Vanbrugh Castle is a house designed and built by John Vanbrugh around 1719 for his own family. It is located on Maze Hill on the eastern edge of Greenwich Park in London, to the north of Blackheath, with views to the west past the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich down to the Thames reaching as far as the Houses of Parliament.
The castle was designed and built after Vanbrugh had been the architect of the baroque houses at Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, and shortly after Vanbrugh succeeded his architectural mentor Christopher Wren as Surveyor to the Royal Naval Hospital in 1716. Vanbrugh took a lease of a 12-acre triangular site of the Westcombe estate from Sir Michael Biddulph, 2nd Baronet in 1718, now known as Vanbrugh Fields.
In contrast to the baroque style used for his professional commissions, he chose a more medieval, almost gothic, style for his own house. Built on the southwestern corner of the triangular site, it predates the first clearly Gothic Revival house at Strawberry Hill by 30 years. The main structure was finished in 1719, a three-storey square keep with basement built in brick with tall narrow windows, augmented on the south side square by three four-storey towers: two square flanking towers with battlements and a central projecting circular tower enclosing stairs capped by a conical copper roof. An arched corbel table below the moulded parapet is a feature unique to Vanbrugh at this date, also found at Kings Weston House (1710–1725). The building's narrow sash windows echo medieval arrowslits or lancets. A garden on the building's lead roof makes the most of the views over the Thames and London.
Aged 55, Vanbrugh married the 26-year-old Henrietta Maria Yarborough in York in January 1719, and he soon added a wing to the east side of the house in a similar style, creating a lopsided, asymmetric construction – said to be the first asymmetric house built in Europe since the Renaissance. [1] It has the "castle air" adopted in Vanbrugh's remodelling of Kimbolton Castle (1708–1719), and also used at Shirburn Castle, [2] both early revivals of a medieval style of architecture.
It has been claimed that the design was based on the Bastille, where Vanbrugh had been imprisoned for over four years in his youth, and the building may have been referred to as Bastille House before it became better known as Vanbrugh Castle. Visitors from Greenwich would pass by other structures in the grounds designed and built by Vanbrugh – the Nunnery, a second smaller single-story house occupied by Vanbrugh's brother Philip; [3] Mince-pie House or Vanbrugh House, occupied by his brother Charles; [4] [5] and later added two white towers made from patented white bricks, perhaps for his two sons [6] – before reaching a crenelated gateway, with a second gatehouse on the Dover road to the south.
The house passed through various owners after Vanbrugh's death in 1726. The next owner was Robert Holford (1686–1753) with his wife Sarah (née Vanderput). The novelist Mary Anna Needell, née Lupton, was born there in 1830. Further extensions to the main house were added in the late 19th and early 20th century, but Mince-Pie House was demolished in 1902 and the Nunnery was demolished in 1911. The house was occupied by engineer Dr Laurence Holker Potts from 1838, where he set up a laboratory creating equipment to treat spinal injuries. He left the house before his death in 1850. [7]
Oil merchant Alexander Duckham, who bought the castle in 1907 as his London home, added a prominent weathervane shaped like a duck in flight. He donated the house (and Rooks Hill House in Sevenoaks) to the RAF Benevolent Fund in 1920 to be used as a school for the children of RAF personnel killed in service. Surprisingly, perhaps, the RAF school provided the choir for the Royal Naval College chapel, on the further side of Greenwich park. The boys were initially taught by Captain Slimming, in the only school room, before moving up to the nearby The John Roan School. The Wakefield Wing was added in 1938, but at the outbreak of war in 1939 the boys were evacuated to Rye and Bexhill. Once it was realised that any German invasion would most probably occur in that area, the school moved again to Wales. The building became Grade I listed property in October 1951. [8] [9] The choral conductor James William Webb-Jones was Headmaster of the school from 1951 to 1955. [10] The choral musician Peter Stanley Lyons, who was simultaneously Director of Music at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, was Director of Music at Vanbrugh Castle School from 1950 to 1954. [11] The school moved to Duke of Kent School in Ewhurst, Surrey in 1976. The house was then acquired by a group of four people for £100,000 and converted to four private flats. [12]
In the 1980s, scenes from the film Mona Lisa were performed on location on the front circular driveway of Vanbrugh Castle.
Nicholas Hawksmoor was an English architect. He was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Hawksmoor worked alongside the principal architects of the time, Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh, and contributed to the design of some of the most notable buildings of the period, including St Paul's Cathedral, Wren's City of London churches, Greenwich Hospital, Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. Part of his work has been correctly attributed to him only relatively recently, and his influence has reached several poets and authors of the twentieth century.
