Lamport Hall

Lamport Hall is a country house near the village of Lamport in Northamptonshire, approximately eleven miles north of Northampton. The house was built and progressively altered from the 17th century onwards for the Isham family by architects including John Webb and Francis Smith of Warwick, and is notable for its library, which contains one of the most important collections of books and manuscripts in a private house in England. It is now managed by the Lamport Hall Trust and is open to the public. The grounds include formal gardens and the hall has claim to be the site where the first garden gnome was placed in England, introduced by Sir Charles Isham in the 1840s.