Sherborne Castle

Sherborne Castle is a country house located within its grounds, dating to the late 16th century with significant alterations and additions in the 17th and 18th centuries. The original core is a rectangular block with angle turrets, initially built for Sir Walter Raleigh. In 1625, Sir John Digby expanded the house by adding four wings of two storeys (with cellars) and hexagonal towers. A drastic restoration occurred in 1859-60 by G D Wingfield-Digby.

The house is constructed of rubble-stone walls, plastered and faced with freestone dressings. The roofs are lead-covered, and it features numerous ashlar chimneys, both square and elongated hexagonal, with moulded plinths, balustrades, and cornices.

The South front has four storeys with mannered gabling above the top storey and a parapet divided by strings. There are three windows, each with cross-transomed stone mullion windows of three, four, and three lights, with moulded cornices serving as labels. Single-light windows are positioned on either side of the top window. A round-headed doorway is centrally located, framed by fluted Roman Doric half-columns supporting an entablature, topped by a stone achievement of arms of the Digby family, Earls of Bristol, above a panelled door. The flanking hexagonal turrets have restored two-light mullion-and-transom windows, finished with plain parapets and heraldic beasts or chimney stacks.

The North front is similar to the South front, with a restored doorway featuring an enriched entablature and a four-light window above, replacing the achievement-of-arms. The East front of the central block has three storeys with attics, topped with a shaped gable, and restored mullion-and-transom windows. The flanking turrets each have a square-headed doorway, the north turret's door being blocked. The added wings are two storeys high and three bays wide, with a balustraded parapet. Windows are late 17th-century insertions, square-headed with eaved architraves, console-brackets, entablatures and pediments.

Internally, courtyard-facing windows are mullion-and-transom. Balustraded stone screens connect the wings, with a central entrance flanked by shell-niches, an entablature, and the Digby crest. The interior retains geometrical plaster ceilings from the 17th century in rooms such as the Red Drawing Room, Lady Bristol’s Room, Green Drawing Room, and Boudoir. Extensive early 17th-century panelling is located behind the library bookcases and in the Oak Room (with enclosure) and Lady Bristol’s Room. Numerous fireplaces with overmantels are present in the Red Drawing Room and Green Drawing Room, both featuring the Digby achievement-of-arms in gadrooned panels. Each hexagonal bay contains a smaller fireplace with Corinthian side columns supporting an entablature. The Library has 18th-century Gothic fittings, with bookcases featuring ogee trefoil-headed arcading on clustered columns, circular spandrel niches containing busts, and a coved arcaded cornice. The house's original, and extended, plan is unusual.