The porch, chapel and clock tower left standing from Sir Nicholas Bacon's 1560s mansion, later the home of his son Francis Bacon
Open accessfree to visit at any reasonable time
A lavish entrance porch, Doric columns framing the ground-floor doorway and Ionic columns above, was the standout feature of the grand house that Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth I, built here between 1563 and 1568 on land that had once belonged to St Albans Abbey. Its finest details were carved from limestone brought in from as far as Normandy.
Elizabeth I paid a visit in 1572 and, as the story goes, joked about the size of the house; Bacon shot back that it was her own visits that made him seem too grand for it, and duly built a new gallery wing before her next stay in 1577. His son, the philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon, later inherited the house and laid out a water garden built around a banqueting house styled on Roman lines.
The family kept the house in repair into the 1670s, but it fell into disrepair over the following century, and a new Gorhambury House went up nearby in 1784, leaving this one to crumble. What remains today — the porch, part of the hall, the chapel and a corner clock tower — stands on the edge of St Albans, a short walk from the Hertfordshire Way.
