The history of Balls Park begins with Sir John Harrison, a wealthy financier and customs official, who constructed the house between 1637 and 1640, possibly to the designs of Nicholas Stone, the king’s master-mason.
A consistent private patron over a period of many years was Sir William Paston, who was modernizing his Elizabethan seat at Oxnead, Norfolk.
•
The obvious European, and thus Catholic, design of the porch was later to cause problems for the porch's patron Archbishop Laud because at the centre of the scrolled pediment was placed a statue of the Virgin and Child, a composition considered to be Roman Catholic idolatry, and later used against the Archbishop at his trial for treason in 1641 following the grand Remonstrance.
Rolling Stone | Oliver Stone | Sharon Stone | Nicholas II of Russia | Saint Nicholas | Stone Cold Steve Austin | Queens of the Stone Age | Nicholas I of Russia | The Stone Roses | Joss Stone | Stone Temple Pilots | Stone Age | Nicholas II | Nicholas I | Nicholas Nickleby | Nicholas Ray | Nicholas Roerich | Nicholas Briggs | St. Nicholas | Sly Stone | Nicholas of Cusa | Nicholas Longworth | Stone Sour | Nicholas Pegg | Nicholas | Lucy Stone | Eli Stone | Bush Stone-curlew | Nicholas Parsons | Nicholas Lyndhurst |
Nicholas Stone the master mason who worked with Inigo Jones recorded Sir David to be his 'great good friend' and 'very noble friend' when he paid for the monument of Sir Thomas Puckering, Adam Newton's brother-in-law, at St. Mary's Warwick and Adam Newton's own tomb at St. Luke's Charlton.