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Lulworth Castle in the seventeenth century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
Lulworth Castle served no defensive purpose. Its impressive, crenellated bulk is in fact an early seventeenth-century essay in nostalgia, a stage setting for the idealized world of chivalry portrayed in Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queen’. The cult of a romantic medievalism was courtly in origin and Lulworth, built as an ostentatious hunting lodge for a nobleman currying favour with the king, could be seen as a specialized offshoot of the great courtier houses of the period. Although garrisoned during the Civil War, Lulworth saw no action and by the end of the century the Castle had become the country house of the Welds. This family was Roman Catholic and the history of the Castle after they purchased it reflects both the handicaps and solaces of a faith forced into retreat.
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- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1990
References
Notes
1 Girouard, M., Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan Country House (1983), particularly p. 210.Google Scholar
2 As exemplified in W. Rodwell, The Archaeology of the English Church (1981).
3 J. Berkeley, Lulworth and the Welds (1971) provides a starting point for any history of Lulworth Castle. Where no separate reference is given, information may be assumed to be taken from this study.
4 Leland, J., Itinerary, ed. Smith, L. Toulmin, Vol. 1 (1907), p. 253.Google Scholar
5 Dorset RO D/WLC/E5. This seventeenth-century valuation of the Lulworth estates describes Bindon: ‘Ther is a faire howse somtymes an Abbey but much fayre buyldings added unto vt.’
6 G. E. Cockayne, The Complete Peerage, Vol. vi (1926) but note misprint 5th for 3rd Duke of Norfolk.
7 P. W. Hasler, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558–1603 (1982).
8 McClure, N. E. (ed.), The Letters of John Chamberlain, Vol. 1, pp. 108–09 Google Scholar. Letter to Dudley Carleton, London Oct. 15 1600: ‘Sir Arthure Gorge had a shrewde windfall the last weeke. His daughter the greate heyre … died on Friday: and the land returnes to the Vicount Binden.’ Calendared in State Papers Domestic 1598–1601 (1869), p. 49.
9 Dorset RO D/WLC/E145. Account for work on Bindon gallery 23 Dec. 1608.
10 Dorset RO D/WLC/E5, M145. Bindon House was valued at £3,000 and Lulworth Castle at £5,000 c. 1641.
11 Calendar of State Papers Domestic 1605–10 (1857), pp. 192, 195.
12 Hatfield, Cecil Papers 123/165, calendared in Historical MSS Commission 9: Salisbury (Cecil) MSS Vol. 19 (1965), pp. 399–400. The 2nd edition of Hutchins, History of Dorset (1796–1815) gives a date of 1588 for the start of the building, which has caused some confusion. This is most probably a misprint for 1599, the date Thomas Weld evidently considered Lulworth was built (Dorset RO D/WLC/E91). I imagine the dates 1599–1609 for Lulworth were supplied to the editor by Thomas Weld as approximately when he thought the 3rd Lord Bindon owned the estate, Bindon being known from Coker (n. 20 below) to be the builder.
13 Historical MSS Commission 9: Salisbury (Cecil) MSS Vol. 19, p: 310.
14 Dorset RO D/WLC/T5.
15 Calendar of State Papers Domestic 1603–10.
16 Historical MSS Commission 9: Salisbury (Cecil) MSS Vol. 20 (1968), p. 204.
17 Dorset RO D/WLC/E2.
18 M. Airs, The Making of the English Country House 1500–1640 (1975), p. 51.
19 Bindon’s hand identified by comparison with Cecil Papers 126/97 holograph letter Bindon to Cecil.
20 Rev. Coker, A Particular Survey ofthe County of Dorset (1732). (In fact text by Thomas Gerard of Trent c. 1624).
21 PRO PCC Will proved 10 March 1611 (22 Wood).
22 W. C. Metcalfe, A Book of Knights made between 4 Henry Viand the Restoration (1885), p. 166. ‘At Lullworth, 15 August 1615 Sir John Fitz James.’
23 Dictionary of National Biography; The Complete Peerage.
24 Dorset ROD/WLC/M71.
25 Cambridge University Library ADD 7094.
26 Dorset RO D/WLC/T7.
27 Dorset RO D/WLC/E96. ‘A Schedule of [th]e Furniture of Lullworth & Bindon belonging to [th]e E of Suffolk To be further perused by H W’.
28 Dorset RO D/WLC/M145.
29 C. H. Mayo (ed.), Minute Books of the Dorset Standing Committee (1902), pp. 168, 297. In January 1646, Thomas Hughes had served as governor of Lulworth Castle for 78 weeks. The estate was sequestered at the same time as the castle was garrisoned.
