Castle House

Castle House, West Street, Buckingham

Large town house comprising a main range of 1708 with late 15th-century wings to the rear flanking an open court. The late 15th-century wings were altered around 1623, with the left (west) wing restored and altered in 1881 by E Swinfen Harris. The building has undergone other early 19th-century and 20th-century alterations.

The main range is constructed of red brick in Flemish bond with limestone dressings, featuring hipped plain-tile roofs and brick ridge stacks. The rear wings are of coursed limestone rubble to ground floor with limestone dressings and timber-framed first floor, all now rendered, and plain-tile roofs.

The main front is a U-plan composition of 8 windows across 2 storeys and attic, arranged as 2:4:2. A pair of moulded stone doorcases to the centre are joined by a continuous plain frieze and moulded cornice. Each doorcase features a segmental pediment; these meet in the middle. The left doorcase frames a 6-panel door and large overlight with an ornamental glazing bar pattern of central horizontal oval and 8 radiating spokes. The right doorcase frames a 12-pane sash window. Similar sashes to ground and first floors have moulded stone sills and surrounds.

Two bays either end of the front break forward to form shallow wings, each with raised quoins to angles. The building displays a wave-moulded limestone plinth, one stone step to the door, stone storey band and wood modillion eaves. The centre features a pedimented section with a rubbed brick pediment framed by wood modillioned slopes. This centre section has a group of 3 roof dormers; the middle one has a segmental pediment, those either side have hipped roofs. The wings each have a central gabled roof dormer. All dormers have 2-light leaded casements.

The symmetrical stacks have wave-moulded stone coping to bases and tall brick flues with stone corner strips and hollow-chamfered stone cornices.

The west wing has been partly rebuilt in brick with a wood mullion and transom window to ground and first floors on the garden side. The remainder has similar windows to the first floor and a pair of 2-light Perpendicular windows to the ground floor of stone, with straight heads, transoms, cinquefoil-headed main lights, secondary trefoil-headed lights to the head and hoodmoulds. A pair of 2-light stone mullion cellar windows feature arched heads to the lights (the left-hand one). A 19th-century two-storey canted bay window to the gable end displays impressed decoration to the render above ground-floor windows and a datestone inscribed 1623/L/WM. A 2-storey corridor extension faces the court side.

The east wing is narrower and survives more complete. It has irregular glazing to the garden side of wood mullion and transom windows, with 16 and 20-pane sashes to the first floor and 3 gabled roof dormers with 2-light leaded casements. There are lower two- and single-storey extensions to the gable end. A datestone on the court side is very similar to that on the west wing.

Interior

The main range contains a staircase hall with an open-well stair. The stair has slender turned balusters of columns on bulbous feet, column newels, carved tread ends and a ramped handrail, swept up where it meets the newels. There is a pilastered and panelled dado.

The dining room to the west of the hall has painted deal fielded panelling with segmental-arched recesses above cupboards either side of the chimneybreast. The eared wood chimneypiece features egg-and-dart ornament, and the overmantel panel has similar ornament and a swan's neck pediment framing a reused plaster panel of Cupid and Psyche.

The study to the east of the hall has a late 18th-century painted wood and composition chimneypiece. The first-floor sitting room has fielded panelling. The main bedroom has reused 17th-century panelling with strapwork ornament to the top row.

The west range appears to have originally consisted of a large ground-floor room over a cellar and a first-floor hall; both rooms have been reduced by at least one bay. The ground-floor Drawing Room, formerly the Great Parlour, has a many-moulded cross beam ceiling with wall posts, hollow-chamfered arch braces to tie-beams and cusped tracery to spandrels. Posts and braces rest on moulded oak corbels. The original windows have chamfered oak lintels with heart stops. The chimneypiece is a 19th-century composite work incorporating old woodwork. It features Salamonic half-columns flanking the fireplace bearing a 2-tiered overmantel; the lower tier is divided in three with a central panel inscribed ANNO 1619/ WL ML, and the upper tier is probably a Jacobean bedroom overmantel with paired columns and twin round-arched headed panels with strapwork. Distinctive late 19th-century woodwork to doors and bay window was designed by E Swinfen Harris.

The bedroom above at the bay window end has 17th-century panelling with strapwork ornament to the top row and a fireplace with a Jacobean overmantel featuring vine trail to columns which frame 2 round arch-headed panels.

The former open hall roof survives in the attic substantially intact, with 3 surviving trusses. The 2 main trusses have double hollow-chamfered arch-braced and cambered tie beams with queen posts to a principal cambered collar and to a secondary collar. Posts frame arch-bracing to the collars, multi-foiled to upper collars and meeting in an ogee arch. An arch-braced collar truss to the lower end, probably marking the position of a screen, has foiled bracing to the secondary collar. There are 2 tiers of clasped, wind-braced purlins. Most members are hollow-chamfered. The principal collars have been cut to give access to the attic room. A moulded wall-post to the roof is visible on the first floor court side, where a tension brace is also exposed.

The east range survives largely complete. It evidently consisted of a large ground-floor room over a stone cellar and 2 chambers to the first floor, one much larger than the other and with an open timber roof.

The cellar has small rectangular stone windows, now blocked, in deeply splayed bays, to the court side and spine beam. The ground-floor room has a chamfered cross beam ceiling of 3 bays and a large open fireplace with a cambered bressumer. The first floor has a blocked ovolo-moulded wood mullion and transom window to the court side and is divided unequally by an original framed partition with a Tudor-arched doorway beside the courtyard wall and a braced central post.

The original open roof in the attic has tie beam trusses with queen posts to cambered collars and remains of arch-bracing between posts. An original closed truss to the gable end survives in a later, possibly 17th-century extension to that end.

The 18th-century front range probably replaces an original solar wing. A Tudor-arched stone doorway, double wave-moulded, by the gable end of the west range on the court side leads to the parlour; this suggests that no substantial original north range has been lost, and no evidence for one was found in recent renovation.

Historical Note

Castle House was the residence of the Bartons from the late 14th century, then of the Fowlers from the mid-15th century until 1590. William Fowler, MP for Buckingham in 1467 and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who died in 1477, may have been the client for the 15th-century house. The Lambards were owners in the early 17th century when important alterations were made; the initials on the datestones are those of William and Mary Lambard. The front range was rebuilt for Matthias Rogers, who succeeded to the property in 1706.