The two-storeyed tomb of Safdarjang was the very last of India’s great Mughal garden tombs. Built between 1753 and 1774, it dates from the period after Nadir Shah’s sacking of the city, by which time the empire was reduced to a fraction of its former size and most of the capital’s grander buildings lay in ruins. Safdarjang was the Mughal nawab (governor) of Avadh who briefly became vizier before being overthrown for his Shi’ite beliefs. Emblematic of the decadence and degeneracy that characterized the twilight of the Mughal era, the mausoleum sports an elongated, tapered dome and absurdly ornate interior filled with swirling plasterwork. In City of Djinns, William Dalrymple aptly describes its quirky design as “blowzy Mughal rococo” typifying an age “not so much decaying into impoverished anonymity as one whoring and drinking itself into extinction”

Read more: www.roughguides.com/destinations/asia/india/delhi/new-del...

Odeon Cinema Scarborough. A recently discovered negative, digitally scanned. Opened in 1936 and designed by Cecil Clavering, the Odeon seated 1,711 in stalls and circle. The interior plasterwork was by Mollo & Egan. It closed in 1988 and was grade 2 listed. This photo was taken in 1991 after it had been abandonded for 3 years, it was later transformed into the Stephen Joseph Theatre, sadly losing this end of the building, but restoring the exterior and foyer. Some of the plasterwork was rescued and reused.

Scarborough, North Yorkshire, Westborough - the former Odeon Theatre

A scanned negative from 1991

Levens Hall is a magnificent Elizabethan mansion that was built around 1350 by the Redman family as a pele (or peel) tower and was later expanded and rebuilt towards the end of the 16th Century. It is the family home of the Bagots, and contains a collection of Jacobean furniture, fine paintings, the earliest English patchwork and many other beautiful objects. (No photos from inside the house as photography is not allowed)

The world-famous award winning gardens were laid out in 1694. The topiary beech hedges and colourful seasonal beds create a stunning visual impact. The topiary garden has huge abstract shapes, pyramids and columns reminiscent of monstrous chess men.

These photographs remind me of my many days visiting stately homes during the summer months, hope you enjoy.

Detail of the side plasterwork at upper circle level at Her Majesty's Theatre, London. Designed by C J Phipps and Romaine Walker in a French C18th style. This is one of the West End's finest theatres, wide with excellent sightlines and supremely elegant. Apart from a number of pillars, this is a near perfect theatre, which has been described as "the best planned theatre in London". Built as a replacement to earlier theatres on this site since 1705, the current theatre was designed by C J Phipps and opened in April 1897. It seats around 1,200 currently, slightly down on the 1,319 quoted in 1897. The building is grade 2* listed and in 1986 the record-breaking run of "The Phantom of the Opera" began. The name reverted to His Majesty's after the coronation of King Charles III in 2023, and it is part of LW Theatres Group.

City of Westminster, London, West End, England - His Majesty's Theatre, Haymarket / Charles II Street

March 2010, image reworked 2024

THE FIRST DWELLING AT LEVENS WAS A MEDIEVAL PELE TOWER, BUILT BY THE DE REDMAN FAMILY OF YEALAND REDMAYNE. THE BELLINGHAM FAMILY, WHO WERE WEALTHY LANDOWNERS, CHOSE LEVENS AS THEIR MAIN RESIDENCE IN THE 1590S AND INCORPORATED THE FORTIFIED TOWER INTO A GENTLEMAN’S RESIDENCE. THEY EMPLOYED LOCAL CRAFTSMEN TO CARVE THE OAK PANELLING, INCORPORATED ELABORATE ITALIAN PLASTERWORK, INCLUDING ELIZABETH THE FIRST’S COAT OF ARMS AND STAINED GLASS - ALL OF WHICH CAN BE SEEN TODAY.

THE HISTORIC HOUSE BECAME THE PROPERTY OF COLONEL JAMES GRAHME IN 1688 AFTER HIS CAREER AT COURT IN THE SERVICE OF KING JAMES II. HE BROUGHT WITH HIM A YOUNG FRENCH GARDENER, GUILLAUME BEAUMONT, A PUPIL OF LE NOTRE AT VERSAILLES, TO PLAN A FASHIONABLE GARDEN AT LEVENS. THIS FAMILY HOME CONTAINS FINE FURNITURE, PAINTINGS, ONE OF THE BEST EXAMPLES IN EUROPE OF SPANISH LEATHER WALL COVERINGS, THE EARLIEST ENGLISH PATCHWORK, WELLINGTONIANA, CLOCKS AND MINIATURES, AND HAS BECOME ONE OF THE FINEST STATELY HOMES IN SOUTH CUMBRIA.

