The Round Drawing Room set within the Great Tower is the second of the suite of crimson-clad parade rooms. It continued the theme begun in the Long Gallery, but with a very different interpretation.

The room the visitors saw was designed by Robert Adam as a drawing room after an earlier attempt to decorate and furnish it as a state bedchamber had been abandoned. Adam's style was immediately identifiable. The symmetry of the room drew the eyes up to the segmented ceiling designed as a copy of the rose window of old St Paul's Cathedral, down to to the oriel window, on to the great chimneypiece and full circle back to the door through which they had entered: from which vantage point they would be invited to look back at the Long Gallery to appreciate from a distance the intricacy and beauty of its overall design.

Above: The Round Drawing Room, watercolour by John Carter. Right: As it is today.