Knowsley Hall and the Derby Collection

Curator Stephen Lloyd will take us on an illustrated tour of the history of Knowsley Hall and its astonishing art collection in this online presentation. The home of the Stanley family and the earls of Derby since 1385, Knowsley Hall was gloriously restored by its current owners, Edward and Caroline Stanley, 19th Earl and Countess of Derby, between 1999 and 2000. Knowsley is also home to the Derby Collection, one of the great private aristocratic art collections in Britain. The collection features Old Master paintings, family portraits, furniture, ceramics, horseracing silver, and a celebrated collection of natural history watercolors, including those by Edward Lear, who wrote his famous nonsense limerick, The Owl and the Pussycat, at Knowsley Hall in the 1830s. Between the 16th and the 19th centuries, the Stanley family produced a number of exceptional earls of Derby. Ferdinando, the 5th Earl, was the patron of Shakespeare’s first acting company; James, the 7th Earl, was beheaded by Cromwell’s Parliament for his loyalty to the crown during the Civil Wars; the 12th Earl founded the Derby Stakes horserace for colts at Epsom in 1780; while the 14th Earl, a three-times prime minister, in 1833 passed the Act of Parliament that abolished slavery in the British Empire.