THERE ARE TEN WONDERFUL ACRES OF GARDENS AT LEVENS HALL. THEY INCLUDE THE UNIQUE COLLECTION OF ANCIENT AND EXTRAORDINARY TOPIARY CHARACTERS SCULPTED FROM BOX AND YEW. THEY RISE UP FROM A SPECTACULAR SEASONAL UNDERPLANTING POPULATED WITH AN EVER-CHANGING RANGE OF OVER THIRTY THOUSAND FLOWERS. FURTHER ON, BEYOND THE ROMANTIC OLD ORCHARD AND SEPARATED BY THE GREAT BEECH HEDGES, LIE THE MAGNIFICENT HERBACEOUS BORDERS. THESE ARE TRADITIONALLY DOUBLE IN FORMAT AND ARE AMONGST THE FINEST TO BE FOUND IN ENGLAND. THERE ARE ALSO WALL BORDERS, VEGETABLE AND HERB GARDENS, A ROSE GARDEN, FOUNTAIN GARDEN, FINE LAWNS, WILDFLOWER MEADOWS & WILLOW LABYRINTH ETC.

GHOSTS AT LEVENS HALL

THE MOST FAMOUS GHOST AT LEVENS HALL IS ABOUT A GYPSY WOMAN WHO IS SAID TO HAVE DIED CURSING THE HOUSE, CLAIMING THAT NO MALE HEIR WOULD INHERIT UNTIL THE RIVER KENT CEASED TO FLOW AND A WHITE FAWN WAS BORN IN THE PARK. STRANGELY, THE ESTATE PASSED THROUGH THE FEMALE LINE FOR FOUR GENERATIONS UNTIL THE BIRTH OF ALAN DESMOND BAGOT IN 1896 WHEN THE RIVER DID INDEED FREEZE OVER AND A WHITE FAWN WAS BORN IN THE PARK. THE THREE MALE HEIRS SINCE HAVE ALL BEEN BORN ON FREEZING WINTER DAYS.

AN EPISODE FILMED BY THE TELEVISION PROGRAMME ‘MOST HAUNTED’ IN 2002 DISCOVERED SOME LIGHTS, SOUNDS AND DISTURBING ATMOSPHERES NOT PREVIOUSLY EXPERIENCED BY VISITORS.

A visit to the National Trust property that is Penrhyn Castle

Penrhyn Castle is a country house in Llandygai, Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, in the form of a Norman castle. It was originally a medieval fortified manor house, founded by Ednyfed Fychan. In 1438, Ioan ap Gruffudd was granted a licence to crenellate and he founded the stone castle and added a tower house. Samuel Wyatt reconstructed the property in the 1780s.

The present building was created between about 1822 and 1837 to designs by Thomas Hopper, who expanded and transformed the building beyond recognition. However a spiral staircase from the original property can still be seen, and a vaulted basement and other masonry were incorporated into the new structure. Hopper's client was George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, who had inherited the Penrhyn estate on the death of his second cousin, Richard Pennant, who had made his fortune from slavery in Jamaica and local slate quarries. The eldest of George's two daughters, Juliana, married Grenadier Guard, Edward Gordon Douglas, who, on inheriting the estate on George's death in 1845, adopted the hyphenated surname of Douglas-Pennant. The cost of the construction of this vast 'castle' is disputed, and very difficult to work out accurately, as much of the timber came from the family's own forestry, and much of the labour was acquired from within their own workforce at the slate quarry. It cost the Pennant family an estimated £150,000. This is the current equivalent to about £49,500,000.

Penrhyn is one of the most admired of the numerous mock castles built in the United Kingdom in the 19th century; Christopher Hussey called it, "the outstanding instance of Norman revival." The castle is a picturesque composition that stretches over 600 feet from a tall donjon containing family rooms, through the main block built around the earlier house, to the service wing and the stables.

It is built in a sombre style which allows it to possess something of the medieval fortress air despite the ground-level drawing room windows. Hopper designed all the principal interiors in a rich but restrained Norman style, with much fine plasterwork and wood and stone carving. The castle also has some specially designed Norman-style furniture, including a one-ton slate bed made for Queen Victoria when she visited in 1859.

