Thornbury Castle, Inner Court

This is a great house built primarily between about 1511 and 1521 for Edward, 3rd Duke of Buckingham. It underwent extensive 19th-century restoration and alteration by the architect Anthony Salvin, with further changes when the building was converted to a hotel. A new section was added to the north range of the inner court in 1997 by Niall Phillips Architects.

The buildings are constructed of Cotswold stone ashlar, with chimney stacks of both ashlar and brick. Some roofs are lead-covered, others are tiled. Most window frames are metal casements.

Layout

Thornbury Castle consists of an inner court with an outer court to the west (the surviving parts of which are listed separately). The inner court is entered through a gatehouse at the centre of the western range. The western range originally housed the Duke and Duchess's wardrobes and lodgings. The south range contained the principal state rooms and private chambers, whilst the north range held kitchens and additional lodgings. An earlier eastern range that once closed the inner court has been demolished.

West Range

The west range was never completed, but the intended symmetrical composition can still be read in its design: a regular rhythm of large polygonal outer towers with intermediate turrets and a central gatehouse. The full-height tower and turret to the south show what was planned, whilst the corresponding elements to the north were left at only two storeys. The completed south tower is uncrenellated, though it has heavy machicolation to the parapet. The smaller turret formerly had a pyramidal cap. An 18th-century roof with 19th-century half-timbering to the gable has been added to the turret immediately south of the gatehouse.

A moulded string-course marks the lower level of the buildings, with a second string-course below the upper two storeys of the completed towers. The string-course follows the heads of the mullioned two-light windows in the northern portion of the range; windows in the southern portion have hood-moulds. There are cross-loops at the bases of the major towers. A pair of sash windows has been inserted to the right of the gatehouse, dating from an 18th-century conversion of this part of the building.

The Gatehouse

The gatehouse features a large four-centred arch with moulded frame, accompanied by a pedestrian entrance to the north. The smaller doorcase is a four-centred arch with foliate carving to the spandrels, framed by a square hood on colonnettes. The presence of this small gate beside the larger one is almost unique in an English castle—such arrangements being more common in monastic and town entrances, and in France. The principal arch has a groove to accommodate a portcullis. The timber gates and door, with diagonally-fixed battens forming a meshed pattern, are not original.

Above the openings, a banner carries the inscription: 'This gate was begun in The yere of Owre Lorde Gode MCCCCCXI The ij yere of The reyne of kynge Henri the viij, by me Edw […] duc of Bukkynghm Erlle of Hertforde Stafforde and Northampto'. Below to the right is inscribed 'Dorenesavant' (the Duke's motto being 'Doresenavant', meaning 'Henceforward'); the corresponding portion has been lost to the left of the gate.

Above this inscription, heraldic badges associated with the Duke of Buckingham are displayed on shields. These badges, which appear elsewhere on the building both externally and internally, include the Stafford knot, a mantle with cords and tassels dependent, a white hart collared and chained, a swan with its neck encircled by a crown with a chain dependent, and a fire-ball. In a central panel, a shield charged with the Duke's quartered arms is encircled by the Garter.

It is thought the gateway was originally intended to be surmounted by an oriel window. Within the gatehouse, the corners retain the lowest portion of ribs which were to have sprung to create a fan or lierne vault beneath the current timber roof.

On the inner court side, the eastern opening of the gatehouse (which spans the breadth of both the principal and postern gates to the west) is framed by engaged columns. The turrets to either side of the gatehouse project as on the west front, though here they are narrower, with doors. The 16th-century character of the southern part of the west range on this elevation has been substantially affected by the steeply-pitched roof with dormers, thought to have been added in the early 18th century, and by the replacement of the casements with sash frames. There is a partially blocked doorway to the south of the gatehouse.

South Range: The 'New Building'

The large south tower of the west range also forms the western element of the southern range—Buckingham's 'New Building'—with a narrow stair tower with single-light windows and a doorway at the angle with the south-facing elevation. This range, overlooking the privy garden, contains rooms designed to accommodate the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham. The Duchess's apartments were on the ground floor, with the Duke's above, in an arrangement employed in Henry VII's palace at Richmond.

These apartments are lit by double-height compass windows with elaborate geometrical profiles—a type apparently inaugurated in Henry VII's late 1490s tower at Windsor and elaborated in his 1503 Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey. At Thornbury, the ground-floor windows take the form of a star, whilst above, the western window is canted to a point. The five-lobed window to the Duke's great chamber to the east is the most impressive. The lights of the upper windows have trefoil heads.

To the west of these windows is a projecting bay with canted corners, with corner windows at a high level; within this bay is a stair. The effect created by these three bay windows has been described as 'probably the most perfect grouping of its date in existence' (Buildings of England: Gloucestershire volume 2).

Between this bay and the stair tower are first- and second-floor twelve-light windows, with the lights of the second-floor windows having ogee heads. The remaining windows of this elevation are a mixture of single-, two-, and multi-light mullion and transom windows with cusped and plain four-centred heads. Hood-moulds are stopped by heads or by the Stafford knot.

At first-floor level, two four-centred arched door openings with carved spandrels—one in the south face of the western tower, the other at the east end of the range—once gave access to the two-storey cloister which surrounded the privy garden to the south of this range, and connected with the ducal pew at the east end of the parish church.

