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Please note that we are closed on Monday and Tuesdays. Our opening hours are Wednesday – Sunday, 10am – 5pm and Bank Holiday Mondays, 10am – 5pm.

Due to predicted high winds some areas of the grounds will be closed on Wednesday 16 April. This will cause some parts of the Easter Trail to be moved to different locations. We will be monitoring this and will open these areas back up when it is deemed safe to do so.

Portraits
and
Miniatures

Thomas Knyvett (c. 1539-1616) was a member of an important East Anglian landowning family who lived at Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk.

He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1578 and became High Sheriff of Norfolk the following year.

This portrait was painted in about 1569, when Thomas was an ambitious young courtier, married to Muriel Parry, daughter of Thomas Parry, comptroller of the Queen’s household. Knyvett is portrayed with his wrist casually resting on his sword hilt – this highlights his right to bear arms, an important signifier of social status.

He is fashionably dressed in a white doublet slashed to reveal a ‘blackwork’ embroidered shirt beneath.

The painting is unsigned but because of its distinctive style it has been attributed to an artist known as the ‘Master of the Countess of Warwick’, who was active in England in the later 1560s, and probably came from the Netherlands.