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The Marble Staircase

Hundreds of glittering stars adorn the vaulted ceiling high above the Marble Staircase.

This spectacular design perhaps encapsulates the convoluted building style at Mount Stuart. Its creation was a true labour of love, with the essential structure completed in 1884, but the carving of the frieze and pillar capitals still unfinished at Bute’s death in 1900.

The stained glass windows display in heraldic form, the lineage of Bute’s direct family ancestors – Lord Bute’s sketched ideas for these windows still survive in the family archives.

Cradled in the spandrels of the arches are wall paintings depicting the six days of creation from the Book of Genesis: in the final panel - the creation of man and the beasts - the figure of a wallaby has been inserted in honour of the colony of these creatures which the animal-loving 3rd Marquess introduced to Mount Stuart in the 1870s.

Click here for a virtual tour of the Marble Staircase
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