Blenheim Palace

The Library

This room, 180 feet (55 metres) long, was designed by Vanbrugh as a picture gallery. At one time Van Dyck's equestrian Charles I (now in the National Gallery) hung at its northern end, where the organ stands today. The organ itself originally stood in the central bay. The famous Sunderland Library, created between 1710 and 1728, was housed in this room until it was sold in 1882. The present library was largely collected by the 9th Duke.

The extraordinarily fine stucco decoration of the ceiling, including the two false domes, is by Isaac Mansfield (1725). If the 1st Duchess had not insisted on lower rates, Sir James Thornhill would most probably have painted allegorical scenes on the ceiling panels. The full-length portraits on the east wall include those of Queen Anne, King William III and the 1st Duke of Marlborough, all by Kneller. Portraits of three of the 1st Duke's daughters - Anne (Countess of Sunderland), Elizabeth (Countess of Bridgwater) and Mary (Duchess of Montagu) - also hang here.

Since Vanbrugh built from east to west, so that the family might live in the east wing while the rest was being finished, this western room was one of the last to be decorated, the work being done to the careful patterns Nicholas Hawksmoor had left behind. Between the lines of Hawksmoor's letters to the Duchess (1722 - 5) plainly runs his anxiety about the finishing of this great room. "Ther's none can judg so well of the designe as the person who composed it," he reminds her in "therefore I should beg leave to take a Convenient time to Slip downe . . ." On evidence of style the marble doorcase too, erected from 1723 to 1725, may well have originated from Hawksmoor's inspired pencil; and indeed, as Laurence Whistler observes, "though Blenheim as a whole is Vanbrugh's, yet there is not one detail of which one could say with certainty that Hawksmoor had not designed it".

Queen Anne commissioned Rysbrack for Marlborough's bust in white marble which now stands in this library's central bay. The pedestal was designed by Sir William Chambers and executed by Richard Hayward in 1772, to support an antique head of Alexander the Great, now in the Great Hall.

The Willis organ, at the north end, was installed by the 8th Duke and his American Duchess, Lilian, in 1891. When the Duke died in the following year, the moving inscription for the front of the organ was found scribbled upon a scrap of paper torn from The Times.

This library once housed the dispatches of John Duke of Marlborough, as well as his wife's correspondence and account of her conduct as Queen Anne's Mistress of the Robes. (They were donated to the British Library in 1974.) There are, too, Sir Winston Churchill's manuscripts for the biography of his father, Lord Randolph; and a delightful book of flower paintings by Susan 5th Duchess of Marlborough (1767-1841), when she was Lady Blandford.

Coronation robes, liveries and uniforms are displayed in the central bay with, in the foreground, the coronets of the present Duke and Duchess, and a cap worn by Queen Anne.

'This Gallery, from one part or other of it," declared Vanbrugh in 1709, "shows everything worth seeing about the Seat.'

Out of the Long Library windows can be seen the 9th Duke's Water Terrace Gardens, a work to which he and Duchene devoted much thought during the nineteen-twenties. The lake seems to run on from the top terrace's edge, a feature which greatly pleased the Duke. "It is certainly a stroke of genius on your part," the Duke told his French architect, "bringing the water-line up to the first terrace. I certainly should not have thought of this idea myself and I doubt any English architect would have."