The earliest staircase would probably have occupied only one side of the tower, leaving room for a small chamber at each level. That arrangement was swept away in 1816 and replaced by an open stairway of Neo-classical form, which was superseded in its turn by the present oak-balustered Staircase of 1850-2. In the Staircase Hall, Barry’s Gothic stone screen is enriched with ancestral shields and the alliterative motto adopted by the Kay family, Kynd Kynn Knawne Kepe (‘Kind Friends Know and Keep’). The colourful floor tiles are Minton, mostly designed by Pugin for the Houses of Parliament. Barry’s plate-glass windows of 1852 are hung with Morton ‘Sardinian pattern’ curtains dating from the 1920s. The longcase clock made c.1775 by John Fletcher of Barnsley, using an existing movement of c.1750 and a brass dial of 1760 by Joseph Donisthrop; the carving on the oak case is Victorian. The portraits on the first-floor landing are of Sir Ughtred and Lady Kay-Shuttleworth, painted by Jon Collier in 1884.
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