768 to create the saloon and the library (The library is now the dining room). Adam, created everything from the door handles to the huge plasterwork ceiling. Thomas Chippendale made the furniture and Matthew Boulton made the four candelabras. She and her husband spent £10,000 on the saloon. Not to be confined to the inside of the property, Boringdon also commissioned Nathaniel Richmond to lay out the present parkland which surrounds the house. Decline The third John Parker, later known as Earl of Morley inherited the house just 20 years after his father and took longer again to make any major changes to the house. However, in 1819 he employed the Regency architect John Foulston to add the Entrance Porch and create the present Library out of two smaller rooms. His second wife, Frances, continued to develop the artistic legacy of the family by producing her own watercolours and Old Master copies which are on show in the house still. The Earl of Morley was ambitious and attempted to develop several industrial and engineering projects on the estate, but many of these were unsuccessful and the family fell heavily into debt. Transference to National Trust Money was so short that the third Earl of Morley was forced to leave the house between 1861 and 1884, and was only able to return after selling several of the estate's most valuable paintings. The family's fortunes picked up in 1926 when the 4th Earl of Morley inherited several other estates although the good times were short lived as the war brought damage from enemy bombing and eventually in 1951 the house and its contents were accepted in lieu of death duties by H.M. Treasury, which transferred them to the National Trust, which remains in charge to this day. Landscape The silting up of the Laira means that once the view to the west was of a muddy estuary for all but the top