Beverston Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

A few kilometres west of Tetbury, in the heart of the Cotswolds, Beverston Castle combines first-rate medieval remains with a house that is still lived in. Built in the early 13th century around a courtyard of about 28 × 15 m, it retains its three-storey west range framed by towers, a 14th-century gatehouse on the east side and a section of deep moat along the west and south sides. Its jewel is the chapel fitted out on the upper floor of the south-west tower by Thomas de Berkeley around the middle of the 14th century: a tierceron vault adorned with carved bosses, richly decorated sedilia, a trefoiled piscina and fragments of painted plaster. The south range, rebuilt in the 17th century by the Hicks family on the site of the great hall, now forms the dwelling house. Fought over several times during the Civil War, besieged twice in 1644 and then taken by the Parliamentarians, the castle was never completely abandoned. Privately owned, it is surrounded by a garden developed in the 20th century and occasionally opened to the public through the National Garden Scheme.