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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Ickworth
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(5km/3m SE of Bury St Edmunds) One of the strangest of English houses, built from 1795 for an improbable character – the 4th earl of Bristol (1730–1803), an avid collector and traveller (any Hotel Bristol on the Continent is named after him), who was simultaneously the free-spending and free-thinking bishop of Derry in Ireland. The great oval rotunda which is the central feature of Ickworth was to a design by an Italian architect (Mario Asprucci), modified by Francis and Joseph Sandys. The earl, who died before the completion of the house in 1829, had intended to live in the state rooms of the rotunda and to keep his art collection in the wings which are linked to it by long curving passages.
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