En un regard
Le château en bref
Bolesworth Castle is an early 19th-century Gothic Revival castellated house set against a wooded sandstone cliff on the Sandstone Ridge, in the parish of Broxton, south of Chester. It replaced a mid-18th-century house and overlooks a park with a lake dug in 1790, crossed by a stone bridge attributed to Robert Mylne.
The house was built around 1826-1829 to designs by the Chester architect William Cole (or Coles), a pupil of Thomas Harrison, for George Walmesley; Historic England regards it as his principal work. Built of sandstone ashlar, it has two storeys and a three-storey turreted centrepiece, with a plinth, a band course, battlements, wide canted bay windows and an octagonal tower. A Gothic archway links the house to the cliff. Inside, Cole's Gothick doorways and ceilings survive, together with a cantilevered stone staircase crowned by a small glazed dome.
The Barbour family, cotton merchants who came from Glasgow by way of Manchester, bought the estate in 1856 in the person of Robert Barbour (1797-1885) and still own it. Between 1920 and 1923 Clough Williams-Ellis remodelled part of the interior (a galleried classical hall) and the right-hand end of the facade. Still the family's private residence, the castle hosts private receptions only occasionally, while the estate stages major events, including the Bolesworth International equestrian show.
