In the best room of an otherwise unpretentious house in Lincoln is a ceiling ornamented with octagonal plaster coffering modelled on that of the first-century Temple of Bel, at Tadmor (the ancient Palmyra), in Syria. The most frequently copied antique coffering is composed of octagons whose cardinal sides are each adjacent to, and parallel with, the cardinal side of another octagon. The residual space between any four octagons in this arrangement is a small square. In the Palmyrene variant the octagons meet each other only at their angles. The residual space is a four-lobed star, which always (though not of necessity) inscribes a small square.
Most of the Denison family were Leeds wool merchants, but one branch established itself as county gentry on an estate at Ossington, six miles north-north-west of Newark, Notts., bought in 1768. Between them their architectural patronage was extended to leading architects from William Thornton in the early eighteenth century to Ernest George and Peto in the late nineteenth century.
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