Architecture in the Cotswolds: Part 2 - Sudely castle, Belas Knap, Winchcombe

Today we're going off in search of Blandings, home to one my favourite Wodehouse characters, Lord Emsworth, the absent minded Earl. We'll be adventuring deep into the Pevsner guidebook (Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds, Verry & Brooks, Yale, 2020) with some pretty technical descriptions of the buildings. Please feel free to ask about any ambiguities, I am still getting used to a lot of the terminology after many years of trying to see. The glossaries in the books help, although I'm still bit unsure about a number of things. All comments welcome :0

Some fans of P G Wodehouse did some research at doctorate level and decided that if Plum had based Blandings castle on a real location then it would have to have been Sudely castle, in Gloucestershire. Other researchers have disagreed using more modern, computer based intelligence to prove that it would have in fact been Apley Hall, Shropshire https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/sep/05/artsandhumanities.arts . I figured that Sudely castle might be as good destination as any. It is older than Apley, and closer to London. On the way from Winchcombe we passed Almsbury farm (pictured below), it has tiny columns in an upper window, probably salvaged from the abbey.

Sudely castle

The history of Sudely castle's buildings is as complicated as its changes of ownership. It was built by Ralph Boteler who owned it for most of the 1400s, although a lot that we see today is the c19 work of George Gilbert Scott, and others. It was never a castle as such. Licenses to crenelate (add battlements to) surrounding walls were only issued by royal decree and so were often used as a status symbol. After Boteler forfeited the estate to the crown, Richard III carried out major remodelling, from around 1470 and built a banquet hall (now gone) and royal apartments, now mostly destroyed. Surviving from Boteler's time are the great barn and the church exterior (Interior remodelled by G.G Scott)

 

The gigantic tithe barn was built around 1450 and is surely one of the largest medieval barns on record, consisting of about 12 wide bays with several large doorways (Although not as well preserved as the one at Harmondsworth, see "On boating an biking" https://humanbikerjournal.blogspot.com/2024/04/ ). The site is now been used as a kind of picturesque garden with well established perennial borders. The rectangular lily pond was made in the 1930s.

There's a good description in the Pevsner book of the Presence chamber or royal apartments; "The five-light canted bay window ... has elegantly moulded mullions, cinque-foil heads, two transoms, panelled reveals, and the remains of fan-vaulting. The other three windows have four lights, that in the centre also with panelled reveals and two transoms. The shorter windows higher up have deep plain reveals and moulded sills with angel corbels. Four-centred arched moulded fireplace with foliage spandrels. In the north wall ... is a great north window at the upper level, of seven lights (plus an extra blank one internally at either side) under a very flat three-centred arch with again a deeply hollowed reveal."

I've always been a big fan of gargoyles and grotesque ornamentation. The church St Mary, built circa 1460, within the castle grounds, has some excellent examples, not all hideous. One depicts a fair lady. Others are more typical frog-like creatures. Its great to see craftsmen being allowed to use their imagination and skill to create something unique. Its also great to know that I'm looking at something pretty unique, in as much as there are no other gargoyles exactly like these, although we will later see comparable ones made by the same team of masons. Mannerist grotesque I find less interesting because if its symmetry and tendency towards uniformity, although any form of grotesque is better than none I suppose.

 

 

Inside the church are some rather fascinating medieval stain-glass windows imported from else where and installed in the north chapel. In the north window a c13 glass image of a man being beheaded and another showing a man begging for mercy. In the east window a c14 bishop, and the other two c15 showing a lady doner and her six daughters. By this time artists had discovered that they only need draw the bodies of the people at the front of a crowd and then just the heads of those behind, saving them a lot of time and trouble.

 

The church is also famous for being the burial place of an English queen; Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII's last wife.

Belas Knap

Let's now go back three thousand years in human history and ask ourselves what on earth this place Belas Knap was all about. Its a kind of bronze age burial ground called a long barrow. Excavations in the c19 have found around 19 skeletons, and revealed up to 6 different entrance, including the false entrance, shown above. This is one of the earliest and finest examples of dry-stone walling. The stones are laid in an incredibly precise fashion and show evidence of a civilised culture. Running your hand along the wall the stones feel totally flush with each other and have stayed like that for as long as anything we know.

  

Winchcombe

It was a fairly long walk to Belas Knap and back via Sudely castle, but there was still enough time to look at some of the many interesting buildings in Winchcombe. St Peter's is another church memorable for its gargoyles and grotesque heads. It was rebuilt around the same time as the church and probably by the same team of masons. The heads have a similar quality though are each different in character. They seem almost comic and remind me of graphic novels. Indeed the figure wearing what looks like a top hat, left of centre, is said to be a depiction of the master mason. It lends a humorous tone to the facade very rarely seen in religious buildings. The sculptor must have been quite highly valued in order to have gotten away with some thing like that. Varied gargoyles also on the upper tier. 

"seven light E window, with a splendid devil at its apex. A blocked doorway in the S end of the E wall, in a similar situation to the church at Sudely. It probably led into a low treasury."

More grotesque heads on the other side. 

The clerestory adds plenty of light to the interior. Pevsner describes St Peter's as "A complete Perp town town church, the least elaborate of the great wool churches in the county, though of simple dignity."

Inside I had to search the screen carvings for the impish face of the master carpenter, who like the master mason, had ensured his own immortality in his work. It was Claudia who eventually found it.

West of the church, some school buildings by George Gilbert Scott, and some almshouses also by him showing his confident handling of different stone types. He seems to have liked it around here. John Drayton Wyat, His draughtsman also continued some of his projects, worked on the church and many other houses nearby.

  

"Jacobean house, built as the King's grammar school in 1618. The E elevation of three stories, has two gables with ball-finials, three cross windows (with concave mouldings) under a continuous stepped-up dripmould on the first floor, and a crude Jacobean central doorway with Tuscan columns on high bases supporting stumpy obelixs." Wyat did some work round the back. There is a flight of steps to the first floor for the school master, presumably built at a time when teachers were more highly valued.

St Georges Inn "was evidently built as an inn for pilgrims by the abbey, for carved in the foliage of the spandrels of the timber doorway are the initials of Richard Kidderminster, who resigned in 1525". More c16 timber work inside the small courtyard, contemporary with the George in Southwark.

Flour de lis below is a good example of a simple cottage design, almost symmetrical, probably with a kitchen on the left, living room on right, through passage down the middle. Band between floors, nice oval window above door, dormers above. Its neighbour is also very dignified for a small house. Almost every house in Winchcombe rewards closer inspection. At one point I was approached by an old lady who saw me walking round the side of her house to see the round windows of a former chapel on Cowl lane. She came out looking quite confrontational. When I explained why I was there she shouted for her husband "Eric, there's a young man out here with a Pevsner book." I could almost feel a sense of pride wash over the couple, and for while I was cornered and just had to chat about architecture. Its a good book to have if your in a tight corner like that.