Sutton Place, in the county of Surrey, has for many years been misunderstood following an account of the history of the house published in the late nineteenth century. Long believed to be a precocious and little altered building of the early English Renaissance, the house has a very much more complex history than previously supposed. It is shown here that it has been radically altered at least twice, and that its existing symmetrical facade is probably the result of remodelling in the early eighteenth century, incorporating terracotta detail of c 1525-30. Few documents relating to the history of the house survive from before the mid-nineteenth century, and the account given here derives from an examination of the fabric undertaken during repairs and alterations in 1993.Sutton Place (figs 1 and 2) has long been acclaimed as a pioneering work of the English Renaissance. Frederic Harrison, who lived in the house and was the first to undertake a systematic account of the building, wrote in 1893:1.