Wray Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Wray Castle stands on the western shore of Lake Windermere, in the hamlet of Low Wray, a few kilometres from Ambleside, in the heart of the Lake District National Park. Despite its appearance of a medieval fortress, with crenellated towers, bartizans and arrow slits, the building is a Victorian creation, erected in the 1840s for a wealthy private individual. The house illustrates the Romantic taste for Gothic Revival applied to a country residence: a rectangular plan dominated by a tall central tower flanked by turrets, a porte-cochère on the entrance front and a service wing topped by a clock. The interiors retain a galleried octagonal entrance hall, an imperial staircase beneath a hammerbeam roof and richly decorated ceilings. The site also owes its fame to Beatrix Potter, whose family rented the castle for the summer of 1882, and to its long institutional history in the 20th century. Owned by the National Trust since 1929, it is now open to visitors with a family trail and wooded grounds sloping down to the lake.