BOUGHTON HOUSE

 

Venture through the lavish Baroque State Rooms, wander the sophisticated French-inspired Gardens & Landscape, and behold the historic Montagu Monuments.

Boughton House

Boughton, sometimes described as ‘the English Versailles’, began life as a monastery. In 1528 the lawyer Edward Montagu bought the building from St Edmundsbury Abbey and built a manor house onto its great hall. Inheriting Boughton in 1683, Ralph Montagu, later 1st Duke of Montagu, former British ambassador to Paris, brought French architectural influences to Boughton and a touch of Versailles to the English countryside, and his son transformed the gardens, building an elegant canal in the park.

 

A century later, Lady Elizabeth Montagu married Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, a descendant of Charles II via his illegitimate son James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, and the house was absorbed into the enormous Buccleuch empire. With the duke preoccupied with his larger Scottish estates, Boughton entered its deep sleep, unused by the family in any meaningful way until the early 20th century. It remains one of the current duke, Richard Montagu Douglas Scott, 10th Duke of Buccleuch and 12th Duke of Queensberry’s homes today, and is rightly beloved by the family, who are one of the largest landowners in the country.