Wardour Castle

Ruins of Old Wardour Castle

Wardour Castle , also Old Wardour Castle , is a ruined castle on the border of the parishes of Tisbury and Donhead St Andrew , about 15 miles west of Salisbury in the English county of Wiltshire . The castle was built in the 1390s and partially destroyed in the English Civil War in 1643–1644 . The ruin is now managed by English Heritage and is listed as a historical building of the first degree. It is open to the public.

history

The castle was built on land that had previously belonged to the De St Martin family. When Sir Lawrence de St Martin died in 1385, it passed to John Lovell, 5th Baron Lovell , for reasons no longer known . It was built from locally extracted Tisbury Greensand , a green sandstone . The builder was William Wynford , and Baron Lovell had received permission to build it from King Richard II in 1392 . The construction was inspired by the hexagonal castles, which were then modern in parts of mainland Europe, particularly France . But the peculiar six-sided system is unique in Great Britain, as is the inclusion of several separate guest escapes.

After the decline of the family Lovell after them in the Rose wars , the Lancaster House had supported the castle until 1544 Sir was confiscated in 1461 and went through the hands of various owners, Thomas Arundell of Lanherne bought. The Arundells were an old and well-known Cornish family whose main branches were based on the manors of Lanherne , Trerice , Tolverne and Meandarva in Cornwall. The family owned several properties in Wiltshire. The castle was again confiscated when Sir Thomas Arundell of Lanherne, a devoted Catholic , was executed for high treason in 1552. In 1570 the property was bought back by his son, Sir Matthew Arundell , later High Sheriff of Dorset and Custos Rotulorum of Dorset . The Arundell family later became known as one of the most active Catholic landowners during the English Reformation , under the leadership of Thomas Arundell, 1st Baron Arundell of Wardour . As such, of course, they were royalists in the English Civil War . During this conflict, Thomas Arundell, 2nd Baron Arundell of Wardour , was absent from the King's business from home and had asked his 61 year old wife, Lady Blanche Arundell , to defend the castle together with a garrison of 25 well trained soldiers. On May 2, 1643, Sir Edward Hungerford and a 1,300-strong parliamentary army called for entry into the castle to search for royalists. He was denied entry and so he besieged the castle and attacked its walls with guns and mines. After five days the castle was in danger of complete destruction. Lady Arundell surrendered and the castle was placed under the command of Colonel Edmund Ludlow . Lord Arundell had died of his wounding in the Battle of Stratton and his son, Henry Arundell, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour , now besieged his own castle, blew up much of it and forced the parliamentary garrison to give up in March 1644.

The family slowly regained power during the times of the Commonwealth of England and the Glorious Revolution until Henry Arundell, 8th Baron Arundell of Wardour , borrowed enough money to fund the reconstruction. This reconstruction was carried out under the direction of the well-known Palladian architect James Paine . Paine built New Wardour Castle and left the old Wardour Castle as a romantic ruin. New Wardour Castle is actually not a castle at all, but a symmetrical, classicist country house with a main block around a central entrance hall with a staircase and two side wings. Paine integrated the ruins of the old castle into the surrounding parkland as a kind of folly .

Both “castles”, the old and the new, were the backdrops for numerous films. The old castle appeared in Kevin Costner's film Robin Hood in 1991 and also as a location in The Journey of Aresmore in 2016 . New Wardour Castle was a dance school in Billy Elliot - I Will Dance . The cover of Sting's album Ten Summoner's Tales was also recorded in the rooms of New Wardour Castle.

Details of Old Wardour Castle

Front door and entrance

Coat of arms and head of Christ above the main entrance.

The level of the ground on which the castle stands was significantly changed around the 18th century. In the Middle Ages it fell away steeply from the castle so that it stood on a kind of low hill. The access to the main entrance was probably protected by a wide moat spanned by a drawbridge . In addition, the entrance was probably secured by a portcullis , even if there are no more traces of it today. Between the towers at the level of the battlements one can see the remains of a protruding gallery or barbican that served to defend the main entrance. The coat of arms of the Arundells and a description of Wardour's possessions are placed above the portal of the main entrance. Sir Matthew Arundell had this put up in 1578 to celebrate the return of the family property, which was confiscated when Sir Thomas Arundell was executed in 1552. The head of Christ is located in a niche above the coat of arms, with the inscription "Sub nomine tuo sta genus et domus".

The courtyard

When the southwest side of the castle was blown away by an explosion in the 17th century, the courtyard changed from a dark, cramped place to a bright, large sanctuary . It probably had a hexagonal floor plan and was surrounded on all sides by four to five-story buildings. In the 1570s, most of the medieval doors and windows were believed to have been replaced. There is a fountain in the middle of this courtyard. Evidence from other castles in the area suggests that this fountain had a finely crafted and impressive roof in which the Lovells and Arundell emblems were carved and painted.

The grotto

The grotto of Old Wardour Castle was the last addition to the complex. Josiah Lane of Tisbury , who was then a well-known designer of garden decorations and other grottos in the area, built it in 1792. He was commissioned to build an artificial cave complete with dripping water, fossils and ferns from bricks , plaster and stones from the ruins of the castle to create. There are also three upright stones in the grotto, taken from the Tisbury Stone Circle.

The Banqueting House

The Arundells returned to Wardour Castle in the 1680s after leaving the castle in 1644. They had a new, smaller house built just outside the castle wall, called the "Banqueting House" (Eng .: "Pavilion"). Only 100 years later did the family build New Wardour Castle and move there. In the meantime, the Old Wardour Castle property was expanded. The Banqueting House was built around 1773–1774 in what was then a modern, neo-Gothic style . It was a hall where the Arundells could entertain their guests. The house had a colored marble open fireplace that came from a smaller house. The colored glass windows built in today probably come from New Wardour Castle from the renovation of the chapel there in 1786. Banqueting House was probably designed and partly built by the local architect James Paine ; he was also entrusted with the design of New Wardour Castle.

The knight's hall

At the top of the steps that led up from the inner courtyard, the medieval visitor found himself in a corridor that lay on the left into a knight's hall behind a wooden screen with arched openings. This room was the formal center of the castle, where the entire household met for festivals and other special occasions. The walls were covered with sheets that covered the mechanisms of the two portcullis. Matthew Arundell had the great hall remodeled in the 1570s. A new gallery for musicians was installed above the wooden entrance screen. The open fireplace has been redesigned and wooden panels replaced the wall hangings and banners. The passage from the knight's hall to the lobby was also redesigned at that time. He left the tall windows and the old wooden roof untouched, presumably because he wanted to keep Lord Lovell's grand old castle .

The lobby

The lobby was a narrow space used to serve sweets to guests after meals, while tables in the great hall were removed to make room for the dance. Such rooms were popular facilities in medieval houses. Matthew Arundell had the room outfitted with new open fireplaces in the 1570s and the stairs in the north tower changed to make access to the upper rooms more private.

The upper rooms

Today very little of the upper rooms has survived. They were once the most inviting part of the castle. Like the knight's hall, they were high rooms with complicated wooden roofs. Each of the rooms had two tall windows that overlooked the landscape and a third to the inner courtyard. In 1605 the upper rooms were converted into a large gallery, a long room with many windows, as was common on the upper floors of Elizabethan houses.