Gilling Castle
Gilling Castle is a castle near the village of Gilling East in the English administrative unit North Yorkshire . English Heritage has listed it as a Grade I Historic Building.
history
The Etton family originally lived in the castle and appeared there towards the end of the 12th century. Thomas de Etton had a fortified mansion built in the 14th century - a large tower with an almost square floor plan, the basement of which still forms the core of the building today. 1349 his father had the basic rule of Gilling to the family of his wife, Fairfax transferred, because the Ettons had no male offspring. Thomas Fairfax was able to claim the property in 1489, and his grandson, Sir William Fairfax , succeeded him in 1571 and had the 14th century house rebuilt. He had the new castle built on the medieval walls, leaving the ground floor as it is, adding a first and second floor and adding a stair tower and a bay window on the east side . The parade bedroom was also built at this time.
At the beginning of the 18th century, the then owner, Viscount Fairfax of Emley , had the interior of the castle rebuilt and the two wings added to enclose the western courtyard. Even if these works are often ascribed to John Vanbrugh or James Gibbs , an attribution to the gentleman architect William Wakefield of Yorkshire is based on a note written by Francis Drake. Minor renovations were carried out in the 1750s by John Carr , who was commissioned to renovate the interior of the well-known headquarters of the Fairfax family in York , Fairfax House in Castlegate.
After the death of Mrs Lavinia Barnes (née Fairfax) in 1885, this branch of the family died out and the castle initially passed through different hands and was then bought by Ampleforth Abbey in 1929 . The introductory picture shows the dilapidated building before the reconstruction. The seller, however, kept the paneling and the glass of the parade bedroom and sold them separately. In 1952, with the help of the Pilgrim Trust and many friends and subscribers, these fixtures were brought back to their old location in Gilling Castle.
Today the St-Martins-Ampleforth School, a pre-school for Ampleforth College , is housed. The castle is also designated as a historical building of the first degree .
Parade bedroom
The parade bedroom is the most important room in the house, as Sir William Fairfax , who owned Gilling Castle from 1571–1597, had rebuilt. It survived the 18th century renovations almost unchanged and is a remarkable example of the richness and finesse of interior design from the end of the Elizabethan period . Sir William Fairfax was keen to show his Yorkshire connections in his heraldry and he made such extensive use of the coats of arms to decorate the new space that inventory lists from the 1590s show that there was a book in which the Visitors could see the coats of arms in stucco, paint and glass. The glass has the signature of a Flemish artist and the year 1585, so it is assumed that the room was completed that year.
The room is paneled with English oak, which is divided in height into three large panels in the four corners. The lozenges are filled with overlapping geometric patterns made of ebony and holly. Each one is different from the others and there are almost 100 pieces in this room. Each of the triangular panels is inlaid with flowers.
The mantelpiece bears the Fairfax coat of arms in the middle. The coat of arms of Queen Elizabeth I is attached above . Above the fireplace are four coats of arms - Sir William Fairfax's four sisters and their husbands (Bellasis, Curwen, Vavasour and Roos, each of them impaled with “Fairfax”).
Above the paneling is a frieze painted on panels showing the coats of arms of the gentlemen of Yorkshire. They are arranged in 21 wapentakes . Each wapentake has a tree and the coats of arms of all the gentlemen who lived in that district hang on the branches of the tree.
Sir William Fairfax continued his heraldic decoration in stained glass, which is the prettiest part of the parade bedroom. The south window, the only one preserved almost intact, is dedicated to the heraldry and genealogy of the family of Sir Williams' second wife, the Stapletons . The bay window has suffered and the first row of panes has been restored in colorless glass, probably in the 18th century. This window shows the story of the Fairfax family. These two windows are the work of Bernard Dininckoff , who left his signature and the year 1585, as well as a small portrait of himself in the lower right corner of the south window. The third (east) window has also lost its lower panes and is by a different artist and from a slightly later period. It shows the history of the Constable family . Sir William Fairfax's only son Thomas (later Viscount Fairfax) married Catharine Constable of Burton Constable .
The ribbed stucco ceiling with its compartments and hanging decorations completed the room. Again Sir Williams' enthusiasm for heraldry finds its place, as the underside of the panels formed by the ribs are decorated with lions (from the Fairfax coat of arms), goats and talbots (from the coats of arms of the supporters of the Fairfax and Stapleton families) .
Web links and sources
- Gilling Castle . E-castles.
- Gilling Castle . Pictures of England.
- Gilling Castle . Images of England.
Individual references and comments
- ↑ Such an attribution was not made in: Howard Colvin: A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840 . 3rd edition 1995.
- ↑ "... this precious Mr. William Wakefield Esq., Whose great skill in architecture will always be remembered as long as Duncombe Park and Gilling Castle still stand." From: Francis Drake , 1736, cited in Colvin, 1995: Wakefield , William .
- ↑ Colvin, 1995: Carr, John .
- ↑ Nicholas Cooper: Houses of the Gentry 1480-1680 . 1999. p. 320. quoted E. Rebecah: Inventories made for Sir William and Sir Thomas Fairfax in Archaeologia . No. 48 (1885). Pp. 121-156.
- ↑ Fairfax: six fields: Fairfax, Malbis, Etton, Carthorpe, Ergham and Folyfayt.
- ^ No doubt of Flemish or German origin, he was appointed Freeman of York in 1586 ; Colvin, 1995: Dinninghof, Barnard .
Coordinates: 54 ° 11 ′ 0.1 ″ N , 1 ° 3 ′ 55 ″ W.