Longford Castle
Longford Castle is a castle on the banks of the Avon south of Salisbury in the English county of Wiltshire . It is the seat of the Earls of Radnor and an example of Elizabethan architecture .
In 1573 Thomas Gorges acquired the manor (then called "Langford"), which originally belonged to the Cervington family. The country house that existed there had previously been damaged by fire. Around 1576 Thomas Gorges married Helena Snakenborg , the Swedish- born widow of the Marquis of Northampton and lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I. They had the Longford estate rebuilt as a triangular Swedish castle on the banks of the River Avon. The construction work became very expensive because of problems with the subsoil. Sir Thomas Gorges, who was now governor of Hurst Castle , persuaded his wife to ask the queen to hand over a shipwreck known to him to the defeated Spanish Armada . The gift was granted and the gold and silver that could be lifted from the wreck financed the completion of the castle under the supervision of John Thorpe until 1591. The family lived in the castle for a few years until it was fully completed.
The main building had several floors and was triangular in shape with a circular tower at each corner; the three towers represented the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. There was a chapel , a kitchen wing, various boudoirs and salons, as well as chambers. Cold drinking water was pumped to several floors; there were toilets that were flushed with rainwater. A park, an orchard and a kitchen garden were connected.
In 1717 Longford Castle became the seat of the Bouverie family after Sir Edward des Bouverie bought it from the Coleraines. It is said that Sir Edward fell in love with the castle as soon as he saw it in the valley as he rode by; he had enough money in his saddlebags to make the sale perfect. The following generations of the family had the interior of the castle and the surrounding park embellished. But Jacob, 2nd Earl of Radnor , (1749-1828) commissioned James Wyatt to transform Longford Castle from a reasonably modest castle into a hexagonal palace "for the despair of future generations". He had one of the Elizabethan towers demolished and replaced with a larger one of his own, adding two more towers and connecting them all together. The palace concept was never completed. Jacob, 4th Earl of Radnor , (1815-1889) oversaw the last major changes to the architecture of the castle that Anthony Salvin made . These included the construction of a second inner courtyard, the spanning of the central inner courtyard with a dome and the addition of a tower with a square floor plan, which can be seen on the aerial photo.
The castle is listed by English Heritage as a First Grade Historic Building.
It is now the seat of William Pleydell-Bouverie , 9th Earl of Radnor , and is open to the public 28 days a year as part of pre-booked tours.
Other uses
- Longford Castle was the template for the "Castle of Amphialeus" in Sir Philip Sidney's The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1580, published 1590)
- 1914–1918 the castle served as a hospital.
- 1939-1945 the castle was occupied by British and US troops. Montgomery, Mark Clark, and Creagh were quartered here.
- An aerial view of Longford Castle can be seen at the end of the film Princess Suddenly as Castle of Genovia.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Daily Telegraph: Obituary: The Earl of Radnor . August 14, 2008. Retrieved July 6, 2016.
- ↑ a b c d e f Jacob Radnor: A Huguenot Family 1536-1889 .
- ^ Longford Castle . Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved July 6, 2016.
- ^ Guided tours of Longford Castle . The National Gallery. Archived from the original on March 20, 2015. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 23, 2015.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 2 ′ 21 ″ N , 1 ° 45 ′ 24.9 ″ W.