Terling Place is a

country house image:Blenheim - Blenheim Palace - 20210417125239.jpg, 300px, Blenheim Palace - Oxfordshire An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a Townhou ...

within the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

Terling Terling (pronounced Ter-ling) is a village and civil parish in the county of Essex, England, between Braintree to the north, Chelmsford to the south-west and Witham to the east. History A settlement at Terling dates back to Roman times. Acc ...

Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

, England, located to the south of All Saints' Church, Terling. It is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, ...

as a

Grade II listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

. It was built for John Strutt, MP between 1772 and 1777 to the designs of John Johnson. The wings, a new porch, a two-storey saloon (with a gallery, and a

frieze In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...

based on the

Elgin Marbles The Elgin Marbles ( ) are a collection of Ancient Greek sculptures from the Parthenon and other structures from the Acropolis of Athens, removed from Ottoman Greece in the early 19th century and shipped to Britain by agents of Thomas Bruce, 7 ...

) and a library were added between 1818 and 1824. The house was redecorated in 1850, when a conservatory was added. It is a Grade II* listed building. From John Strutt the house passed to his eldest surviving son,

Joseph Joseph is a common male name, derived from the Hebrew (). "Joseph" is used, along with " Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the modern-day Nordic count ...

, whose wife Lady Charlotte FitzGerald was created Baroness Rayleigh in 1821. The 3rd Lord Rayleigh established a laboratory in the west wing, which remains to this day. Indeed, he used apparatus from this laboratory to isolate

argon Argon is a chemical element; it has symbol Ar and atomic number 18. It is in group 18 of the periodic table and is a noble gas. Argon is the third most abundant gas in Earth's atmosphere, at 0.934% (9340 ppmv). It is more than twice as abu ...

in the cellar of Terling Place in 1894, for which he was awarded the

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

in Physics in 1904.

References

Country houses in Essex Neoclassical architecture in England Grade II* listed houses Grade II* listed buildings in Essex Residential buildings completed in 1772 Houses completed in 1777 Houses completed in 1821 Strutt family Grade II listed parks and gardens in Essex Terling {{Essex-struct-stub