Grimsthorpe Castle: A Historic Country House in Lincolnshire
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- British, English
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page22 sections
History
Grimsthorpe Castle is a country house in England, near Bourne, whose origins as a small medieval castle are traditionally linked to Gilbert de Gant, Earl of Lincoln, around 1140. Its early history remains uncertain, since some traditions place its construction in the early thirteenth century, while the earlier date would situate it within the Anarchy, the civil war between the supporters of Empress Matilda and King Stephen from 1135 to 1154. The de Eresby family has held the estate since 1516, and the property is now owned and managed by a trust together with Drummond Castle.
Medieval origins and Plantagenet ownership
The original castle occupied a ridge between the edge of the Lincolnshire fenland and the Great North Road. The south-east tower of the present house is traditionally identified with this medieval building and is known as King John’s Tower. The name appears to have encouraged a later belief that King John founded the castle, although his ownership during his reign remains uncertain.
After Gilbert de Gant died in 1156, Grimsthorpe probably passed to the Earl of Chester, while the earldom of Lincoln returned to the Crown. When the earldom was recreated in 1217, it was granted to Ranulph de Blondeville, 4th Earl of Chester. The property therefore became connected with the changing distribution of royal and aristocratic power in medieval England.
At the end of the Plantagenet monarchy, the estate was held by Lord Lovell, a prominent supporter of Richard III. Lovell later joined a failed rebellion against Henry VII, intended to restore the preceding royal dynasty. His property was confiscated and granted to a supporter of the Tudor king. Lovell’s fate after the Battle of Stoke remains uncertain.
The Willoughbys and the Tudor rebuilding
Henry VIII granted Grimsthorpe to William Willoughby, 11th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, in 1516, in connection with his marriage to Maria de Salinas, a Spanish lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon. Their daughter Katherine inherited the title, estate, and associated lands in 1526, when she was seven years old. In 1533 she married Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, a close ally of Henry VIII.
In 1539, Henry VIII granted Charles Brandon the lands of nearby Vaudey Abbey, a medieval religious house founded in 1147 and dissolved during the Tudor Reformation. Brandon used stone from the abbey to enlarge and rebuild Katherine’s house. The medieval castle was transformed into a four-sided country house arranged around an open courtyard. The work was completed within eighteen months for Henry VIII’s visit in 1541, when he was travelling towards York to meet his nephew, James V of Scotland.
Mary of Guise, the widow of James V, stayed at Grimsthorpe in 1551. During Mary I’s reign, Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, and her second husband, Richard Bertie, were forced to leave because of their Anglican beliefs. They returned after Elizabeth I came to the throne, bringing their daughter Susan, later Countess of Kent, and their son Peregrine, later the 13th Baron Willoughby de Eresby. Peregrine became a soldier and spent much of his life away from the estate. Household accounts nevertheless record theatrical entertainments at Grimsthorpe, including a hobby-horse performance in February 1561 and a puppet show in August of the same year.
Classical and Baroque transformation
By 1707, the 15th Baron Willoughby de Eresby and 3rd Earl of Lindsey had rebuilt the north front in the classical style. The work is probably attributable to William Winde. In 1715, Robert Bertie, 16th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, employed Sir John Vanbrugh to create a Baroque front celebrating his elevation as the first Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven. Baroque architecture uses monumental scale, dramatic massing, and elaborate classical detail.
Vanbrugh prepared plans for rebuilding the other three ranges, including a Palladian south front. Palladian architecture is based on balanced proportions and formal symmetry derived from the classical designs associated with Andrea Palladio. These proposals were not carried out, and Vanbrugh’s designs were still incomplete when he died in 1726.
The estate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Lancelot “Capability” Brown designed the present park in 1771, and his patron, the 3rd Duke of Ancaster, implemented the scheme. Brown was known for naturalistic landscapes shaped by broad lawns, lakes, and wooded planting. The park had earlier formed the southern edge of the great Lincolnshire forest and included both a medieval deer park and a Tudor oak park.
In the nineteenth century, the 1st Earl of Ancaster promoted technological changes across the estate. He arranged an early demonstration of steam ploughing, built a private railway, and used portable steam engines in the sawmill and for pumping. In 1828, Peter Robert Drummond-Burrell, 22nd Baron Willoughby de Eresby and 2nd Baron Gwydyr, inherited Grimsthorpe from his mother and commissioned Samuel Page and Henry Garling to redesign the east and west fronts.
Their work gave the east front crenellations and a tower, strengthening the house’s castle-like appearance, while the west front was remodelled in the Tudor style. The additions continued the long process by which Grimsthorpe combined medieval associations with later domestic and architectural forms.
War, conservation, and modern ownership
During the First World War, the park served as an emergency landing ground for the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force. In the Second World War, its central area near the Vaudey Abbey site was used as a bombing range. In 1944, the house accommodated a company of the Parachute Regiment recovering from operations in Italy and training for Operation Market Garden.
Grimsthorpe Castle was designated a Grade I listed monument in 1952. During the twentieth century, Eloise Breese, wife of Gilbert Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby, 2nd Earl of Ancaster and 26th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, commissioned Detmar Blow to panel numerous rooms in the Edwardian style. Her daughter-in-law, “Wissy” Astor, later modernized the house with advice from Nancy Lancaster and the interior designer John Fowler.
