Highcliffe Castle

Highcliffe Castle

The original house on this site was built around 1775 for the third Earl of Bute, possibly by Robert Adam or Capability Brown, but it did not occupy the exact location of the present building and was demolished in 1794. It was replaced by a nondescript building which was itself demolished in 1830. The present Highcliffe Castle was built between 1830 and 1834 by Lord Stuart de Rothesay. The architect was W J Donthorne, who collaborated with Lord Stuart de Rothesay on the design.

The castle incorporates materials from the Hôtel des Andelys near Rouen in Normandy, the house where Antoine de Bourbon, father of Henri IV, died in 1562. When Lord Stuart de Rothesay retired from the British Embassy in Paris in 1830, he witnessed the original Hôtel des Andelys being demolished. He purchased it, had it shipped down the Seine and across to this site, where it was re-erected.

The building forms a large L-shaped plan and is constructed of rosy-tinged ashlar with two storeys and a basement. The north or entrance front is dominated by a great Gothic porte-cochere archway at least 30 feet high, flanked by ribbed octagonal buttresses with a gable between surmounted by a pierced parapet. Beneath the archway is a groined vaulted roof, an elaborate carved doorway, and a tall five-light pointed window above it. The east wing, to the left of the porte-cochere, has a terrace over an enclosed forecourt containing obtusely-pointed windows of the basement. The ground floor of the wing has five casement windows in three tiers of two lights each with depressed heads, the top tier lighting an entresol. A cornice and parapet sit above the ground floor. The first floor is set back with a flat walk on the roof of the ground floor in front of it, terminating at the east end in a rectangular tower with one window flanked by rectangular or octagonal buttresses at the angles and a parapet between. Beyond the tower, the ground floor without basement projects further and has six additional windows, the three easternmost in a canted bay.

The west front comprises the hall at the north end, which has four buttresses, a narrow half-octagonal oriel window at the north end, four lancet windows at first floor level, and a pierced parapet surmounted by finials. At the south end of this front is a rectangular projection at right angles with one window on each front and a parapet over surmounted by octagonal corbel cupolas at the angles. Its west face has a projecting oriel window on the ground floor and an elaborate window of two tiers of four lights above.

At the south end of the south wing is an L-shaped projection on the ground floor only, formerly a garden-room, conservatory and chapel combined. Its south front is entirely composed of windows with a huge bay in the centre approached by seven steps. The south-east side of the castle shows its L-plan, though the angle is partly filled in, giving the impression of three sides of an octagon. The centre has three windows with flat heads on both floors beneath a pierced parapet containing the inscription "Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis terra magnum alterius spectare laborem". On each side of this centre portion is a tower at a slight angle. The east tower is of three storeys flanked by octagonal buttresses with a four-light window on each floor. The west tower has two storeys only, with a round-headed archway forming a porch on the ground floor and above it the elaborate carved oriel window from the Manoir d'Andelys in which Henri IV stood while he waited for his father Antoine de Bourbon to die. Tracery buttresses stand on each side of this oriel. On each side of the east and south towers are wings of ground floor height only, also at an angle to the towers. These identical wings have three windows each of two tiers of two lights and are surmounted by pierced parapets with finials above the angles of the bays.

All windows throughout the castle are casement windows with stone mullions and transoms. The interior contains French 18th-century panelling and marble chimney-pieces. The principal interior feature is the hall, though the double staircase which formerly led from it to the principal bedroom has been removed. The principal bedroom is notable as the room in which Emperor William II of Germany slept when he rented the house during his rest-cure in 1907.