Astley Castle, in Warwickshire, is a Grade II* listed building. The related bridge, gatehouse and curtain walls are listed at Grade II, and the stable block at Grade II*. But the wider site is scheduled, and contains some very interesting garden remains, including fishponds and evidence of seventeenth- and nineteenth-century gardens: it is of course the gardens which are the focus of this post.
Astley Castle
There would of course be no garden without the castle, so we start with a bit of background. The list entry provides the pithiest outline of the castle’s evolution:
Country house, originally a fortified house. C13 and C14 origins; C15, mid C16 and early C17; remodelled c.1820.
The history of Astley Castle is set out in rather more detail in the Landmark Trust’s History Album for the property. In summary, the site was certainly occupied in the Saxon period. By the twelfth century it was held by the Astley family (‘de Estlega’ at this point), and, apart from a short period in the 1260s, remained so for a considerable time. The castle was crenellated and moated in 1266: according to the Warwickshire Historic Environment Record, it was the earliest building in Warwickshire to be granted a license to crenellate.
By the early fifteenth century the estate had passed to the Grey family, under whom ‘the castle achieved its most mature and considered form, both as a building and within its setting’ – not surprising given the family’s prominence. With the decline of the family’s fortunes, though, the castle was bought by Sir Edward Chamberlain in 1600. It was a Parliamentary garrison in the Civil War, and, in 1674, was bought by the Newdigate family (owners of the neighbouring Arbury Estate). An Astley leased and improved the castle in the 1770s, and, in the nineteenth century, it was used as a dower house. During World War II, it was requisitioned as a convalescent home, and then restored by the Tunnicliffes in the 1950s, being used as a hotel. Its decline accelerated with a fire in 1978, and ‘vandalism, unauthorised stripping out and collapse made its plight still worse’. The Landmark Trust proposed a traditional restoration in the 1990s, which could not be made to work, and then proposed the solution which can now be seen, described as ‘reinstat[ing] occupancy… in a manner appropriate for the 21st century’:
An architectural competition was held, the brief accepting that some parts of the castle were now beyond restoration, but which sought to create good modern accommodation within the ancient ruins…. After careful recording, those parts of the building beyond pragmatic repair were taken down. The new-build introduced also consolidates and ties together what could be saved of the original fabric as unobtrusively as possible, leaving the castle’s form in the landscape largely unchanged.
The result was awarded the 2013 RIBA Stirling Prize, and now operates as holiday accommodation.
The Gardens
A manor house was built on the site in the twelfth century. The mediaeval strip farming in the fields to the north left their mark in the surviving traces of the ridge and furrow system, but these fields were later transformed into the castle’s park, and would have contained all the features of a hunting park – some form of enclosure, rides, and areas of woodland. The earliest evidence of a garden dates from the seventeenth century; further traces relate to the nineteenth century garden. As the scheduled monument entry notes, the garden earthworks ‘reflect the changing trends of garden design over a period of more than three centuries’. The scheduled monument is not limited to the gardens, though:
… the moated site of Astley Castle, its associated garden features and fishpond complex. It also includes the earthwork remains of a medieval settlement, the earthwork and buried remains of Astley College [a fourteenth-century collegiate church], and an area of ridge and furrow cultivation.
Starting with the earliest and most distinctive feature in the landscape, the external dimensions of the thirteenth-century moat are 100 metres by 115 metres; the waterfilled sections are around 10 metres wide, within ditches that are up to 20 metres wide. Originally defensive in purpose, it was later incorporated into the castle’s garden.
Traces of the formal seventeenth-century garden can be seen to the west of the moat (as can the remains of the mediaeval settlement, including three house platforms, and, ‘between the south-west corner of the moat and the north wall of the parish church’, the site of Astley College). A prospect mound overlooks the portion of the site referred to in 1664 as the ‘New Garden’, now a large earthwork platform to the north-west of the moat (and to the north of the College site). As the schedule entry notes, ‘the layout of this garden, its walkways and planting layout will survive as buried features beneath the ground surface’.
To the north-west of the New Garden are four rectangular interconnecting ponds, linked to the moat by a leat:
The uniformity of the ponds and their proximity to the ‘New Garden’ indicates that they are likely to have been incorporated within the formal garden layout in the 17th century. There is a slight circular depression within [a] central raised area. This may be the remains of a further pond added to the complex when the gardens were laid out.
A formal garden is known to have existed in the northern portion of the moated island in 1664, but without any visible traces today. The Landmark Trust’s History Album includes a map from 1696, showing both the formal garden and a ‘small structure on the northern edge of the moated island, near where footings of a bridge remain today’, suggesting that it might have been a banqueting house.
Traces of the nineteenth-century garden – largely in the form of a more naturalised parkland – may be seen to the north and east of the moat, and on the moated island. As the list entry observes, the bridge across the moat, and associated gatehouse and curtain walls, date from the fourteenth century, though with origins in the works of 1266, and alterations in the early nineteenth century. A doorway (now blocked) in the remains of the gatehouse is known to have been in use in 1875 as an entrance to a garden walkway around the inner edge of the moat (the use of the moat within the garden is also explored here). A conservatory was also in place in 1875, on the south-west elevation of the castle.
On the other side of the moat is evidence of a further, nineteenth-century, timber bridge (the remains of a stone pier), linking the moated site to the garden to the north. This garden is believed to be associated with remodelling of the castle in around 1820, and includes an earthwork avenue between the bridge and a pond, originally fully flanked by yews. This side of the moat also retains traces of a shrubbery.
To the north-west of the moated site is a well and the remains of a small nineteenth-century pumping house, providing ‘evidence for the development of water management on the site in the 19th century’. To the east of the moated island is a raised platform parallel to the moat, where a surviving Cedar of Lebanon, and the remains of others, suggest the deliberate creation of ‘a garden feature visible from the house’.
On the moated island, there is now a twenty-first century garden, courtesy of a competition run by the Landmark Trust to design a new knot garden on the site of the seventeenth-century formal garden: the winning design was installed in 2011. As explained in Volume II of the History Album (‘Conservation & Conversion’), the winning tripartite design by Kate Heppell:
… was inspired by Astley’s link with the three Queens of England, reflected by three wrought iron arches, three benches and triangular paths. The arches incorporate the flowers associated with each queen – a pendant worn by Elizabeth Woodville in her famous portrait, a rose for Elizabeth of York and a gilly flower (a highly scented pink or carnation) for Lady Jane Grey (her husband Guildford Dudley’s emblem).
Conclusion
Astley Castle itself is still what draws the eye in this outwardly rural landscape, but there is a lot of garden to be found if you look more closely – and a lot still to be confirmed underground.
Gardens, Heritage and Planning 