What we see today is only a fragment of a much larger Tudor house, which was created in the early 16th century from a number of free-standing medieval buildings.

The previous house was created by William, 1st Lord Sandys, Henry VIII's Lord Chamberlain. He died in 1540.

If you stand on the portico side, facing the huge expanse of lawn that now runs down to the lake, you look over an area once covered by a series of Tudor courtyards.

However, the portrait of Henry VIII in the chapel stained glass and the royal arms in the Oak Gallery panelling still offer reminders of the era when The Vyne was the 'power house' of a great Tudor courtier. Henry VIII was entertained three times here, the last time accompanied by his queen, Anne Boleyn.

The wealth and power of the Sandys family declined during the next hundred years and was finally broken by the Civil War. They supported the King and were fined for their loyalty.

In 1653, the estate was sold to Chaloner Chute, Speaker of the House of Commons in the last Commonwealth parliament. He reduced and modernised the house, commissioning Inigo Jones's most talented pupil, John Webb, to add the classical portico.

Although Jones had used features from classical architecture for state buildings and churches while he was architect to King James I, it is believed that the portico at The Vyne is the first of its kind to be used on an English country house. Chute died in 1659, probably before he could complete his scheme, and little seems to have been done to the house during the next hundred years.

Speaker Chute's great-grandson, John Chute, who inherited The Vyne in 1754, was a close friend of Horace Walpole. He helped design the influential Gothic Revival interiors of Walpole's villa at Strawberry Hill in Twickenham.

Chute was a talented amateur architect, but also a cautious antiquarian who appreciated the complex history of his ancient home. Although he devised various Gothic schemes for The Vyne in keeping with its Tudor origins, his real inspiration was the era of Speaker Chute, who he commemorated by creating the Tomb Chamber. He also conceived the Staircase Hall, a masterpiece of classical spatial planning in the spirit of John Webb.

The Vyne is still full of the mementoes that Chute brought back from his long Grand Tour of Italy in the 1740s.