Downton Castle and adjoining stable courtyard

Downton Castle and adjoining stable courtyard

Country house and adjoining stable courtyard, built circa 1774–1778 by Richard Payne Knight, with alterations and extensions made between 1860 and 1870. Constructed in sandstone ashlar.

The castle exemplifies the Picturesque style, with an asymmetric plan featuring roofs concealed behind embattled parapets. The main parapets project above prominent corbel tables; others have strings at their base. The parapets to the main south-east front are partly pierced with loopholes beneath the merlons, some of which are cruciform in shape. Groups of ashlar chimney stacks are concealed from the main elevations. The building is principally two and three storeys with a cellar. Nineteenth-century additions include the eastern end, the north-west tower, the north porch, and the chapel. Windows were originally designed as lancets but were replaced in the 19th century with mullioned windows and traceried lights.

The main south elevation, originally the principal entrance front, is composed of a roughly central large square tower that once housed the main entrance. To the left are two three-bay ranges terminated by a large octagonal tower; to the right is a 2:1:2 range, a square tower, and a two-bay addition. The octagonal tower rises three stages and bears a traceried rectangular window with a hoodmould on the lower stage of its south-east face. The adjoining three-bay range projects slightly and features large ground floor mullion and transom windows with four-centred heads, hoodmoulds and block stops; the first floor has two-light traceried windows with hoodmoulds and returns. The next three-bay range is narrower and recessed, with a central ground floor canted bay window topped by an embattled parapet, flanked by inserted double doors; above is a rectangular traceried window and two mullion and transom windows with hoodmoulds. A small turret projects from the left side of the parapet.

The large projecting central tower is of two stages. Its former main entrance is approached by a flight of steps and flanked by battered buttresses, featuring a four-centred arched head of two orders, double doors, and a transom light. Above is a corbelled canopy decorated with a central blank shield flanked by loopholes. Two rectangular lights sit beneath the parapet, which has corner buttresses. The 2:1:2 range to the right contains a central slightly projecting small square tower with two ground floor traceried lights bearing hoodmoulds with block stops; on the first floor is a semi-circular oriel window with a foliated corbelled base springing from an attached shaft between the ground floor windows, and an embattled parapet. The second floor displays a group of three cusped lancets.

The flanking ranges have lean-to two-bay arcades with four-centred archways of two orders on the ground floor. Within the left arcade are a two-light window with plate tracery, a mullion and transom window, and a door with a four-centred head; above on the first floor is a three-light window with plate tracery and a mullion and transom window. The right arcade contains three mullion and transom windows and a rectangular light with a traceried head, with three mullion and transom windows on the first floor. To the right of this range stands a square tower of roughly four stages with a battered plinth containing a rectangular light. A string above the lower stage forms a hoodmould above a lancet window and also above a two-light window on the right side. The second stage has an oriel window on three corbels with a hipped roof; the third stage bears a loophole and the fourth stage a two-light window. The left side contains a doorway, and a stair turret occupies the right angle. To the right of the tower is a two-bay 19th-century range with ground floor mullion and transom windows having four-centred heads, a three-light and two-light first floor window, and groups of three and two cusped lancets on the second floor. A bartisan-style projection marks the parapet corner.

The main entrance was relocated to the north-west side in the 19th century. It is flanked by two circular three-stage towers, with the linking wall displaying a stepped parapet above a large four-centred arched recess containing a window. The porch is canted, has buttresses with offsets, and a blind pointed archway with a blank shield in the central embrasure of the parapet. The entrance archway is of three hollow-chamfered orders, the central one shafted and enriched with rosettes.

The stable courtyard adjoins to the north-east and has a hipped slate roof. It is two storeys with a dentilled eaves cornice, comprising roughly eight bays on its sides and four on its ends. Windows have cambered heads. At the centre of the north-east side stands a square two-stage clocktower with an intermediate two-course band, large four-centred archways on the lower stage, and a brick quadripartite vault within.

Interior

The principal room in the south tower is a copy of the Pantheon, featuring a circular coffered dome with columns supporting an elaborate entablature and screening niches in the walls containing statues of Coade stone. The drawing room has doors and windows flanked by porphyry columns with white marble capitals and bases, topped by an entablature enriched with a peacock frieze. The fireplaces are of ornately carved white marble; the library fireplace is particularly notable for its porphyry panels decorated with swags, masks, and garlands.

Historical context

Richard Payne Knight was the grandson of Richard Knight of Madeley (1659–1749), a Shropshire iron-master whose fortune he inherited. At the age of 17, he travelled to Italy and became regarded as a scholar and aesthetician of considerable distinction. Downton Castle was built as an early expression of Knight's beliefs about the relationship between architecture and landscape, ideas he later expounded in his Analytical Enquiry into the Principles of Taste (1805). His intention was to unite "the different improvements of different ages in the same building"—a design that combined irregular castellated exterior architecture with a classical interior. Medieval castle architecture from Wales and the landscapes of Poussin and Claude Lorraine probably inspired him. While asymmetric plans and picturesque styling first emerged in Vanbrugh's house at Greenwich (1717) and at Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill (begun 1748), Downton Castle achieved the first true expression of these ideas and inspired the castellated designs of the Picturesque movement for the next fifty years.