Castle Goring | |
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General information | |
Architectural style | Greco-Palladian and Gothic |
Town or city | Worthing, West Sussex |
Country | England |
Completed | 1797–1798 [1] |
Cost | £90,000 adjusted for inflation: £10.1 million [2] |
Client | Sir Bysshe Shelley |
Owner | Lady Colin Campbell |
Design and construction | |
Architect(s) | John Rebecca |
Castle Goring is a Grade I listed country house in Worthing, in West Sussex, England [3] about 4.5 miles (7 kilometres) northwest of the town centre.
One of Worthing's two Grade I listed buildings (deemed by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to be of exceptional interest), it has been described by architectural critic Ian Nairn as reflecting "the equivocal taste of the 1790s as well as anywhere in the country." [4]
Castle Goring was designed by John Rebecca for Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet. It was intended that his grandson, the renowned poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, would live at Castle Goring; however, he drowned in Italy aged 29, so he never took possession of the house.
In 1845, Mary Shelley, who inherited the building as widow of the poet, sold it to Vice-Admiral Sir George Brooke-Pechell, RN, who'd been residing at the property as a tenant since 1825. It is currently owned by Lady Colin Campbell. [5]
When it was built in the 1790s, Castle Goring was in the far north of the parish. Since Goring-by-Sea became part of the borough of Worthing in 1929, development has extended to the borders of the Castle Goring estate, and the estate now borders on the West Durrington area of the town, several kilometres from the original centre of Goring.
Castle Goring lies adjacent to the A27 road from Worthing to Chichester, at grid reference TQ 102056, to the northwest of Worthing. It also lies within the South Downs National Park next to ancient woodland at Titnore Wood.
The building has a front and rear of different styles. The north side of Castle Goring is Gothic and is thought to resemble Arundel Castle 8 km (5.0 mi) to the west, while the south side has a Greco-Palladian front of yellow brick, said to be a copy of the Villa Lante [6] near Rome.
English Heritage has described Castle Goring as "the most complete example of the 'carnival-style' of the era". [7]
As the building has always been in private ownership, little is known about the interior. There is known to be a glass dome in the centre of the building, above a spiral staircase. The building's owners do not welcome visitors and relatively few photographs of the building exist in the public domain. However, in 2016 the present owner, Lady Colin Campbell, allowed the interior of the building to be extensively filmed and shown in an ITV documentary, Lady C and the Castle. On 7 January 2017, the castle's interior and exterior were also shown when Lady Colin Campbell was a subject on the ITV show Through the Keyhole . Further views of the interior, including the glass dome which is said to be the oldest in the UK in a private home (and in need of extensive renovation) were shown in an episode of Salvage Hunters on Quest in 2017.
Castle Goring was designed by John Rebecca for Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet. The building was the first of several that Rebecca designed in the Georgian era around the then fashionable resort town of Worthing. Sir Bysshe Shelley's son, Sir Timothy Shelley, preferred to live at Field Place near Horsham. It was intended that his son, Percy Bysshe Shelley, would live at Castle Goring; however, the poet drowned in Italy aged just 29, so he never took possession.
In 1825, Sir Timothy Shelley let the building to Captain (later Vice Admiral) Sir George Brooke-Pechell, 4th Baronet of Paglesham, lord of the manor of Angmering, who was Liberal MP for Brighton from 1835 to 1860. In 1845, Mary Shelley, who inherited the building as widow of the poet, sold it to Brooke-Pechel. Brooke-Pechel's daughter, Adelaide, married Sir Alfred FC Somerset, who was Deputy Lieutenant for Middlesex and Justice of the Peace for Middlesex. [8] Their daughter Gwendoline married her cousin, Arthur W Fitzroy Somerset, who held the same offices for Sussex. [9] Aside from a period in the 1870s and 1880s when the property was let to the Burrell family, the property remained with the Somerset family until 2013. [10] Lady Colin Campbell is the current owner. [5]
By the start of the 21st century, the future of the building had looked bleak. Castle Goring had been left to decay to the point that it was on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register, which described its situation as "very grave". Historic England described Castle Goring as being of priority category A, its highest priority. It was defined as at "immediate risk of further rapid deterioration or loss of fabric; no solution agreed".
Structural surveyors working on behalf of Worthing Borough Council tried, unsuccessfully, to gain access to the building several times. A full survey of Castle Goring was finally carried out in July 2003, using the council's legal powers to gain entry. The report was completed in January 2004 and set out details of the repairs considered necessary to "retain the architectural and historic importance of the building and sets out a timescale over which the repairs should be carried out".
It is known that an evaluation study was carried out for a golf resort within the castle estate. [11] However, it was not clear whether the building itself would have been renovated under the scheme. In 2010, Castle Goring and its estate was included in the South Downs National Park.
