While we’re nitpicking, although Highclere Castle is near Newbury (which is in Berkshire), the house itself, along with Highclere village, is definitely in Hampshire (my home county).
ITV got it wrong on the credits of every single episode, for six series. :rolleyes:
Nitpick: the Rothschilds came to the UK by way of Germany in the 18th century, not the US. But it’s certainly true to say that Americans have saved many country piles in the UK either by marriage of purchase (as well as enthusiastically pillaging the ones whose holdings were sold off).
In many cases the owners of castles pulled them down once they were of no military value after the Civil War and built something more comfortable and convenient to live in, and took the castle name with them. Victorian newly-minted capitalists called their baronial hall a ‘castle’, and added some vaguely battlement-like crenellations, because that was their idea of what the English gentleman was supposed to live in.
And there are also Iron Age earthworks termed ‘castles’ such as Maiden Castle and Cadbury Castle, which were never castles in the conventional sense (just as any earthwork of unknown age got labelled ‘Caesar’s Camp’)
The Dissolution of the Monasteries of 1536-1541 sometimes resulted in the conversion of a religious building to a nonreligious purpose, but often the building was demolished leaving just a name behind, e.g., Blackfriars in the City of London, where there is nothing left of the monastery owned by the Black Friars, i.e., Dominicans.
A notorious case is the burial site of King Richard III, who was buried circa 1485 in the Church of the Grey Friars (i.e., Franciscans) in Leicester. About a century later, the church was demolished, leaving just “Greyfriars” as a street name, and eventually the body of the former king was found under a car park.
To find a “downtown abbey” in the City of London, read The lost abbeys and priories of the City of London.
Tbh it’s overwhelmingly English Heritage or the National Trust that save these houses. I have a cousin (a few times removed) who lives in the ‘family seat’, built by one of our ancestors. As stately homes go it is attractive, but relatively compact, though it’s set in a very nice and quite large park designed by Capability Brown. English Heritage put up the money that allowed my cousins to maintain it, but the latest cousin was very canny and he set up the parkland as a tourist attraction and for events like music festivals and is pretty much self-sufficient the last that I heard.
OK we’ll give you Downton Abbey but the x-wing base on D’Qaris ours dammit!
To Marry an English Lord is a non-fiction account of various American heiresses who married English nobility in the late 1800’s through WWI. It’s a buck 99 on Kindle if you’re interested.
To take a prominent fictional example where everyone always slightly misremembers the actual name of the house:
I’m not sure that Waugh was ever quite clear about what style the house had been built in, but evidently Ryder must have seen a mismatch between that and the name. There is the suggestion that the fiction is based on Madresfield Court, though surely no reader now imagines it as anything other than Castle Howard, itself a classic example of an English stately home that looks nothing like the name suggests.
IIRC -
The castles were fortified buildings - originally a tower or such (keep), then surrounded by a wall enclosing the extra buildings, and so on… The War of the Roses was the final straw proving as much as anything that the monarch could not afford to have subjects who could raise armies and hide from his army. Many castles were rendered unusable over that time as the kings reinforced their supremacy. The same happened to many of the castles in Scotland after the Jacobite rebellions - Eileen Donan castle, for example, was blown down to the foundations and only rebuilt in the 1930’s. Of course, as the country became more pacified and gunpowder rendered castles obsolete, they were neglected too. As a result, many were abandoned and left to ruin. (Upkeep costs money).
A good example is the Warwick Castle. Within the curtain wall of the old castle is a large chateaux or mansion house. This was the other problem - as the country expanded and some lords became rich from commerce, they found the tiny main buildings and tiny windows, 5 foot thick walls, etc. built in the 1200’s and 1300’s - did not lend themselves to redecorating as large airy mansions with grand ballrooms and sumptuous living quarters. Castles were abandoned in favour of building new stately houses. Hampton court for example - the archbishop did not need a fortified place, it was built as a large stately home with a modicum of security. A few castles survived if the lord refurbished them, and escaped the kings’ removal of fortifications if the lord had already destroyed the military value by cutting large windows in the exterior walls.
If you ever visit Clifford’s tower in York, or the main gate of the Tower of London (St. Thomas Tower?) you will see that what was a sumptuous large dining hall in the 1100’s barely qualifies as a middling bedroom in a 1700’s manor. The great hall in the old part of Hampton court may seem large, but in those days people did not get their own room unless they were important, since construction was expensive. All the lesser nobles and men at arms bunked down together in the dining hall at night.
The grand chateaux of the Loire fall into various categories. A few are old castles, renovated into grand houses; many have the grand house added to the old fortifications; some are pretentions, imitations of castles with all the trappings of a grand residence. Chambord, for example, was built as a square of walls and round towers at the corners, but is totally useless as a fortification. Usse (often called “Cinderella’s castle”) was built on the foundations of an old fortress, but is purely show.
So what’s a castle? Well, whatever someone calls a castle.
Hampton Court (A palace but never a castle) was mostly built by Cardinal Wolsey, but much altered and added to by Henry VIII.
Corfe Castle is another example which was ‘slighted’ [blown up] after the Civil War and then quarried for stone by the local inhabitants.
These Tudors sure knew how to party …
But like a lot of palaces in this transition time (1500’s) and even much later - it was not particularly fortified in terms of withstanding a military assault; but it did have a closed-in central courtyard, surrounded by structure, and a locking gate, and minimal ground level windows and access from the outside perimeter. It was fairly secure from gangs of thieves, the rabble mob, minor disputes with poorly armed neighbours, etc. I assume the crenellations are décor and/or added much later, as they are pretty useless without the accompanying walkway.
Whereas by the time of Blenheim palace (1700’s) there was no need or pretense of security, it had large glassed French doors opening onto terraces, a courtyard open on one one side, etc.