Nancy Astor died at Grimsthorpe in 1964. The present occupant is Jane Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby, 28th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby and Astor’s granddaughter. A life-size portrait of Benjamin by Francisco de Zurbarán has been at Grimsthorpe since the eighteenth century. It is the only painting separated from Zurbarán’s seventeenth-century series Jacob and His Twelve Sons, preserved at Auckland Castle in Bishop Auckland, where a copy of the Benjamin portrait is held.
Remains
Grimsthorpe stands within a park of about 3,000 acres, or 12 square kilometres, of rolling pasture, lakes, and woodland. The house presents a massive, martial appearance through its towers and projecting pavilions, which recall fortress bastions in classical form. Architecturally, however, it is a country house rather than a castle in the strict sense. Its surviving fabric brings together the medieval tower, the Tudor courtyard building, Vanbrugh’s Baroque north front, and nineteenth-century alterations.
Medieval and Tudor fabric
King John’s Tower
King John’s Tower occupies the south-east corner of the present house and is traditionally regarded as part of the original medieval castle. It preserves the connection between the later country house and the small stronghold that first occupied the ridge. The tower’s traditional name also contributed to the belief that King John founded Grimsthorpe.
The Tudor courtyard house
The Tudor rebuilding converted the medieval castle into a four-sided residence around an open courtyard. Much of the Tudor fabric remains visible, including a sequence of rooms in the east range with recessed oriel windows, which are projecting window structures, and ornate ceilings. The rebuilding was carried out hastily on glacial till, unsorted sediment deposited directly by glacial ice, and the foundations later needed substantial repairs because of the site’s poor ground conditions.
Baroque and later fronts
Vanbrugh’s north front
The north front, rebuilt in the classical style by 1707, was subsequently replaced by Vanbrugh’s 1715 Baroque design. Its monumental composition includes corner towers and Doric columns, a classical order recognized by sturdy proportions and plain capitals. Vanbrugh also planned a Palladian south front and the reconstruction of the other three ranges, but these elements remained unexecuted.
The east and west fronts
After Peter Robert Drummond-Burrell inherited the estate in 1828, Samuel Page and Henry Garling redesigned the east and west fronts. The east received crenellations and a tower, while the west was remodelled in the Tudor style. These changes reinforced the house’s deliberately fortified appearance while preserving its character as a composite country house.
Principal interiors
Vanbrugh’s hall
Vanbrugh’s hall is a monumental two-storey space surrounded by stone arcades. Arcaded screens at both ends divide it from the staircases, and the staircase behind the screens rises to the first-floor state rooms. Seven grisaille paintings by James Thornhill decorate the hall. Grisaille means monochrome or nearly monochrome painting, usually in tones resembling grey sculpture. Thornhill’s paintings depict English kings who granted titles or property to the Willoughby family.
The State Dining Room
The State Dining Room occupies Vanbrugh’s north-east tower. Its painted ceiling is illuminated by a Venetian window, a large central arched opening flanked by narrower openings. The room contains the throne used by George IV at his coronation banquet, a Regency giltwood throne and footstool used by Queen Victoria in the former House of Lords, and a walnut and parcel-gilt chair and footstool made for George III at Westminster.
Drawing rooms and the south corridor
The King James and State Drawing Rooms have been redecorated over several centuries. Their contents include portraits by Joshua Reynolds and Anthony van Dyck, European furniture, and yellow Soho tapestries woven by Joshua Morris around 1730. The South Corridor contains thrones used by Prince Albert and Edward VII, as well as the desk on which Queen Victoria signed her coronation oath.
The Tudor east range
The rooms of the Tudor east range include the Chinese Drawing Room, whose richly decorated ceiling accompanies an eighteenth-century fan-vaulted oriel window. A fan vault has ribs that spread in a fan-shaped pattern. Chinese wallpaper in the room depicts birds among bamboo.
The chapel
The chapel contains substantial seventeenth-century plasterwork. The extent of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s contribution remains uncertain, although designs for the chapel were reportedly found among his papers after his death in 1736. Other eighteenth-century interior work includes a Rococo fireplace by Henry Cheere, a possibly attributed wrought-iron staircase railing by Thomas Warren, ceiling paintings by Francesco Sleter, and plasterwork by William Perrit. Rococo was an ornate decorative style of the eighteenth century.
Park and gardens
The historic park
The park includes lakes, woodland, avenues, the medieval deer park, and the Tudor oak park. Ancient oaks are associated with trees recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, the great land survey compiled for William I. Some of these ancient trees were reportedly still living in the twentieth century. The wider landscape reflects both the earlier estate and Brown’s eighteenth-century design.
The gardens
The gardens contain a knot garden, hedged rose gardens, a terrace with herbaceous and shrub borders, and a Vanbrugh-designed summerhouse. Other features include formal flower and topiary gardens, a woodland garden, an ornamental vegetable garden and orchard created in the 1960s, box-edged parterres near the house, and a herbaceous border framing views across the lake. A parterre is a formal garden bed arranged in ornamental patterns and often edged with low hedges.
