Blickling Hall was built by Anne Boleyn's family, but it is unsure whether she lived there or not. As the second wife of Henry VIII, she certainly didn't survive to enjoy visiting her family there.
This historic house is in the Jacobean style of architecture. It is HUGE! It's in the shape of a U with the main house being the bottom of the U, and then there are long wings that come out on each side of it. The self-guided tour was only of the central section and included the “below stairs” areas of the house staff as it existed in the 1930s.
There were many fine textiles and embroidery pieces, but the most interesting thing for both of us was talking with the librarian who is cataloging all the books in the house. He works in the library in public view so that people can talk to him and he can show the old books to people going through the house.
The main library has 12,000 books, of which he has cataloged about 4,000. He figures that it will be another 7 years for him to finish cataloging the books they know about, but that there are many more books in storage in the attic that have not been looked at in years. We saw a cheaply bound book that was bound with sheepskin and compared that to one bound with tooled leather, gilt designs and coffered pages. That means a design has been put onto the edges of the pages so that it shows up when the book is closed. In this case, the design was punched into the gilt-edged pages witth a punch and small hammer creating a lovely pattern.
By the time we finished talking with him, there was barely enough time to run through the house, avoiding eager-to-talk guides, and get back on the coach.
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