String-courses run above the first floor and below the crenellated parapet; some of the decorative gargoyles take the form of the Stafford knot.

The Chimneys

Rising from the west end is a complex chimney of red brick, with geometrically-patterned side stacks flanking a central section taking the form of a concave spiral, and panels to the rim.

At the east end of the elevation, the outer walls continue beyond the enclosed, habitable range with windows exposed on both sides, terminating in an irregular edge where the wall remains unfinished or partially destroyed. The return wall is blind apart from a substantial 19th-century central doorway, with a smaller blocked doorway to the left which may be part of the original design.

The north elevation contains fine first-floor windows intended to serve the Duke's apartments. Within the shell at the east end is a tall oriel window with blind lower lights. The form of the oriel further west has been significantly altered by restoration, which has reduced its height and replaced the central four lights with a blank panel, though the supporting corbel with trefoil panelling to the underside is original. Further west is an un-restored four-light window with ogee and mouchette tracery as on the south elevation, with a hood-mould above. The fenestration otherwise consists of small, irregularly placed windows, some dating from the 19th century. Between the two oriels, a stack is corbelled out at first-floor level.

The stack on this side, also of brick, is if anything more elaborate than that above the south elevation, with heraldic decoration to the side stacks, the tops of which are lobed to echo the form of the largest of the compass windows, with arrow loops to the rim. A scroll at the base of the chimney bears the date 1514.

The incomplete section of this elevation is crenellated; the habitable section to the west is not. The main entrance to the building is now through a 19th-century door at the junction with the west range; to the left is a mounting block carved with the Stafford knot.

North Range

The north range has undergone extensive restoration and rebuilding during the 19th and 20th centuries. At the centre of the south elevation is a polygonal stair tower, with regularly placed two-light mullioned windows to either side. This range has projecting wings to the north and mullioned windows belonging to different phases. A tall window above the eastern door on the northern elevation is thought to be a 20th-century intervention, whilst the pitched roof rising behind the parapets with half-timbered gables dates from the late 20th-century conversion. The principal feature of the late 20th-century work is the addition of a double-height canted bay to the east end, in a 16th-century style, incorporating features found elsewhere in the castle.

Interior

West Range

Within the west range, the portion to the west of the gatehouse contains kitchens on the ground floor, with reception rooms decorated in the 19th and 20th centuries above. To the east of the gatehouse are cellars, identified as a dungeon in the late 16th-century survey. The bedrooms within this range are thought to retain few notable original features.

South Range

Each of the two suites in the south range originally consisted of three large chambers with closets, the bedchambers being in the tower. The interior is now essentially the product of 19th-century refurbishment by Salvin, with later alterations and additions. Salvin's work included some reordering of many of the principal spaces and the re-siting of a number of features. The 1832 survey of the building made under the direction of A W N Pugin, which produced a number of plans and drawings, allows us to identify a number of the most significant survivals and changes.

Salvin's renovation made the former Duchess's apartments on the ground floor into the principal public spaces. These are characterised by plain Tudor-style panelling and compartmented ceilings by Salvin, with late 20th-century decoration and carpentry by Steve Edgar. A corridor runs along the north side of the range, with stairs to east and west; the western stair, with integral balcony, is Jacobethan in style. Stone spiral stairs remain within the two towers on the south front.

The central room—now the drawing room—is entered through a stone Tudor doorcase with armorial badges enriching the concave-moulded jambs and the spandrels. This doorcase originally stood between the great chamber and dining chamber in the first-floor Duke's apartments. On the north wall of the drawing room, moved to allow for the insertion of the corridor, is an elaborate 16th-century Tudor-arched fireplace with foliate carving to the spandrels and a frieze of quatrefoil panels with armorial badges. The 19th-century painted panels above replace original carved panels, and there is a grate with 19th-century heraldic tiles. The windows of this room have roundels of painted armorial glass by Thomas Willement of 1858.

The ground-floor room to the east, once the largest of these chambers and now the library, has been reduced by the insertion of service rooms at the east end. A fireplace now stands at the east end of the library, replacing one to the east of the window.

The octagonal tower room at the west end, and the room to the north of this, are now in use as dining rooms with 19th-century panelling and 19th-century moulded and carved stone doorcases reflecting details of the 16th-century building.

The first floor is now subdivided into bedrooms with a central corridor running the length of the range, the rooms being accessed through doorways with timber four-centred arches. At the east end, the great cinquefoil compass window has armorial badges studding the uprights internally. Immediately to the east is visible part of a large and complex fire-surround with carved heraldic panels and studded decoration, extremely similar to the one described by Pugin as being in the same position in the room below.

A number of the other rooms retain original stone fireplaces with Tudor arches and foliate spandrels with armorial details, including the former Duke's bedchamber in the west tower, which has a corresponding moulded stone doorcase with carving to the spandrels. One first-floor fireplace also has a concave inner moulding and a frieze of linked quatrefoils.

North Range

The north range, the rooms of which would originally have been relatively plain, is thought to have lost much of its original character internally. A thoroughgoing conversion in the late 20th century providing additional bedroom accommodation has substantially altered the appearance of many of the internal spaces. However, the large kitchen to the west, now remodelled as the Tudor Hall, retains a large fireplace, with evidence of a second fireplace to the west.