The chimneypiece, with Gothic-fretted pilasters and frieze flowered in quatrefoils within an entwined-ribbon guilloche, is likely to have been introduced to Chillinton Castle, Northumberland by Charles Bennett, 3rd Earl of Tankerville (d.1767) and M.P. for Northumberland, at the time that he was aggrandising the ancient castle in the 1750's. Its antiquarian ornament relates to chimneypiece patterns in William Pain's, The Builder's Companion and Workman's General Assistant, 1758, as well as to chimneypieces designed in the 1760s for Bitterley Court, Shropshire by the architect Thomas Farnolls Pritchard (d.1777).