In 2013, Lady Colin Campbell purchased the property and in November 2015, she said that she had decided to be a contestant on the popular television show I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in order to pay to replace the castle's roof. [12]
The Heritage at Risk Register reports that consent for change of use to a wedding/conference venue has been granted and repairs to the roof, stairs and structural timbers have been carried out. It is now priority category F. [13]
Goring-by-Sea, commonly referred to simply as Goring, is a neighbourhood of Worthing and former civil parish, now in Worthing district in West Sussex, England. It lies west of West Worthing, about 2.5 miles (4 km) west of Worthing town centre. Historically in Sussex, in the rape of Arundel, Goring has been part of the borough of Worthing since 1929.
Petworth House in the parish of Petworth, West Sussex, England, is a late 17th-century Grade I listed country house, rebuilt in 1688 by Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, and altered in the 1870s to the design of the architect Anthony Salvin. It contains intricate wood-carvings by Grinling Gibbons (d.1721). It is the manor house of the manor of Petworth. For centuries it was the southern home for the Percy family, Earls of Northumberland.
Georgia Arianna, Lady Colin Campbell, also known as Lady C, is a British Jamaican author, socialite, and television personality who has published seven books about the British royal family. They include biographies of Diana, Princess of Wales, which was on The New York Times Best Seller list in 1992, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
Warnham is a village and civil parish in the Horsham district of West Sussex, England. The village is centred 2 miles (3.2 km) north-northwest of Horsham, 31 miles (50 km) from London, to the west of the A24 road. Other named settlements within the parish include the hamlets of Goosegreen, Kingsfold and Winterfold as well as parts of Strood Green and Rowhook. The area is in the northwest of the Weald, a gently sloped remnant forest in southeast England and largely a plain by erosion.
John Biagio Rebecca, the son of Italian-born decorative painter Biagio Rebecca (1735–1808), was an architect of many buildings in Sussex and London. He lived in London's Leicester Square from 1825 to 1827 but many of his buildings were built in the seaside town of Worthing in Sussex and he is credited as being the town's principal Georgian architect.
There have been three baronetcies created for members of the Shelley family, one in the Baronetage of England and two in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. The three recipients of the titles represented two different branches of the family with a common ancestor in John Shelley of Michelgrove. The most famous member of the family is the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, although he never held any title. The holders of the third and last creation were later elevated to the peerage as Baron De L'Isle and Dudley and Viscount De L'Isle.
Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet was the grandfather of English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Sir Paul Pechell, 1st Baronet, army officer, was a descendant of minor Huguenot nobility of Languedoc. His grandfather had been ejected from France following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and ultimately settled in Ireland, where Pechell was born.
Sir Timothy Shelley, 2nd Baronet was an English politician and lawyer. He was the son of Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet of Castle Goring and the father of Romantic poet and dramatist Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Sir Percy Florence Shelley, 3rd Baronet was the son of the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, novelist and author of Frankenstein. He was the only child of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to live beyond infancy. His middle name, possibly suggested by his father's friend Sophia Stacey, came from the city of his birth, Florence in Italy. He had two elder half-siblings, by his father's first marriage to Harriet Westbrook, and three full siblings who died in infancy.
Ripley Castle is a Grade I listed 14th-century country house in Ripley, North Yorkshire, England, 3 miles (4.8 km) north of Harrogate.
Sir John Villiers Shelley, 7th Baronet was an English Tory landowner and politician.
Cothelstone Manor in Cothelstone, Somerset, England was built in the mid-16th century, largely demolished by the parliamentary troops in 1646 and rebuilt by E.J. Esdaile in 1855–56.
St Mary's Church is an Anglican church in the Goring-by-Sea area of the Borough of Worthing, one of seven local government districts in the English county of West Sussex. The late Norman parish church of the ancient village of Goring retains some architectural elements from that period, but Decimus Burton's comprehensive restoration of 1837 has given the church its present Gothic Revival exterior appearance. German artist Hans Feibusch, who worked extensively in the Diocese of Chichester, provided a mural in 1954: it is considered impressive, but caused controversy at the time. English Heritage has listed the church at Grade II* for its architectural and historical importance.
Titnore Wood is an area of ancient woodland to the north-west of Worthing in West Sussex. With neighbouring Goring Wood it forms one of the last remaining blocks of ancient woodland on the West Sussex coastal plain.
Arthur William FitzRoy Somerset was an English first-class cricketer. Though hailing from Chatham, Kent, Somerset moved to Castle Goring, a country house now in the town of Worthing in Sussex, and former home of Sir Bysshe Shelley, grandfather of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Vice-Admiral Sir George Richard Brooke-Pechell, 4th Baronet, born George Richard Pechell, was a British Royal Navy officer and Whig politician. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Brighton for 25 years.
Burton Park is a 19th-century country house in the civil parish of Duncton in West Sussex, and is situated 1/2 a mile to the east of the village of Duncton, within its own estate. It is a Grade I listed building, now converted into multiple occupation.
Bysshe is a surname sometimes used as a given name. It has been said that it is a variation of the surname Bush.
The following is a timeline of the history of the borough of Worthing, West Sussex, England.