Sherborne Castle
| Sherborne Castle | |
| Dorset | |
|---|---|
 Sherborne Castle | |
| Location | |
| Location: | 50°56’46"N, 2°30’2"W |
| Village: | Sherborne |
| History | |
| Country house | |
| Information | |
| Owned by: | The Wingfield Digby Family |
| Website: | Sherborne Castle |
Sherborne Castle is a 16th-century Tudor mansion southeast of Sherborne in Dorset. The 1,200 acre park formed only a small part of the 15,000-acre Digby estate in its day. Today the house and park remain in the ownership of the Wingfield Digby family, who have held it for the past four hundred years.
History
Sherborne Old Castle was built in the 12th century and its ruins stand in the grounds of the mansion. The old castle was built as the fortified palace of Roger de Caen, Bishop of Salisbury and Chancellor of England and still belonged to the Church in the late 16th century. Today it in the care of English Heritage
Sherborne Lodge was created by Sir Walter Raleigh. It is said that after passing through Sherborne on the way to Plymouth, Sir Walter Raleigh fell in love with the castle, and Queen Elizabeth relinquished the estate, leasing it to Raleigh in 1592,[1] For his short viits to his new estate, Sir Walter decided to build a new lodging apart from the castle, in the manner of the time known as a lodge. Sherborne Lodge, the new house, was a four-story, rectangular building completed in 1594. The antiquary John Aubrey remembered it as "a delicate Lodge in the park, of Brick, not big, but very convenient for its bignes, a place to retire from the Court in summer time, and to contemplate, etc."[2] It had four polygonal corner turrets with angled masonry as if they were actually to serve for military defence, which Nicholas Cooper suggests "may be an obeisance to the old building".[3] Its most progressive feature for its date was the entrance, disguised in one of the corner towers so as not to spoil the apparent symmetry of the facade, which was centred on a rectangular forecourt. The entrance vestibule also contained a winder stairwell and gave directly on the hall.
Raleigh was convicted of treason against King James I and his estates forfeit. During his imprisonment in the Tower, King James leased the estate to Robert Carr and then sold it to Sir John Digby, 1st Earl of Bristol in 1617. In the 1620s, the Digby family, in order to suit the lodge to a more permanent seat, added four wings to the house in an architectural style similar to the original, retaining the original corner towers.
New castle
In the Civil War Sherborne was strongly Royalist, and the old castle was left in ruins by General Fairfax of the Parliamentary forces in 1645. The name "Sherborne Castle" was then applied to the new house, though today the term 'Sherborne New Castle' is also used to distinguish it from the ruins, which are known as 'Sherborne Old Castle'.
Through the early and mid-18th century William, 5th Lord Digby, who laid out the grounds praised by Alexander Pope, and his heirs Edward, 6th Lord Digby, who inherited in 1752, and Henry, 7th Lord, created Earl Digby, laid out the present castle gardens, including the 1753 lake designed by Capability Brown, which separates the old and new castles.[4] The ruins of the old castle are part of the gardens, being conspicuous amongst the trees across the lake. King George III visited the house and gardens in 1789, shortly before awarding Henry Digby with a peerage. When Edward, 2nd and last Earl Digby died in 1856 the house was passed to the Wingfield Digby family, who still own the house. The house was modernised by the architect Philip Charles Hardwick.
In the First World War the house was used by the Red Cross as a hospital and in the Second World War as the headquarters for the commandos involved in the D-Day landings.
The gardens are open to the public much of the year, and the house is open to the public most Saturdays. The estate often hosts special events, such as concerts and firework displays.
The old castle was leased by English Heritage and is now separate from the rest of the estate.
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Sherborne Castle) |
- Sherborne Castle
- Sherborne Castle Garden - information on garden history
- {{EH link|Sherborne Old Castle]] at English Heritage
References
- ↑ Waymark 2001:65.
- ↑ Aubrey, Brief Lives, "Sir Walter Raleigh, quoted by Nicholas Cooper, Houses of the Gentry 1480-1680, 1999:121.
- ↑ Nicholas Cooper 1999:121; the contemporary plan by Simon Basil, pl. 22, shows with dashed lines that the angle faces of the corner towers were aligned with the opposite inner corners.
- ↑ Waymark 2001. A new library, in Gothick taste, was carried out by the London surveyor William Ride in 1757-58, possibly to Ride's designs (Colvin 1995, s.v. "Ride, William").
- Stroud, Dorothy (1975) [1950]. Capability Brown; 2nd revised ed. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-10267-0. ISBN 0-571-13405-X.
- Waymark, Janet, "Sherborne, Dorset" Garden History 29.1, (Summer 2001), pp 64–81.