30 Dorset ROD/WLC/AEI.
30 Mayo, p. 146.
32 Cal. Proceedings Committee for Compounding, Pt 2 (1890), p. 1447.
33 B. D. Henning, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1660–160O (1985).
34 Dorset RO D/WLC/E99.
35 Dorset RO D/WLC/C4(2).
36 Dorset RO D/WLC/C4(6).
37 Dorset RO D/WLC/E88.
38 Dorset RO D/WLC/AE196.
39 Dorset RO D/WLC/AE69.
40 Dorset RO D/WLC/AE19A.
41 Dorset RO D/WLC/AE7 and D/WLC/P56.
42 ‘The North East View of Lulworth Castle in the County of Dorset’, drawn and engraved by S. N. Buck 1733, published 1774 in Buck’s Antiquities Vol. 1, p. 75.
43 Dorset RO D/WLC/C4 Cat. No. 2.
44 Dorset RO D/WLC/E96. The relevant entries are
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(i) a sequence of headings ‘In the stayres by the Hall’, a difficult to decipher heading which probably reads ‘In the oryall within the Hall’; ‘In the Hall’, ‘In the entry before the buttry dore’ — probably the logical sequence G12, G5, G4, G2 — which must mean G3 was the buttery.
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(ii) ‘3 chambers over (the) buttery’. By analogy with the 1679 inventory, these are M1, M2, M3 which make up the mezzanine floor (above G3) in the south-east tower.
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(iii) the entry for the buttery itself occurs in a sequence of rooms clearly in the basement. However, with direct access from the basement to the buttery via St5 this may not be inappropriate.
45 Dorset D/WLC/P54.
46 There are several reasons for this, apart from the fundamental disadvantage of not being able to check the actual structure against documentary evidence. There are more rooms on this floor and consequently it is harder to detect any jumps in sequence, particularly as some of the rooms are referred to by their occupants’ names, rather than their locations. Most of the walls were partition walls rather than load-bearing, and could be altered easily, so there is more chance of the plan differing from the inventory if they are not strictly contemporary. Also the compiler of the inventory has got muddled and several compass descriptions have been altered. However, taking the amended room descriptions as correct, there are too many rooms in the north-east tower, so some of the locations given must be considered suspect.
47 Windows on the east side are shown on the 1721 engraving, and there are sills of blocked windows visible on the pre-demolition photographs of the west side of the tower. Both the 1721 engraving (Fig. 3) and a roof plan of 1756 (Dorset Record Office D/WLC/P55) show a ridged structure in the centre of the tower’s roof.
48 Similar decoration is found at Montacute House (late sixteenth century) and Cranborne Manor (rebuilt early seventeenth century).
49 Sometimes with a motif similar (but not identical) to the ‘hourglass’ motif on some fireplaces at Montacute House.
50 Macnaughten, Angus, ‘Remains of a Royal Retreat’, Country Life, 4 January 1968, p. 10.Google Scholar
51 For example, Westwood, Worcestershire; Woolaton Lodge, Staffordshire; Sherborne Castle, Dorset; Mount Edgcumbe, Cornwall.
52 See my Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan Country House (New Haven and London, 1983), pp. 100, 105 and Pis 53, 58, Fig. 2.
53 Aubrey, John, Brief Lives and other Selected Writings (London, 1949), pp. 194–95.Google Scholar
54 Sir John Soane Museum, Thorpe drawings T189, T190, reproduced Walpole Society XL (1960), PI. 87.
55 Dorset RO, D10/P57.
56 Elizabethan and Jacobean castle architecture is discussed and illustrated in Robert Smythson, pp. 206–32. For Audley End, see Paul Drury, ‘No other palace in the kingdom will compare with it’, Architectural History 23 (1980), especially p. 21, and PI. 22a. A demolished building near Lulworth which deserves research in ‘Crechbarow Lodge’ between West and East Creech, shown as a tower on a hilltop in Ralph Treswell’s map of the isle of Purbeck, c. 1585–86.
57 The first-floor rooms at Hatfield were used in this way, to judge from a 1611 inventory in the Hatfield papers, which lists two sets of furnishings, for royal and family use.
58 It seems reasonable to read the inventory in this way. The sequence of rooms goes: Great Chamber, South East Tower and the Second Story, called the Nursery, next chamber, and My Ladyes Chamber, which appears to be the reverse order of the King’s Chamber, Drawing Roome, South East Tower and Great Dining Roome of the 1678 inventory.
59 Great kitchen and privy kitchen survive at Hampton Court; see History of the King’s Works (ed. H. M. Colvin), iv (1982), Fig. 13, pp. 139, 141. For plans of the Audley End and Holdenby kitchens, see Henry Winstanley’s ‘general ground plot’, illustrated Drury, op. cit., PI. 16 and Thorpe drawing T183-4, reproduced Walpole Society XL, PI. 85.
60 The Wollaton kitchen is illustrated in Country Life, 16 June 1917, p. 595.