Preston Manor: 'The Entrance Hall' 1896-7.

'The Entrance Hall' is shown as a comfortably furnished 'living hall'. The inventory mentions 'an embonised circular stand', and a 'small ebonised table'. These can be seen to the left and right of the picture. The ceiling light is described thus: 'three light bronzed gas pendants and globes each filled with one electric light burner.'

The writing tables, large red leather screen, red leather chair, and musical clock are all mentioned in Mrs. Macdonald's Will, together with 'the swords, epaulettes and wings belonging to my late husband, Captain George Varnham Macdonald (1828-1881), held a commission in the 19th Regiment, Princess of Wales' Own.

Adjacent to the hall was the stucco Room so called because of its elaborate cornice moulding. In 1905 the wall separating the Hall from the Stucco Room was pierced by a screen of Iconic columns, thus making a large circulation space so favoured by the Edwardians. The view of the Stucco Room (Fig. 4), evidently painted between December 1896 and November 1897, is perhaps the most charming in the series. A sparsely furnished room is set off by a green carpet and pale yellow walls - a remarkably unsombre colour scheme for an upper middle class house of the 1980s. The inventory and Will fail to mention the two most prominent objects: the sideboard and standard lamp. The former is a good example of a Sheraton-style sideboard dating from the 1790s; the latter is of particular interest as it is almost certainly by W. A. S. Benson (1854-1924), the artist and metalworker who became Director of Morris and Company in 1896. A Benson ceiling light survives today in the North East Room.