Hugh Napier Douglas-Pennant, 4th Lord Penrhyn, died in 1949, and the castle and estate passed to his niece, Lady Janet Pelham, who, on inheritance, adopted the surname of Douglas-Pennant. In 1951, the castle and 40,000 acres (160 km²) of land were accepted by the treasury in lieu of death duties from Lady Janet. It now belongs to the National Trust and is open to the public. The site received 109,395 visitors in 2017.

Grade I Listed Building

Penrhyn Castle

History

The present house, built in the form of a vast Norman castle, was constructed to the design of Thomas Hopper for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant between 1820 and 1837. It has been very little altered since.

The original house on the site was a medieval manor house of C14 origin, for which a licence to crenellate was given at an unknown date between 1410 and 1431. This house survived until c1782 when it was remodelled in castellated Gothick style, replete with yellow mathematical tiles, by Samuel Wyatt for Richard Pennant. This house, the great hall of which is incorporated in the present drawing room, was remodelled in c1800, but the vast profits from the Penrhyn slate quarries enabled all the rest to be completely swept away by Hopper's vast neo-Norman fantasy, sited and built so that it could be seen not only from the quarries, but most parts of the surrounding estate, thereby emphasizing the local dominance of the Dawkins-Pennant family. The total cost is unknown but it cannot have been less than the £123,000 claimed by Catherine Sinclair in 1839.

Since 1951 the house has belonged to the National Trust, together with over 40,000 acres of the family estates around Ysbyty Ifan and the Ogwen valley.

Exterior

Country house built in the style of a vast Norman castle with other later medieval influences, so huge (its 70 roofs cover an area of over an acre (0.4ha)) that it almost defies meaningful description. The main components of the house, which is built on a north-south axis with the main elevations to east and west, are the 124ft (37.8m) high keep, based on Castle Hedingham (Essex) containing the family quarters on the south, the central range, protected by a 'barbican' terrace on the east, housing the state apartments, and the rectangular-shaped staff/service buildings and stables to the north. The whole is constructed of local rubblestone with internal brick lining, but all elevations are faced in tooled Anglesey limestone ashlar of the finest quality jointing; flat lead roofs concealed by castellated parapets. Close to, the extreme length of the building (it is about 200 yards (182.88m) long) and the fact that the ground slopes away on all sides mean that almost no complete elevation can be seen. That the most frequent views of the exterior are oblique also offered Hopper the opportunity to deploy his towers for picturesque effect, the relationship between the keep and the other towers and turrets frequently obscuring the distances between them. Another significant external feature of the castle is that it actually looks defensible making it secure at least from Pugin's famous slur of 1841 on contemporary "castles" - "Who would hammer against nailed portals, when he could kick his way through the greenhouse?" Certainly, this could never be achieved at Penrhyn and it looks every inch the impregnable fortress both architect and patron intended it to be.

East elevation: to the left is the loosely attached 4-storey keep on battered plinth with 4 tiers of deeply splayed Norman windows, 2 to each face, with chevron decoration and nook-shafts, topped by 4 square corner turrets. The dining room (distinguished by the intersecting tracery above the windows) and breakfast room to the right of the entrance gallery are protected by the long sweep of the machicolated 'barbican' terrace (carriage forecourt), curved in front of the 2 rooms and then running northwards before returning at right-angles to the west to include the gatehouse, which formed the original main entrance to the castle, and ending in a tall rectangular tower with machicolated parapet. To the right of the gatehouse are the recessed buildings of the kitchen court and to the right again the long, largely unbroken outer wall of the stable court, terminated by the square footmen's tower to the left and the rather more exuberant projecting circular dung tower with its spectacularly cantilevered bartizan on the right. From here the wall runs at right-angles to the west incorporating the impressive gatehouse to the stable court.

West elevation: beginning at the left is the hexagonal smithy tower, followed by the long run of the stable court, well provided with windows on this side as the stables lie directly behind. At the end of this the wall turns at right-angles to the west, incorporating the narrow circular-turreted gatehouse to the outer court and terminating in the machicolated circular ice tower. From here the wall runs again at a lower height enclosing the remainder of the outer court. It is, of course, the state apartments which make up the chief architectural display on the central part of this elevation, beginning with a strongly articulated but essentially rectangular tower to the left, while both the drawing room and the library have Norman windows leading directly onto the lawns, the latter terminating in a slender machicolated circular corner tower. To the right is the keep, considerably set back on this side.

