HIGHCLERE CASTLE is a building now familiar to more than 270 million people worldwide. The peculiar thing about its staggering celebrity, however, is that, for the vast majority of this global audience, it’s familiar by another name: Downton Abbey. Many people know it solely as the backdrop to the lives of the ITV drama and film sequel of the same name, but the real history of this imposing house is equally compelling.
From at least 1208, Highclere was a valued possession of the Bishops of Winchester, one of five distinct divisions of a larger estate called ‘Clere’ that was gifted to the cathedral church nearly 1,300 years ago in 749. The bishops created a substantial hunting park here with fish ponds, now lakes. Their manor house formed part of a small village or settlement and, in typical English fashion, stood close to the parish church that served it.
Nothing is securely known about the form of the manor house, but it was greatly expanded or rebuilt from 1387 by the celebrated architectural patron Bishop William of Wykeham, under the direction of the same master carpenter and mason—one Hugh Hurland and William Wynford—who were concurrently at work on Wykeham’s surviving educational foundations at Winchester College and New College, Oxford.
Following the Reformation, Highclere was appropriated from the see of Winchester and, in the late 17th century, was bought by the successful lawyer, Speaker of the House of Commons (1678) and attorney-general Sir Robert Sawyer. It’s very likely that he modernized the house and, according to the parish register, he ‘built a new complete church in the parish of Highclere, the old one being ruinous and unfit, which was begun to be plucked down August 18th, 1687, and the new church was finished… August 18th, 1689’. The footings of this building, which was demolished in the 1860s, survive immediately beside the house.
Denne historien er fra November 06, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra November 06, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
