Highclere Castle is Victorian country house in high Elizabethan style, with park designed by Capability Brown, located in Hampshire in England in a 2,400 ha estate south of Newbury, Berkshire. It is the country seat of the Herbert family, the Earls of Carnarvon, and the largest mansion in Hampshire.
The present Castle stands on the site of an earlier house, in turn built on the foundations of the medieval palace of the Bishops of Winchester, who owned this estate from the 8th century. In 1692, Robert Sawyer, a lawyer and college friend of Samuel Pepys, bequeathed a mansion at Highclere to his only daughter, Margaret. Her second son, Robert Herbert, inherited Highclere, began its picture collection, and created the garden temples. His nephew Henry Herbert was made Baron Porchester and 1st Earl of Carnarvon by King George III.
In those years, the house was a square, classical mansion, but it was remodelled and all but rebuilt for the third earl by Sir Charles Barry, in 1839-1842 after he had finished building the Houses of Parliament. It is in the Elizabethan style, and faced in Bath stone. Although the exterior of the north, east and south sides were completed by the time the 3rd Earl died in 1849 and Sir Charles Barry died in 1852, the interior and the west wing (designated as servants' quarters) were still far from complete. The 4th Earl turned to the architect Thomas Allom , who had worked with Barry, to supervise work on the interior of the Castle which was completed on 1878.
The 1st Earl rebuilt his park according to a design by Capability Brown during 1774-1777, relocating the village in the process (the remains of the church of 1689 are at the south west corner of the castle). The famous 18th centurty seed collector, Bishop Stephen Pococke, was a friend, and brought Lebanon Cedar seeds from a trip to Lebanon. These beautiful trees can be seen in the garden today. Various follies and eye-catchers exist on the estate. To the east of the house is the Temple, a strange structure, erected before 1743 with Corinthian columns from Devonshire House in Piccadilly. "Heaven's Gate" is an eye-catcher about 18 m high on Sidown Hill , built in 1731 from a design, it is thought, by the 9th Earl of Pembroke. It fell shortly afterwards. The event was witnessed and recorded by a Rev. J Milles, who recorded that "we had not been there above half an hour before we saw it cleave from ye foundations and it fell with such a noise yet was heard at three or four miles [5-6 km] distant".
The hybrid holly Ilex x altaclerensis (Highclere Holly) was developed here in about 1835 by hybridising the Madeiran Ilex perado (grown in a greenhouse) with the local native Ilex aquifolium.
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Last updated: 10-16-2005 02:06:42