Interior

Only those parts of the castle generally accessible to visitors are recorded in this description. Although not described here much of the furniture and many of the paintings (including family portraits) are also original to the house. Similarly, it should be noted that in the interests of brevity and clarity, not all significant architectural features are itemised in the following description.

Entrance gallery: one of the last parts of the castle to be built, this narrow cloister-like passage was added to the main block to heighten the sensation of entering the vast Grand Hall, which is made only partly visible by the deliberate offsetting of the intervening doorways; bronze lamp standards with wolf-heads on stone bases. Grand Hall: entering the columned aisle of this huge space, the visitor stands at a cross-roads between the 3 principal areas of the castle's plan; to the left the passage leads up to the family's private apartments on the 4 floors of the keep, to the right the door at the end leads to the extensive service quarters while ahead lies the sequence of state rooms used for entertaining guests and displayed to the public ever since the castle was built. The hall itself resembles in form, style and scale the transept of a great Norman cathedral, the great clustered columns extending upwards to a "triforium" formed on 2 sides of extraordinary compound arches; stained glass with signs of the zodiac and months of the year as in a book of hours by Thomas Willement (completed 1835). Library: has very much the atmosphere of a gentlemen’s London club with walls, columned arches and ceilings covered in the most lavish ornamentation; superb architectural bookcases and panelled walls are of oak but the arches are plaster grained to match; ornamental bosses and other devices to the rich plaster ceiling refer to the ancestry of the Dawkins and Pennant families, as do the stained glass lunettes above the windows, possibly by David Evans of Shrewsbury; 4 chimneypieces of polished Anglesey "marble", one with a frieze of fantastical carved mummers in the capitals. Drawing room (great hall of the late C18 house and its medieval predecessor): again in a neo-Norman style but the decoration is lighter and the columns more slender, the spirit of the room reflected in the 2000 delicate Maltese gilt crosses to the vaulted ceiling. Ebony room: so called on account of its furniture and "ebonised" chimneypiece and plasterwork, has at its entrance a spiral staircase from the medieval house. Grand Staircase hall: in many ways the greatest architectural achievement at Penrhyn, taking 10 years to complete, the carving in 2 contrasting stones of the highest quality; repeating abstract decorative motifs contrast with the infinitely inventive figurative carving in the newels and capitals; to the top the intricate plaster panels of the domed lantern are formed in exceptionally high relief and display both Norse and Celtic influences. Next to the grand stair is the secondary stair, itself a magnificent structure in grey sandstone with lantern, built immediately next to the grand stair so that family or guests should not meet staff on the same staircase. Reached from the columned aisle of the grand hall are the 2 remaining principal ground-floor rooms, the dining room and the breakfast room, among the last parts of the castle to be completed and clearly intended to be picture galleries as much as dining areas, the stencilled treatment of the walls in the dining room allowing both the provision of an appropriately elaborate "Norman" scheme and a large flat surface for the hanging of paintings; black marble fireplace carved by Richard Westmacott and extremely ornate ceiling with leaf bosses encircled by bands of figurative mouldings derived from the Romanesque church of Kilpeck, Herefordshire. Breakfast room has cambered beam ceiling with oak-grained finish.

Grand hall gallery: at the top of the grand staircase is vaulted and continues around the grand hall below to link with the passage to the keep, which at this level (as on the other floors) contains a suite of rooms comprising a sitting room, dressing room, bedroom and small ante-chamber, the room containing the famous slate bed also with a red Mona marble chimneypiece, one of the most spectacular in the castle. Returning to the grand hall gallery and continuing straight on rather than returning to the grand staircase the Lower India room is reached to the right: this contains an Anglesey limestone chimneypiece painted to match the ground colour of the room's Chinese wallpaper. Coming out of this room, the chapel corridor leads to the chapel gallery (used by the family) and the chapel proper below (used by staff), the latter with encaustic tiles probably reused from the old medieval chapel; stained and painted glass by David Evans (c1833).

