Penrhyn Castle

Penrhyn Castle is a country house built in the style of a vast Norman castle with influences from other later medieval periods. It is of such immense scale — its 70 roofs cover an area of over an acre (0.4 hectares) — that it almost defies meaningful description. The main components of the house, which is built on a north-south axis with the principal elevations facing east and west, are the 124-foot (37.8 metre) high keep, based on Castle Hedingham in Essex, containing the family quarters on the south; the central range, protected by a barbican terrace on the east, housing the state apartments; and the rectangular-shaped staff and service buildings and stables to the north. The entire building is constructed of local rubblestone with internal brick lining, but all elevations are faced in tooled Anglesey limestone ashlar of the finest quality jointing, with flat lead roofs concealed by castellated parapets.

Close up, the extreme length of the building — approximately 200 yards (182.88 metres) long — and the fact that the ground slopes away on all sides mean that almost no complete elevation can be seen. Because the most frequent views of the exterior are oblique, this also offered Hopper the opportunity to deploy his towers for picturesque effect, with the relationship between the keep and the other towers and turrets frequently obscuring the distances between them. Another significant external feature of the castle is that it actually looks defensible, making it immune at least from Pugin's famous 1841 slur on contemporary castles: "Who would hammer against nailed portals, when he could kick his way through the greenhouse?" Certainly, this could never be achieved at Penrhyn, and it looks every inch the impregnable fortress both architect and patron intended it to be.

East Elevation

To the left is the loosely attached four-storey keep on a battered plinth with four tiers of deeply splayed Norman windows, two to each face, with chevron decoration and nook-shafts, topped by four square corner turrets. The dining room (distinguished by the intersecting tracery above the windows) and breakfast room to the right of the entrance gallery are protected by the long sweep of the machicolated barbican terrace (carriage forecourt), which curves in front of the two rooms and then runs northwards before returning at right angles to the west to include the gatehouse, which formed the original main entrance to the castle, and ending in a tall rectangular tower with machicolated parapet. To the right of the gatehouse are the recessed buildings of the kitchen court, and to the right again the long, largely unbroken outer wall of the stable court, terminated by the square footmen's tower to the left and the rather more exuberant projecting circular dung tower with its spectacularly cantilevered bartizan on the right. From here the wall runs at right angles to the west, incorporating the impressive gatehouse to the stable court.

West Elevation

Beginning at the left is the hexagonal smithy tower, followed by the long run of the stable court, well provided with windows on this side as the stables lie directly behind. At the end of this the wall turns at right angles to the west, incorporating the narrow circular-turreted gatehouse to the outer court and terminating in the machicolated circular ice tower. From here the wall runs again at a lower height, enclosing the remainder of the outer court. It is the state apartments which make up the chief architectural display on the central part of this elevation, beginning with a strongly articulated but essentially rectangular tower to the left, while both the drawing room and the library have Norman windows leading directly onto the lawns, the latter terminating in a slender machicolated circular corner tower. To the right is the keep, considerably set back on this side.

Interior

Only those parts of the castle generally accessible to visitors are recorded in this description. Although not described here, much of the furniture and many of the paintings (including family portraits) are also original to the house. Similarly, it should be noted that in the interests of brevity and clarity, not all significant architectural features are itemised in the following description.

Entrance Gallery

One of the last parts of the castle to be built, this narrow cloister-like passage was added to the main block to heighten the sensation of entering the vast Grand Hall, which is made only partly visible by the deliberate offsetting of the intervening doorways. It has bronze lamp standards with wolf-heads on stone bases.

Grand Hall

Entering the columned aisle of this huge space, the visitor stands at a crossroads between the three principal areas of the castle's plan: to the left the passage leads up to the family's private apartments on the four floors of the keep; to the right the door at the end leads to the extensive service quarters; while ahead lies the sequence of state rooms used for entertaining guests and displayed to the public ever since the castle was built. The hall itself resembles in form, style and scale the transept of a great Norman cathedral, with the great clustered columns extending upwards to a triforium formed on two sides of extraordinary compound arches. It has stained glass with signs of the zodiac and months of the year as in a book of hours by Thomas Willement (completed 1835).

