Chilham Castle

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Front facade of Chilham Castle

Chilham Castle is a mansion with a keep in the village of Chilham between Ashford and Canterbury in the English county of Kent .

history

The polygonal keep of the Norman castle, the oldest building in the village, dates back to 1174 and is still inhabited today. It is said to have been built at the behest of King Henry II . But excavations carried out in the 1920s have revealed that it stands on a much older Anglo-Saxon fortress, possibly from the 5th century. There is also evidence of an earlier Roman settlement in the neighborhood. In June 1320, a splendid reception took place at Chilham Castle, which Bartholomew de Badlesmere hosted for King Edward II and his entourage as they traveled to Dover on their way to France .

The Jacobean building within sight of the "Old Castle" (the donjon) was completed in 1616 on behalf of Sir Dudley Digges . The floor plan is a hexagon with five corners formed by buildings and the sixth free. It has parapets with battlements , groups of brick chimneys and corner towers with square ogee roofs . The Victorian view that this bold but typical house was designed by Inigo Jones is not shared by architectural historians. Indeed, Nicholas Stone , a builder who had worked under Jones' direction at 1616 Holyrood Palace and the Banqueting House in Whitehall , was commissioned to add a burial chapel to the Church of Chilham for Sir Dudley Digges in 1631 and 1632 , the Stones Tomb for Lady Digges should contain. If there were any traces of Jones's construction at Chilham Castle, Nicholas Stone would be considered a candidate. It is nonetheless one of the nicer mansions in the south east of England and offers an exceptional view of the Stour Valley .

Aerial view of the mansion
Chilham Castle: an open rear wing, open to the lawns and terraces

The gardens, which are said to have originally been planned by John Tradescant the Elder , were redesigned twice in the 18th century. First , beautiful views down to the river were created under the London banker James Colebrooke , who had bought the property from the Digges family, and then under Thomas Heron , who had acquired the property from Colebrooke's son Robert . Capability Brown made further amendments, some of which were implemented. In 1794 James Wildman bought Chilham Castle and in 1816 he bequeathed the house to his son James Beckford Wildman , who sold it in 1861 because of his declining income due to the abolition of slavery in the West Indies . Home to plans of Chilham Castle showing some of the major changes to the buildings that architect David Brandon made for Charles Stewart Hardy in 1862 and architect Sir Herbert Baker for mining magnate Sir Edmund Davis and his wife Mary in the early 1920s Victoria & Albert Museum.

The present terracing, modified in the 18th and 19th centuries, leads down to the fish pond, which dates from the time of Charles Stewart Hardy in the 1860s and 1870s. Most of the property's enclosing walls date from the 18th century, although the two gatehouses were not added until the early 1920s. They replaced a completely differently designed example from the 19th century.

The Hardy Children , statue in St. Mary's Church. The book shows an illustration from the fairy tale Babes in the Wood .

From 1949 until his death in 1992, Chilham Castle was owned by the Hon. John Clotworthy Talbot Foster Whyte-Melville Skeffington . Chilham Castle is currently owned by UKIP activist Stuart Wheeler , who lives there with his wife Tessa and their three daughters, Sarah , Jacquetta and Charlotte .

The Chilham Park Equestrian Center is now housed on the site .

In film and television

In 1965 the film The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders with Kim Novak , Leo McKern and Angela Lansbury in the leading roles was shot in the manor house .

In 1985, Chilham Castle played a role as Makepeace's private home in an episode of the police drama Dempsey & Makepeace (filming: summer 1984). The episode was called The Jade Treasure, and most of the hour-long episode was filmed in the mansion and estate.

The property was also featured in the 1989 first episode of Chatsworth TV's ITV adventure game show Interceptor . Chatsworth TV was also responsible for the earlier series Flight Puzzle . A medieval tournament was being held there and a candidate had to participate in order to advance on the show.

In 1994 the mansion appeared in an episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot (ITV) as Simeon Lee's Gorston Hall mansion .

The mansion was also used as the grand home of Cardew Pye (a character) in the TV movie The Shadow Hand ( Miss Marple ) . The entire village also appeared in it.

Individual references and comments

  1. ^ Roa Martin Haynes: King Edward II: Edward of Caernarfon, His Life, His Reign and Its Aftermath, 1284-1330 . McGill-Queen's University, Montreal 2003, p. 120.
  2. ^ Sir Banister Fletcher: A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method , 1901, p. 407, counts Chilham Castle among Jones' works; apparently this is the last architectural historian to do so: “Many buildings are very unlikely to be attributed to Jones. This includes Chilham Castle in Kent with (...) ”; the DNB states: "sv Inigo Jones".
  3. ↑ George Mabbit: Chilham: The Unique Village , 1999 (Retrieved February 18, 2016) ( Memento of the original July 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) 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. alludes to the original plans at the Royal Institute of British Architects . This is obviously a mistake, but there is an unsigned outline plan, obviously very old, in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London today .  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.chilham-parish.org.uk
  4. ↑ Neither does Howard Colvin in A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840 (3rd edition, Yale University Press, 1995), which does not make an attribution for the 17th century Chilham Castle, nor Nicholas Cooper in Houses of the Gentry, 1480-1680 (Yale University Press, 1999), who briefly mentions Chilham Castle on p. 33 and depicts the old castle and manor house (p. 32, Figs. 19 and 20).
  5. ↑ Colvin: Sv Stone, Nicholas (1995); Stone's chapel was demolished in 1863.
  6. ↑ John Newman: Nicholas Stone's Goldsmiths 'Hall: Design and Practice in the 1630s in Architectural History (No. 14 (1971), pp. 30–39, 138–141) discusses Stone's role in spreading Jones' architectural ideas in England.
  7. ↑ His son was Sir John Colebrooke, 1st Baronet .
  8. ↑ Sir Robert's domed mausoleum, designed by Sir Robert Taylor in 1755, attached to the parish church choir, was demolished in 1862. (Colvin: sv Taylor, Sir Robert .)
  9. ^ Henry William Ireland: England's Topographer: Or A New and Complete History of the County of Kent . G. Virtue, 1829. p. 526 . Retrieved February 18, 2016.
  10. ↑ The Chilham Castle website states: “In 1949, Chilham Castle including the remaining 160 acres was auctioned. "Jock" Skeffington bought the mansion for £ 94,000. He lived there with his wife Annabelle McNamara (née Lewis ) until his death in 1992. In 1956, after the death of his father, Skeffington became the 13th Viscount Massereene and Baron of Loughneagh , 6th Viscount Ferrard and Baron Oriel of Collon in Ireland and Baron Oriel of Ferrard appointed in the UK. "
  11. ↑ TV series, Season 2 Episode 2

Web links

Commons : Chilham Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 14 ′ 34.8 "  N , 0 ° 57 ′ 36"  E