The domestic quarters of the castle are reached along the passage from the breakfast room, which turns at right-angles to the right at the foot of the secondary staircase, the most important areas being the butler's pantry, steward's office, servants' hall, housekeeper's room, still room, housekeeper's store and housemaids' tower, while the kitchen (with its cast-iron range flanked by large and hygienic vertical slabs of Penrhyn slate) is housed on the lower ground floor. From this kitchen court, which also includes a coal store, oil vaults, brushing room, lamp room, pastry room, larder, scullery and laundry are reached the outer court with its soup kitchen, brewhouse and 2-storey ice tower and the much larger stables court which, along with the stables themselves containing their extensive slate-partitioned stalls and loose boxes, incorporates the coach house, covered ride, smithy tower, dung tower with gardeners' messroom above and footmen's tower.

Reasons for Listing

Included at Grade I as one of the most important large country houses in Wales; a superb example of the relatively short-lived Norman Revival of the early C19 and generally regarded as the masterpiece of its architect, Thomas Hopper.

Ice Tower - you can go up it to the first floor.

A visit to the National Trust property that is Penrhyn Castle

Penrhyn Castle is a country house in Llandygai, Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, in the form of a Norman castle. It was originally a medieval fortified manor house, founded by Ednyfed Fychan. In 1438, Ioan ap Gruffudd was granted a licence to crenellate and he founded the stone castle and added a tower house. Samuel Wyatt reconstructed the property in the 1780s.

The present building was created between about 1822 and 1837 to designs by Thomas Hopper, who expanded and transformed the building beyond recognition. However a spiral staircase from the original property can still be seen, and a vaulted basement and other masonry were incorporated into the new structure. Hopper's client was George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, who had inherited the Penrhyn estate on the death of his second cousin, Richard Pennant, who had made his fortune from slavery in Jamaica and local slate quarries. The eldest of George's two daughters, Juliana, married Grenadier Guard, Edward Gordon Douglas, who, on inheriting the estate on George's death in 1845, adopted the hyphenated surname of Douglas-Pennant. The cost of the construction of this vast 'castle' is disputed, and very difficult to work out accurately, as much of the timber came from the family's own forestry, and much of the labour was acquired from within their own workforce at the slate quarry. It cost the Pennant family an estimated £150,000. This is the current equivalent to about £49,500,000.

Penrhyn is one of the most admired of the numerous mock castles built in the United Kingdom in the 19th century; Christopher Hussey called it, "the outstanding instance of Norman revival." The castle is a picturesque composition that stretches over 600 feet from a tall donjon containing family rooms, through the main block built around the earlier house, to the service wing and the stables.

It is built in a sombre style which allows it to possess something of the medieval fortress air despite the ground-level drawing room windows. Hopper designed all the principal interiors in a rich but restrained Norman style, with much fine plasterwork and wood and stone carving. The castle also has some specially designed Norman-style furniture, including a one-ton slate bed made for Queen Victoria when she visited in 1859.

Hugh Napier Douglas-Pennant, 4th Lord Penrhyn, died in 1949, and the castle and estate passed to his niece, Lady Janet Pelham, who, on inheritance, adopted the surname of Douglas-Pennant. In 1951, the castle and 40,000 acres (160 km²) of land were accepted by the treasury in lieu of death duties from Lady Janet. It now belongs to the National Trust and is open to the public. The site received 109,395 visitors in 2017.

Grade I Listed Building

Penrhyn Castle

History

The present house, built in the form of a vast Norman castle, was constructed to the design of Thomas Hopper for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant between 1820 and 1837. It has been very little altered since.

The original house on the site was a medieval manor house of C14 origin, for which a licence to crenellate was given at an unknown date between 1410 and 1431. This house survived until c1782 when it was remodelled in castellated Gothick style, replete with yellow mathematical tiles, by Samuel Wyatt for Richard Pennant. This house, the great hall of which is incorporated in the present drawing room, was remodelled in c1800, but the vast profits from the Penrhyn slate quarries enabled all the rest to be completely swept away by Hopper's vast neo-Norman fantasy, sited and built so that it could be seen not only from the quarries, but most parts of the surrounding estate, thereby emphasizing the local dominance of the Dawkins-Pennant family. The total cost is unknown but it cannot have been less than the £123,000 claimed by Catherine Sinclair in 1839.

Since 1951 the house has belonged to the National Trust, together with over 40,000 acres of the family estates around Ysbyty Ifan and the Ogwen valley.

