The Red Brick Castle

I mentioned Kirby Muxloe to someone the other day and he said 'Oh, yes, the red brick castle'.  I always used to think of Tattershall Castle in Lincolnshire with those words but Kirby Muxloe is most definitely a red brick castle too.

I had visited the castle many years ago in the 1980s and remembered it being surrounded by water but had forgotten it was built of brick and also that it was never completed as a building.

You can walk around the outside of the castle first taking in its structure and on the day we visited there were some lovely reflections in the water of the moat.

Above you can see the remains of the west tower and the gatehouse.  It was intended for a tower to be built in each corner of the construction, with domestic buildings in the centre of the outer walls which is where the old manor house used to stand.

The owner William, Lord Hastings (1430 -1483) began to rebuild a new and sumptuous residence on the site of the old manor house around 1480.  He was in favour and had power and influence at the court of  King Edward IV but his luck changed and he was executed in June 1483 by the new king Richard III.   In July of that year Richard III  issued a special grant to Hastings's widow Katherine and restored the family to its inheritance.  Katherine did continue for about a year with the building project but it gradually came to a close.  Had the building been completed Kirby Muxloe would have been one of the most advanced and fashionable fortified manor houses of its day.

The gatehouse is accessed by the bridge over the moat, it is modern but constructed in the style of the old one.

The entrance to the gatehouse is impressive, only the ground floor remains although you can access the next floor up it is open to the elements (see the photos below) but you can cross above the ceiling from one side to the other via spiral staircases.

One of the guard rooms in the base of the gatehouse, the other is used as the reception and shop by the custodians English Heritage.

You can see the door to one of the staircases on the left of the gatehouse. We went up via the stairs on the right and came down those on the left.

The ceiling of one of the spiral staircases,  I love the swirling brick patterns.

The remains of the room which would have been above the entrance to the gatehouse

 

  and across the two guard rooms below.

Back down the stairs on the opposite side.

There were lovely views across the centre of the castle area towards the moat and to the countryside beyond.  You can see the stone foundations of the earlier manor house in the grass below.

 

Looking upwards in the west tower

Nature was taking over.

 The opening hours for Kirby Muxloe are weekends only from May to September so it is very hard to catch it open we were lucky to be close by en route to Stoneywell (see my post of 8th September) so spent a pleasant hour here wandering around.

More information - here

Boscobel House

We have just renewed our membership to English Heritage and Bocobel House was our first visit of the new season to one of their properties.  We had visited quite  a few years ago when we first moved over to this side of the country and thought it was about time we went back.

Boscobel is one of the two houses on the borders of Staffordshire and Shropshire to be associated with the escape of Charles II after the Battle of Worcester in 1651.  You may remember that we visited the other house Moseley Old Hall, a National Trust property, in June last year - here is a link to the post I wrote then so you can, if you wish, see the two places together.

The property has had many different uses over the years.  It was built in 1632 on land formerly belonging to Whiteladies Priory as a farmhouse and later it was converted into a hunting lodge by its owner John Gifford.  At the time of the English Civil Wars Boscobel was owned by the Gifford family with the Penderel family living there as their tenants and servants.

The Giffords were a Roman Catholic family living at a time of religious persecution and it is thought that the real reason for the building of the house was to serve as a secret place of shelter for Catholics in times of need.

As you can see there is a lot of conservation work being carried out but the volunteer we spoke to as we wandered around inside the house told us that it would soon be completed and the scaffolding and covers would be taken down.
You can see part of the knot garden in the photo above.

Of course Boscobel is famous for its oak tree, known as the Royal Oak, as Charles II hid in the tree on his first night at Boscobel.   He also hid in the priest's hole inside the house. The tree the visitor sees today is a descendant of the original tree having been grown from an acorn from the first tree.

Above are some photos of the inside the old farmhouse.  In this part of the house the light was a bit too dull to take many good photographs and, of course, no flash was allowed.  Bottom left you can see the priest's hole where Charles II hid whilst at Boscobel.  Most of the interior is panelled in dark wood and furnished as it would have been in Victorian times.  This links in with Victorian farm buildings and kitchens also on the site. 

There was a dairy and a scullery, with displays on the making and storing of butter and cheese.

Above the barn and stables and some of the residents of the buildings and farm yard. 

The Boscobel estate eventually came into the ownership of the Fitzherbert family of Norbury Hall in Derbyshire who let it to tenants including the Penderels.  It was sold to Walter Evans a Derbyshire industrialist in 1812 and it was the Evans family who restored the hall and perpetuated the story of Charles II in their own, unique way.  Boscobel was sold in 1918 to the Earl of Bradford who placed it and the tree in the care of the Ministry of Works which later became English Heritage.