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Petworth House & Park – National Trust

Explore magnificent Petworth House with it’s extraordinary collection of art and sculpture and stunning state rooms, set in beautiful grounds and parklands. Petworth House was designed to display the taste, lifestyle and artistic patronage of generations who lived here.

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Discover Petworth’s art collection

The art collections of the various owners of Petworth House still remain on display within the house, and together the form one of the finest collections of art and sculpture in the care of the National Trust. In the North Gallery you find works by Van Dyck, JMW Turner, Reynolds and Gainsborough. The Gallery was built by the third Earl of Egremont who lived at Petworth 1751-1837, to showcase his collection, including commissions by JMW Turner.

In the North Gallery you’ll also discover treasures that include an original terrestrial English globe from 1592, believed to be the only surviving one of its kind, as well as an early manuscript of Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’.

North Gallery in Petworth House

Which rooms can you see inside Petworth House?

Inside the magnificent Petworth House you will see interiors which were designed to showcase the wealth and lifestyle of the family, and today are displayed as they would have been during the third Earl’s time. Explore exquisite rooms such as the Chapel and the Marble Hall, once the main entrance to the house, as visiting artists did in their day.

Not to be missed, the Carved Room is famed for its wood carvings by Grinling Gibbons and is where you’ll be able to view some of Turner’s Sussex views which were painted in Petworth in the early 19th Century.

See what life ‘below stairs’ might have been like.

Petworth’s Servants’ Quarters offer a atmospheric peek into life ‘below stairs’ at the house, where once around 40 servants would have lived. You’ll see domestic rooms and Historic Kitchens which in 1829 served in the region of 30,000 guests.

What can you see in Petworth Pleasure Grounds?

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was responsible for the transformation of the formal gardens of Petworth House during the 18th Century, into the Pleasure gardens which you see today.  Explore the monuments and varied planting, on the various paths which loop around the grounds, before venturing further into the Deer Park.

The Rotunda at Petworth Park by John Miller

Can you see deer at Petworth Park?

Petworth’s 700-acre Deer Park was also designed by Capability Brown. Its expansive parkland and far reaching views were the inspiration for many of Turner’s paintings. As you explore here, you can catch glimpses of the park’s historic herd of fallow deer, which have been at Petworth for over 500 years, and were thought to be hunted by King Henry VIII during the 1500s.

Explore more of Petworth’s parklands on the Ancient Trees walk