Thornbury Castle Hotel

En un regard

Le château en bref

Thornbury Castle, north of Bristol, is one of the last great "castles" of late medieval England: a fortified princely residence commissioned by Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, who obtained a licence to crenellate in 1510 and had the date 1511 carved on the gatehouse. More a lordly palace than a fortress, the complex borrows its taste for splendour from Richmond Palace, while retaining towers, arrow slits and a portcullis groove. The project was never completed: arrested and then executed for treason in 1521, the duke left an outer court as a mere shell and an unfinished west range. The estate passed to the Crown; Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn stayed there for about ten days in August 1535, before Mary I returned it to the Staffords in 1554. Neglected after the Civil War, it was rescued in the 19th century by the Howards, who entrusted its restoration to Anthony Salvin. The south range, with its famous superimposed polygonal oriel windows, judged by Pevsner to be among the most perfect of their period, still overlooks the privy garden. Listed Grade I, the castle has housed since the 1960s first a restaurant and then a luxury hotel, a venue for receptions and weddings.