[Baron Halifax' Residence] This New Design of my Invention is most humbly Inscribed to the Rt. Honble. the Earl of Halifax..

London: Published by Colen Campbell, 1725. Engraved by Henry Hulsbergh. On laid paper. Two repaired tears in the bottom margin, well outside image. From Colen Campbell's "Vitruvius Britannicus, or the British Architect."

Vitruvius Britannicus is one of the great eighteenth-century English architectural works. It illustrates, in a way, the social revolution that occured in the first half of the 18th century under the governance of Robert Walpole. Noble country estates as grand as any in continental Europe appeared throughout the land. These are buildings of Classical formality and grandeur, implying familial and imperial permanence, vast, symmetrical palaces that preside over their surroundings. Colen Campbell (1676-1729) was a descendant of the Campbells of Cawdor Castle in Scotland. As an architect, he favored the Palladian style and, through his own designs and withVitruvius Britannicus , helped establish it as the dominant style in great buildings, both public and private, in England. This design for the Earl of Halifax was Campbell's own.