Exterior

Country house built in the style of a vast Norman castle with other later medieval influences, so huge (its 70 roofs cover an area of over an acre (0.4ha)) that it almost defies meaningful description. The main components of the house, which is built on a north-south axis with the main elevations to east and west, are the 124ft (37.8m) high keep, based on Castle Hedingham (Essex) containing the family quarters on the south, the central range, protected by a 'barbican' terrace on the east, housing the state apartments, and the rectangular-shaped staff/service buildings and stables to the north. The whole is constructed of local rubblestone with internal brick lining, but all elevations are faced in tooled Anglesey limestone ashlar of the finest quality jointing; flat lead roofs concealed by castellated parapets. Close to, the extreme length of the building (it is about 200 yards (182.88m) long) and the fact that the ground slopes away on all sides mean that almost no complete elevation can be seen. That the most frequent views of the exterior are oblique also offered Hopper the opportunity to deploy his towers for picturesque effect, the relationship between the keep and the other towers and turrets frequently obscuring the distances between them. Another significant external feature of the castle is that it actually looks defensible making it secure at least from Pugin's famous slur of 1841 on contemporary "castles" - "Who would hammer against nailed portals, when he could kick his way through the greenhouse?" Certainly, this could never be achieved at Penrhyn and it looks every inch the impregnable fortress both architect and patron intended it to be.

East elevation: to the left is the loosely attached 4-storey keep on battered plinth with 4 tiers of deeply splayed Norman windows, 2 to each face, with chevron decoration and nook-shafts, topped by 4 square corner turrets. The dining room (distinguished by the intersecting tracery above the windows) and breakfast room to the right of the entrance gallery are protected by the long sweep of the machicolated 'barbican' terrace (carriage forecourt), curved in front of the 2 rooms and then running northwards before returning at right-angles to the west to include the gatehouse, which formed the original main entrance to the castle, and ending in a tall rectangular tower with machicolated parapet. To the right of the gatehouse are the recessed buildings of the kitchen court and to the right again the long, largely unbroken outer wall of the stable court, terminated by the square footmen's tower to the left and the rather more exuberant projecting circular dung tower with its spectacularly cantilevered bartizan on the right. From here the wall runs at right-angles to the west incorporating the impressive gatehouse to the stable court.

West elevation: beginning at the left is the hexagonal smithy tower, followed by the long run of the stable court, well provided with windows on this side as the stables lie directly behind. At the end of this the wall turns at right-angles to the west, incorporating the narrow circular-turreted gatehouse to the outer court and terminating in the machicolated circular ice tower. From here the wall runs again at a lower height enclosing the remainder of the outer court. It is, of course, the state apartments which make up the chief architectural display on the central part of this elevation, beginning with a strongly articulated but essentially rectangular tower to the left, while both the drawing room and the library have Norman windows leading directly onto the lawns, the latter terminating in a slender machicolated circular corner tower. To the right is the keep, considerably set back on this side.

Interior

Only those parts of the castle generally accessible to visitors are recorded in this description. Although not described here much of the furniture and many of the paintings (including family portraits) are also original to the house. Similarly, it should be noted that in the interests of brevity and clarity, not all significant architectural features are itemised in the following description.

