Ashburnham House

Your correspondent of this morning, who states that `the chief part of what was remarkable in the interior (of this house) wasdestroyed by a former Dean and Chapter' must surely have seen the interior from the exterior. Last summer I had the pleasure of seeing it in the way that most mortals see an interior, and I must assert as a fact, that the interior of the hall and staircase (with the quite remarkable `lantern'), together with the reception rooms, was still `remarkable' for something unusual in London, which I took to be architectural beauty, and which the architects and archaeologists, including the late Dean Stanley, who had been kind enough to ask me to accompany them, thought was still in pretty much the same condition as it had been left by its original builders.

Letter to the Daily News, 28 November 1881.