Castle Ashby House
Castle Ashby House is a country house in the village of Castle Ashby in the English county of Northamptonshire . It is one of the seats of the Marquess of Northampton .
History, architecture and fixtures
 View and floor plan |
The original castle was built from a mansion in 1306 when Walter Langton , Bishop of Coventry , received permission to fortify his mansion. Sir Gerard Braybroke was from the manor at Castle Ashby.
The construction of the Castle Ashby House, which is still preserved today, was started by Henry Crompton, 1st Baron Crompton in 1574 and his son, who was made Earl of Northampton , continued. Queen Elizabeth I first visited in 1600. Like other houses from this period, the country house was built in an E-shaped floor plan, with a deep gate in the middle and a flight of stairs forming the middle line of the E. This paid homage to Elizabeth I's coronation. When King James I and his queen first visited Castle Ashby in 1605, the house is described as "Lord Crompton's princely mansion" and the household records show that 83 domestic servants, four chaplains, three musicians and a gardener were employed there were.
The writing on the stone parapet around the eaves of the house dates from 1624. It says in Latin:
NISI DOMINUS CUSTOS CUSTODIVERIT DOMUM FRUSTRA
VIGILAT QUI CUSTODIT EAM: NISI DOMINUS AEDIFICAVERIT
DOMUM IN VANUM LABORAVERUNT QUI AEDIFICANT EAM
The words are based on the 127th Psalm : “If God does not build the house, they work in vain, they who build it; if God does not keep the house, the security guard watches in vain ”.
In 1635 an ambitious neo-classical screen was added to the open south side of the courtyard, presumably to create a direct connection between the two wings. His style deviates so much from Palladian rules that it seems unlikely that Inigo Jones designed it. Howard Colvin says his payment of £ 8 to "Cartor Surveyor" from the Earl's accounts in September 1631 could refer to Edward Carter who was Jones' assistant in the construction of St Paul's Cathedral in 1633–1641. The works at Castle Ashby only progressed until the architect Colen Campbell hired them. He said: "The English Civil War is stopping all trades."
While the family was absent to fight for the royalist cause in the civil war, the east wing of the house was set on fire and suffered great damage. A legend tells that an old woman called Elspeth who lived in Parvis at the north entrance to the church was the first to notice the fire and alarmed the village so that the remains of the house could be saved. The traces of the flames can still be clearly seen today on the lintels. The Roundheads looted the interiors of the house and badly damaged the property.
In October 1695, King Wilhelm III visited. the house and introduced the Dutch way of creating avenues. Not only did the house gain in importance, but the views from the windows were also embellished. Within a month of the visit, Lord Northampton had four avenues built, one on each side of the house. It took 25 years for the plants to reach the desired height.
As a result of Capability Brown's “back to nature” philosophy 35 years later, only two of these avenues have survived to this day. Brown, the architect and landscaper, was commissioned in 1760. He not only "changed" the avenues into small groups of trees and removed the Elizabethan gardens, but also enlarged the ponds, which one could overlook from the house, to ornamental lakes, created a Ha-Ha around the park and left the milk room and the temple add to the menagerie. Between 1771 and 1774 the great hall was rebuilt by John Johnson for the 9th Earl.
.JPG)
It wasn't until the 1860s that other major changes were made to the house when Charles Douglas Compton, 3rd Marquess of Northampton , and his wife commissioned architect Matthew Digby Wyatt to make numerous changes to the interior of the house. Most of them were taken back by later generations because they found them ugly. At that time, the terraces around the house with their terracotta balustrades were added and the Italian "Golden Gates" at the front entrance were hung on pillars that Wyatt himself had designed. Unfortunately, Lady Northampton died of tuberculosis before any changes were made, prompted by the painful Latin inscription in terracotta next to the church. There it says: "To Theodosia, the sweetest of all women (...) started in hope, ended in mourning."
In 1867 the architect Edward William Godwin was commissioned to carry out further work. The Italianate Orangery and the Birmingham Show Houses were built according to his designs. The old kitchen garden in between was also transformed into an Italian garden with shaped beds that were divided by book borders and the huge kitchen garden next to it was fenced in. Lodges were built towards the train station and at the entrance to the avenue from Northampton Road. The last-named pair of lodges was demolished in 1869, one year after their construction, because they were too close to each other, and immediately rebuilt in their current position.
Even later, in the time of the 4th Marquess (1877–1897), the Long Gallery, the Knight's Hall, the billiard room and the chapel were fundamentally redesigned. The plans for the redesign of the Long Gallery were drawn by William Burges , but they were not carried out this way, instead Thomas Graham Jackson was commissioned to do it.
Lands
- The house is now a subordinate mansion; Compton Wynyates is the family headquarters. Castle Ashby is now used by the heir of the lands, Daniel Bingham Compton, Earl Compton .
- Castle Ashby's estates, now administered by Lord Compton, are some of the largest in the area. They include lots in many neighboring villages such as Grendon, Denton, and Yardley Hastings .
- The grounds also include a beautiful cricket field in front of the manor house and a 1.6 km long driveway.
- The site is open to the public every day. Not so the house, for which viewing appointments can be made.
- The Greenbelt Festival of Christian Music took place on the site every year from 1984 to 1992 .
- In July 2000 Elton John gave two open air concerts on the grounds in front of the manor house.
- The local theater company The Parish Players , whose members come from some of the neighboring villages, regularly perform plays in the manor house, a tradition that has been going on for several years.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Walter de Gray Birch: Catalog of seals in the Department of manuscripts in the British museum . Printed on behalf of the Trustees, British Museum, Dept. of Manuscripts, 1892, p. 553.
- ↑ a b c History . In: Welcome to Castle Ashby Gardens . Archived from the original on October 20, 2010. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved February 27, 2015.
- ↑ Gervase Jackson-Stops: Country Life. January 30, 1986.
- ^ Howard Colvin: A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840. 3rd edition, 1995. via Edward Carter.
- ↑ It was rebuilt again in 1884. Source: Howard Colvin: A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840. 3rd edition, 1995. via John Johnson.
- ^ J. Mordaunt Crook: William Burges and the High Victorian Dream. John Murray, London 1981, ISBN 0-7195-3822-X (Appendix B).
- ^ Bridget Cherry, Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England. Yale University Press, New Haven CT / London 1973, ISBN 0-300-09632-1 , p. 143. Chapter: Northamptonshire.
Coordinates: 52 ° 13 ′ 28.2 " N , 0 ° 44 ′ 18.6" W.