Entrance gallery: one of the last parts of the castle to be built, this narrow cloister-like passage was added to the main block to heighten the sensation of entering the vast Grand Hall, which is made only partly visible by the deliberate offsetting of the intervening doorways; bronze lamp standards with wolf-heads on stone bases. Grand Hall: entering the columned aisle of this huge space, the visitor stands at a cross-roads between the 3 principal areas of the castle's plan; to the left the passage leads up to the family's private apartments on the 4 floors of the keep, to the right the door at the end leads to the extensive service quarters while ahead lies the sequence of state rooms used for entertaining guests and displayed to the public ever since the castle was built. The hall itself resembles in form, style and scale the transept of a great Norman cathedral, the great clustered columns extending upwards to a "triforium" formed on 2 sides of extraordinary compound arches; stained glass with signs of the zodiac and months of the year as in a book of hours by Thomas Willement (completed 1835). Library: has very much the atmosphere of a gentlemen’s London club with walls, columned arches and ceilings covered in the most lavish ornamentation; superb architectural bookcases and panelled walls are of oak but the arches are plaster grained to match; ornamental bosses and other devices to the rich plaster ceiling refer to the ancestry of the Dawkins and Pennant families, as do the stained glass lunettes above the windows, possibly by David Evans of Shrewsbury; 4 chimneypieces of polished Anglesey "marble", one with a frieze of fantastical carved mummers in the capitals. Drawing room (great hall of the late C18 house and its medieval predecessor): again in a neo-Norman style but the decoration is lighter and the columns more slender, the spirit of the room reflected in the 2000 delicate Maltese gilt crosses to the vaulted ceiling. Ebony room: so called on account of its furniture and "ebonised" chimneypiece and plasterwork, has at its entrance a spiral staircase from the medieval house. Grand Staircase hall: in many ways the greatest architectural achievement at Penrhyn, taking 10 years to complete, the carving in 2 contrasting stones of the highest quality; repeating abstract decorative motifs contrast with the infinitely inventive figurative carving in the newels and capitals; to the top the intricate plaster panels of the domed lantern are formed in exceptionally high relief and display both Norse and Celtic influences. Next to the grand stair is the secondary stair, itself a magnificent structure in grey sandstone with lantern, built immediately next to the grand stair so that family or guests should not meet staff on the same staircase. Reached from the columned aisle of the grand hall are the 2 remaining principal ground-floor rooms, the dining room and the breakfast room, among the last parts of the castle to be completed and clearly intended to be picture galleries as much as dining areas, the stencilled treatment of the walls in the dining room allowing both the provision of an appropriately elaborate "Norman" scheme and a large flat surface for the hanging of paintings; black marble fireplace carved by Richard Westmacott and extremely ornate ceiling with leaf bosses encircled by bands of figurative mouldings derived from the Romanesque church of Kilpeck, Herefordshire. Breakfast room has cambered beam ceiling with oak-grained finish.

Grand hall gallery: at the top of the grand staircase is vaulted and continues around the grand hall below to link with the passage to the keep, which at this level (as on the other floors) contains a suite of rooms comprising a sitting room, dressing room, bedroom and small ante-chamber, the room containing the famous slate bed also with a red Mona marble chimneypiece, one of the most spectacular in the castle. Returning to the grand hall gallery and continuing straight on rather than returning to the grand staircase the Lower India room is reached to the right: this contains an Anglesey limestone chimneypiece painted to match the ground colour of the room's Chinese wallpaper. Coming out of this room, the chapel corridor leads to the chapel gallery (used by the family) and the chapel proper below (used by staff), the latter with encaustic tiles probably reused from the old medieval chapel; stained and painted glass by David Evans (c1833).

The domestic quarters of the castle are reached along the passage from the breakfast room, which turns at right-angles to the right at the foot of the secondary staircase, the most important areas being the butler's pantry, steward's office, servants' hall, housekeeper's room, still room, housekeeper's store and housemaids' tower, while the kitchen (with its cast-iron range flanked by large and hygienic vertical slabs of Penrhyn slate) is housed on the lower ground floor. From this kitchen court, which also includes a coal store, oil vaults, brushing room, lamp room, pastry room, larder, scullery and laundry are reached the outer court with its soup kitchen, brewhouse and 2-storey ice tower and the much larger stables court which, along with the stables themselves containing their extensive slate-partitioned stalls and loose boxes, incorporates the coach house, covered ride, smithy tower, dung tower with gardeners' messroom above and footmen's tower.

Reasons for Listing

Included at Grade I as one of the most important large country houses in Wales; a superb example of the relatively short-lived Norman Revival of the early C19 and generally regarded as the masterpiece of its architect, Thomas Hopper.

Railway Museum

Haydock

Richard Evans & Co. Ltd, Haydock Foundry, near St. Helens, Lancashire. 0-6-0 Side Tank Locomotive.

A visit to the National Trust property that is Penrhyn Castle

Penrhyn Castle is a country house in Llandygai, Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, in the form of a Norman castle. It was originally a medieval fortified manor house, founded by Ednyfed Fychan. In 1438, Ioan ap Gruffudd was granted a licence to crenellate and he founded the stone castle and added a tower house. Samuel Wyatt reconstructed the property in the 1780s.

