| New Wardour Castle | |
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| Newwardourcastle.JPG New Wardour Castle, taken from the old castle |
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Location within Wiltshire
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| General information | |
| Architectural style | Palladian |
| Town or city | Tisbury, Wiltshire |
| Country | England |
| Coordinates | |
| Construction started | 1769 |
| Completed | 1776 |
| Design and construction | |
| Client | Arundell family |
| Architect | James Paine |
New Wardour Castle is an English country house at Wardour, near Tisbury in Wiltshire, built for the Arundell family. The house is of a Palladian style, designed by the architect James Paine with additional pieces from Giacomo Quarenghi, who was a principal architect of the Imperial Russian capital city Saint Petersburg.
The house's construction began in 1769 and was completed in 1776, with additional buildings being added in the 1970s and 1980s.
New Wardour Castle is approximately 1.5 miles (2 km) from Old Wardour Castle, which was left as a landscape feature of the original parkland. This was formerly the home of the Arundell family before it was destroyed in the Civil War.
Contents |
The building is constructed from limestone ashlar with hipped Welsh slate roofs and comprises a square main block with flanking pavilions. The north front has a rusticated basement below a piano nobile with mezzanine and attic floor over.
The house also includes a Roman Catholic chapel and a rare rotunda staircase. There are also many painted ceilings and ornate fireplaces, typical of the building period.
In total the rotunda staircase is 144 feet (44 m) round and was designed by James Paine.
The ground floor of the rotunda staircase features a black and white marble floor with exits to the north and south and sweeping staircases either side. The stairs can sometimes be fitted with glass uplighter candle lamps and a stair carpet.
The first floor consists of a wooden floor with Roman columns rising to the vaulted ceiling. The surrounding balustrade is made from fine leadwork with Gold leaf gilded flowers and topped by a wooden handrail. Leading off from the 1st floor are four fine alcoves with tall wooden doors.
Also on the first floor, there is a pipe organ in wood, ivory and gold.
The ceiling is a high circular dome with a central window decorated with reliefs of musical instruments.
The former Roman Catholic chapel which belonged to the house is known as All Saints Chapel, Wardour. It was enlarged by Henry Arundell, 8th Baron Arundell of Wardour in 1788, to the designs of John Soane.[1] From its beginnings, it served the needs of a substantial local recusant community and still has regular Sunday services, as well as sometimes being used for musical events.
The original plans for the grounds were suggested by Richard Woods in 1764, however these proved too expensive and revised by George Ingham in 1773 before Capability Brown was brought in and undertook extensive earth moving and tree planting between 1775 and 1783.
The current garden includes a ha-ha, a walled garden with a swimming pool and a Camelia house.[2] There is a long driveway, which passes the Hexagon cottage and leads up to the rear of the building and the chapel.
There is also a Temple, built as a folly, in a distinct area of the grounds referred to as the Temple Garden.[3]
After the death in 1944 of John Francis, 16th and last Lord Arundell of Wardour, the building was rented and became the home of Cranbourne Chase School. The school built new classrooms, studio dormitories and a dining-room extension on the south-eastern side of the main house, along with three staff houses to the west.
The school eventually closed in 1990. In 1992 the house along with five cottages, six tennis courts, and a swimming pool in the walled garden, was sold for under £1 million to Nigel Tuersley, and was converted into 10 luxury apartments by designer John Pawson, with Tuersley living in Apartment 1, which occupies the two main floors of the central block. The extensions and accommodation added by the school were mostly demolished.
The building has been designated by English Heritage as a grade I listed building, with its grounds being grade II* listed.[4] It was used in the filming of the television mini-series First Born (1998), and in the filming of Billy Elliot, a movie released in 2000. Jasper Conran recently purchased the house, and plans to live between this house and Ven House.