Blackheath is an area in Southeast London, straddling the border of the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the London Borough of Lewisham. Historically within the county of Kent, it is located 1-mile (1.6 km) northeast of Lewisham, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south of Greenwich and 6.4 miles (10.3 km) southeast of Charing Cross, the traditional centre of London.
Greenwich is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated 5.5 miles (8.9 km) east-south-east of Charing Cross.
Sir John Vanbrugh was an English architect, dramatist and herald, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies, The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy. He was knighted in 1714.
Greenwich Park is a former hunting park in Greenwich and one of the largest single green spaces in south-east London. One of the Royal Parks of London, and the first to be enclosed, it covers 74 hectares, and is part of the Greenwich World Heritage Site. Surrounding the hilltop Royal Observatory and straddling the Greenwich Prime Meridian, it commands elevated views over the River Thames, the Isle of Dogs and the City of London.
Westcombe Park is a largely residential area in Blackheath in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, South East London, England. It is bounded by the main London-Dartford railway line to the north, the Blackwall Tunnel southern approach to the east, the Blackheath common to the south and a road, Vanbrugh Hill, to the west.
The Palace of Placentia, also known as Greenwich Palace, was an English royal residence that was initially built by prince Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in 1443. Over the centuries it took several different forms, until turned into a hospital in the 1690s. The palace was a place designed for pleasure, entertainment and an escape from the city. It was located at Greenwich on the south bank of the River Thames, downstream from London.
John James was a British architect particularly associated with Twickenham in west London, where he rebuilt St Mary's Church and also built a house for James Johnson, Secretary of State for Scotland, later Orleans House and since demolished. Howard Colvin's assessment of him was that of "a competent architect, but he lacked inventive fancy, and his buildings are for the most part plain and unadventurous in design".
The architecture of England is the architecture of modern England and in the historic Kingdom of England. It often includes buildings created under English influence or by English architects in other parts of the world, particularly in the English and later British colonies and Empire, which developed into the Commonwealth of Nations.
Grimsthorpe Castle is a country house in Lincolnshire, England 4 miles (6.4 km) north-west of Bourne on the A151. It lies within a 3,000 acre (12 km2) park of rolling pastures, lakes, and woodland landscaped by Capability Brown. While Grimsthorpe is not a castle in the strict sense of the word, its character is massive and martial – the towers and outlying pavilions recalling the bastions of a great fortress in classical dress. Grimsthorpe has been the home of the de Eresby family since 1516. The present occupant is Jane Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby, 28th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, granddaughter of Nancy Astor, who died at Grimsthorpe in 1964.
Tudor Revival architecture, also known as mock Tudor in the UK, first manifested in domestic architecture in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the 19th century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture, in reality it usually took the style of English vernacular architecture of the Middle Ages that had survived into the Tudor period.
Maze Hill is an area in Greenwich and Blackheath, in south-east London, lying to the east of Greenwich Park, and west of the Westcombe Park area of Blackheath. It is part of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, and takes its name from the main thoroughfare, Maze Hill. It gives its name to Maze Hill railway station.
The Church Army Chapel at Vanbrugh Park, Blackheath, Greater London, designed by project architect E.T. Spashett for Austin Vernon & Partners, opened in 1965 by Princess Alexandra and consecrated by Michael Ramsey, is a locally listed building of outstanding architectural significance, and is notable for originally having had the tallest sectional aluminium spire of its time, and for being one of the earliest 20th-century chapels of modern design to have been conceived with a central altar. It is now part of Blackheath High School.
St John's Blackheath is an all age Anglican church in the Vanbrugh Park area of Blackheath, part of the Royal Borough of Greenwich in southeast London, England. Built in the 1850s to the design of architect Arthur Ashpitel, it provided "an important visual and spiritual focus" to a rapidly growing high-class residential area. The church has an Evangelical character. There are two services on a Sunday. St John's Blackheath has thriving children's groups and youth groups.
Goose-Pie House was a small English Baroque house built by John Vanbrugh in Whitehall, London, in 1701. The house was demolished in 1898. The site now lies under the southeast corner of the Old War Office Building on Whitehall, near the Gurkha Memorial statue on Horse Guards Avenue.
Charles Vanbrugh was an officer of the Royal Navy and member of parliament for Plymouth.
Neil Biron Rhind was an English journalist, writer and an authority on the social and historical development of Blackheath and surrounding areas of south east London.
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