Library

The library has very much the atmosphere of a gentlemen's London club, with walls, columned arches and ceilings covered in the most lavish ornamentation. The superb architectural bookcases and panelled walls are of oak but the arches are plaster grained to match. Ornamental bosses and other devices to the rich plaster ceiling refer to the ancestry of the Dawkins and Pennant families, as do the stained glass lunettes above the windows, possibly by David Evans of Shrewsbury. There are four chimneypieces of polished Anglesey marble, one with a frieze of fantastical carved mummers in the capitals.

Drawing Room

This was the great hall of the late 18th-century house and its medieval predecessor. It is again in a neo-Norman style but the decoration is lighter and the columns more slender, the spirit of the room reflected in the 2,000 delicate Maltese gilt crosses to the vaulted ceiling.

Ebony Room

So called on account of its furniture and ebonised chimneypiece and plasterwork, the Ebony Room has at its entrance a spiral staircase from the medieval house.

Grand Staircase Hall

In many ways the greatest architectural achievement at Penrhyn, taking ten years to complete, the carving in two contrasting stones is of the highest quality. Repeating abstract decorative motifs contrast with the infinitely inventive figurative carving in the newels and capitals. To the top, the intricate plaster panels of the domed lantern are formed in exceptionally high relief and display both Norse and Celtic influences. Next to the grand stair is the secondary stair, itself a magnificent structure in grey sandstone with lantern, built immediately next to the grand stair so that family or guests should not meet staff on the same staircase.

Dining Room and Breakfast Room

Reached from the columned aisle of the grand hall are the two remaining principal ground-floor rooms, the dining room and the breakfast room, among the last parts of the castle to be completed and clearly intended to be picture galleries as much as dining areas. The stencilled treatment of the walls in the dining room allows both the provision of an appropriately elaborate Norman scheme and a large flat surface for the hanging of paintings. It has a black marble fireplace carved by Richard Westmacott and an extremely ornate ceiling with leaf bosses encircled by bands of figurative mouldings derived from the Romanesque church of Kilpeck, Herefordshire. The breakfast room has a cambered beam ceiling with oak-grained finish.

Upper Floors

At the top of the grand staircase is the grand hall gallery, which is vaulted and continues around the grand hall below to link with the passage to the keep. At this level (as on the other floors) the keep contains a suite of rooms comprising a sitting room, dressing room, bedroom and small ante-chamber. The room containing the famous slate bed also has a red Mona marble chimneypiece, one of the most spectacular in the castle. Returning to the grand hall gallery and continuing straight on rather than returning to the grand staircase, the Lower India room is reached to the right. This contains an Anglesey limestone chimneypiece painted to match the ground colour of the room's Chinese wallpaper. Coming out of this room, the chapel corridor leads to the chapel gallery (used by the family) and the chapel proper below (used by staff), the latter with encaustic tiles probably reused from the old medieval chapel and stained and painted glass by David Evans (circa 1833).

Domestic Quarters

The domestic quarters of the castle are reached along the passage from the breakfast room, which turns at right angles to the right at the foot of the secondary staircase. The most important areas are the butler's pantry, steward's office, servants' hall, housekeeper's room, still room, housekeeper's store and housemaids' tower, while the kitchen (with its cast-iron range flanked by large and hygienic vertical slabs of Penrhyn slate) is housed on the lower ground floor. From this kitchen court, which also includes a coal store, oil vaults, brushing room, lamp room, pastry room, larder, scullery and laundry, are reached the outer court with its soup kitchen, brewhouse and two-storey ice tower, and the much larger stables court which, along with the stables themselves containing their extensive slate-partitioned stalls and loose boxes, incorporates the coach house, covered ride, smithy tower, dung tower with gardeners' messroom above, and footmen's tower.