David Hockney’s landscape paintings of the Yorkshire Wolds in the 1990s alerted people to the peculiar beauty of the East Riding but the region remains strangely unknown and unvisited, especially the small, scattered villages inland from the coast. Yet the village of Burton Agnes, on the road between Driffield and Bridlington, contains an unexpected jewel: an Elizabethan manor-house which has remained remarkably unaltered since its creation some four hundred years ago. Built between 1598 and 1610 on an estate which itself dates back to the twelfth century, Burton Agnes Hall is a three-storied, perfectly proportioned example of Tudor Renaissance architecture, designed by Robert Smythson, the architect of better known, larger houses such as Hardwick Hall (Derbyshire) and Longleat (Wiltshire)...