Hornby Castle: A Medieval Castle Developed into a Country House
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- British, English
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page12 sections
History
Hornby Castle is a country house in the United Kingdom, developed from a medieval castle thought to have been built for the Neville family in the thirteenth century and later transformed through English Gothic, Perpendicular Gothic, and Gothic Revival work. Standing east of Hornby village in the Lune Valley, the property retains fabric from several periods and is listed at Grade I on the National Heritage List for England.
Medieval origins and the Monteagle family
The base of the rear tower is attributed to the thirteenth century, when the Nevilles are thought to have established the castle. Margaret de Neville owned Hornby Castle in 1285. A polygonal tower rising from the medieval base belongs to the sixteenth century and was probably built for Sir Edward Stanley, 1st Baron Monteagle.
Stanley’s son, the second Baron Monteagle, took part in suppressing the Rising of the North in 1536, a rebellion by northern Catholic nobles against the Tudor government. The third Baron Monteagle sold much of the estate’s land. After his death in 1581, Hornby passed to his only daughter Elizabeth, who married Edward Parker, 12th Baron Morley. Their son William became the fourth Baron Monteagle and was the nobleman forewarned about the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, the Catholic conspiracy to destroy the House of Lords and kill King James I.
Civil War and changing ownership
William’s son Henry was a committed Royalist at the start of the English Civil War, the conflict of the 1640s between supporters of King Charles I and Parliament. His estates were declared forfeit and sold after he supported the royal cause. Colonel Assheton captured Hornby Castle in 1643, and the Duke of Hamilton and his Scottish army occupied it in 1648. The family later recovered the property.
Financial difficulties led Henry’s son Thomas to sell Hornby Castle to Robert Brudenell, 2nd Earl of Cardigan, in 1663. Brudenell’s grandson sold it to Colonel Charteris in 1713. Charteris’s daughter Janet married James Wemyss, 5th Earl of Wemyss, and the castle was given to their second son Francis. Taking the surname Charteris, Francis remodelled the building around 1720.
Nineteenth-century rebuilding
In 1789, Charteris sold Hornby Castle to John Marsden of Wennington Hall, who was known as “Silly Marsden.” Marsden sold Wennington to pay for the purchase. After his death in 1826, a prolonged legal dispute over his will followed, and Admiral Sandford Tatham regained control of the property from George Wright’s family in 1838.
Tatham died in 1840 and left Hornby Castle to his nephew, the younger Pudsey Dawson. Dawson, who became High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1845, commissioned the Lancaster architects Sharpe and Paley to rebuild much of the castle between 1847 and 1850. The work retained earlier fabric while demolishing or remodelling the part altered during the Charteris period.
In 1859, the property passed to Dawson’s nephew, Richard Pudsey Dawson, who sold it to John Foster, a Bradford mill owner. Foster’s ownership brought further additions by Paley and Austin in 1879 to 1882, followed by alterations by W. and R. Mawson of Bradford in 1890. The castle remained with the Foster family through John Foster’s son William Foster and William’s son, Colonel William Henry Foster. The latter was High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1891 and Member of Parliament for Lancaster from 1895 to 1900.
During the mid-twentieth century, rooms in the eastern part of the house were removed to create a courtyard, and the principal internal staircase was also removed. The castle’s terrace walls, together with the lodge, gate piers, and adjoining wall at the former entrance to the drive, have separate Grade II listings.
Remains
House and exterior
Hornby Castle stands on the east side of Hornby village, overlooking the village within a curve of the River Wenning at approximately 42 metres above sea level. The building has an irregular plan, is mainly two storeys high, and is built of sandstone rubble with slate roofs. Much of it carries a battlemented parapet, while its appearance combines English Gothic, Perpendicular Gothic, and nineteenth-century Gothic Revival forms.
Southwest entrance front
The southwest entrance front is almost symmetrical and comprises seven bays. The outer bays project forward, as does the central three-storey porch. Their windows are mullioned, meaning that vertical stone members divide them, or mullioned and transomed, with horizontal members added as well. The lateral bays contain bay windows with angled upper floors, and the left bay has a further pair of windows above its bay window.
Towers and porch
The porch has an octagonal turret on its left and a diagonal buttress on its right. An oriel window, a projecting upper-storey window, occupies the middle storey, while a three-light window is set above it. Behind the porch, slightly offset to the left, stands a square tower containing a partly blocked Venetian window, formed by a central opening with narrower openings at the sides. The taller, narrower polygonal tower rises to the left of the square tower and incorporates the medieval tower base.
Behind the three right-hand bays, a courtyard was formed during the twentieth century. An earlier courtyard lies to the northeast of the main building. It is now surrounded by apartments and is entered through a gatehouse with a pointed arch.
Interior rooms
Entrance hall
The porch has a vaulted ceiling decorated with foliated bosses, which are carved projections ornamented with leaves. The hall is entered through a Tudor arch, a low flattened pointed arch associated with late medieval and Tudor architecture. The opening contains a Gothic-style glazed timber screen, and the hall has a sandstone fireplace with a Tudor arch.
Library and upper rooms
Late nineteenth-century stained glass fills the hall windows, having been moved there during the twentieth century. To the left of the hall, the library contains woodwork attributed to Gillows. On the upper floor, the billiard room has Gothic decoration, while the drawing room has a barrel vault and hanging pendants.
Terrace and former entrance
A terrace with nineteenth-century sandstone walls runs along the southwest and southeast sides of the house. Three flights of steps descend from it, and a small semicircular building at its northern end functions as a bastion, a projecting defensive structure.
At the entrance to the former drive stands a lodge with a canted front, a steep slate roof, and an embattled turret. The gate piers are carved with roundels showing green men, a foliage-associated decorative motif depicting a human face surrounded by or issuing leaves, together with the crest of Pudsey Dawson.
