Powderham Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

On the western bank of the Exe estuary, a few kilometres south of Exeter, Powderham Castle is one of the few English houses to have remained in the hands of a single lineage since the late Middle Ages. The Courtenays, Earls of Devon, have lived there ever since Sir Philip Courtenay received the estate in 1391 and built a fortified house on it, completed around 1420. Behind its crenellated, Gothic Revival-style façades, the castle conceals a medieval core of grey limestone rubble: a great hall, service wings and private apartments, flanked by four towers dating from the Middle Ages or the 16th century. Later centuries layered on their own tastes: a Baroque library, a grand staircase with exuberant stucco work made in the mid-18th century, a Neoclassical music room by James Wyatt, and then a large Gothic dining room and a new west-facing entrance designed by Charles Fowler in the 19th century. The castle sits within a landscaped deer park, listed at Grade II*, punctuated by the Belvedere erected in the 1770s. Still lived in by the family, Powderham opens its state rooms for guided tours, hosts weddings, concerts and large outdoor events, and its interiors served as a setting for the film The Remains of the Day (1993).