The present building was created between about 1822 and 1837 to designs by Thomas Hopper, who expanded and transformed the building beyond recognition. However a spiral staircase from the original property can still be seen, and a vaulted basement and other masonry were incorporated into the new structure. Hopper's client was George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, who had inherited the Penrhyn estate on the death of his second cousin, Richard Pennant, who had made his fortune from slavery in Jamaica and local slate quarries. The eldest of George's two daughters, Juliana, married Grenadier Guard, Edward Gordon Douglas, who, on inheriting the estate on George's death in 1845, adopted the hyphenated surname of Douglas-Pennant. The cost of the construction of this vast 'castle' is disputed, and very difficult to work out accurately, as much of the timber came from the family's own forestry, and much of the labour was acquired from within their own workforce at the slate quarry. It cost the Pennant family an estimated £150,000. This is the current equivalent to about £49,500,000.

Penrhyn is one of the most admired of the numerous mock castles built in the United Kingdom in the 19th century; Christopher Hussey called it, "the outstanding instance of Norman revival." The castle is a picturesque composition that stretches over 600 feet from a tall donjon containing family rooms, through the main block built around the earlier house, to the service wing and the stables.

It is built in a sombre style which allows it to possess something of the medieval fortress air despite the ground-level drawing room windows. Hopper designed all the principal interiors in a rich but restrained Norman style, with much fine plasterwork and wood and stone carving. The castle also has some specially designed Norman-style furniture, including a one-ton slate bed made for Queen Victoria when she visited in 1859.

Hugh Napier Douglas-Pennant, 4th Lord Penrhyn, died in 1949, and the castle and estate passed to his niece, Lady Janet Pelham, who, on inheritance, adopted the surname of Douglas-Pennant. In 1951, the castle and 40,000 acres (160 km²) of land were accepted by the treasury in lieu of death duties from Lady Janet. It now belongs to the National Trust and is open to the public. The site received 109,395 visitors in 2017.

Grade I Listed Building

Penrhyn Castle

History

The present house, built in the form of a vast Norman castle, was constructed to the design of Thomas Hopper for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant between 1820 and 1837. It has been very little altered since.

The original house on the site was a medieval manor house of C14 origin, for which a licence to crenellate was given at an unknown date between 1410 and 1431. This house survived until c1782 when it was remodelled in castellated Gothick style, replete with yellow mathematical tiles, by Samuel Wyatt for Richard Pennant. This house, the great hall of which is incorporated in the present drawing room, was remodelled in c1800, but the vast profits from the Penrhyn slate quarries enabled all the rest to be completely swept away by Hopper's vast neo-Norman fantasy, sited and built so that it could be seen not only from the quarries, but most parts of the surrounding estate, thereby emphasizing the local dominance of the Dawkins-Pennant family. The total cost is unknown but it cannot have been less than the £123,000 claimed by Catherine Sinclair in 1839.

Since 1951 the house has belonged to the National Trust, together with over 40,000 acres of the family estates around Ysbyty Ifan and the Ogwen valley.

Exterior

Country house built in the style of a vast Norman castle with other later medieval influences, so huge (its 70 roofs cover an area of over an acre (0.4ha)) that it almost defies meaningful description. The main components of the house, which is built on a north-south axis with the main elevations to east and west, are the 124ft (37.8m) high keep, based on Castle Hedingham (Essex) containing the family quarters on the south, the central range, protected by a 'barbican' terrace on the east, housing the state apartments, and the rectangular-shaped staff/service buildings and stables to the north. The whole is constructed of local rubblestone with internal brick lining, but all elevations are faced in tooled Anglesey limestone ashlar of the finest quality jointing; flat lead roofs concealed by castellated parapets. Close to, the extreme length of the building (it is about 200 yards (182.88m) long) and the fact that the ground slopes away on all sides mean that almost no complete elevation can be seen. That the most frequent views of the exterior are oblique also offered Hopper the opportunity to deploy his towers for picturesque effect, the relationship between the keep and the other towers and turrets frequently obscuring the distances between them. Another significant external feature of the castle is that it actually looks defensible making it secure at least from Pugin's famous slur of 1841 on contemporary "castles" - "Who would hammer against nailed portals, when he could kick his way through the greenhouse?" Certainly, this could never be achieved at Penrhyn and it looks every inch the impregnable fortress both architect and patron intended it to be.

East elevation: to the left is the loosely attached 4-storey keep on battered plinth with 4 tiers of deeply splayed Norman windows, 2 to each face, with chevron decoration and nook-shafts, topped by 4 square corner turrets. The dining room (distinguished by the intersecting tracery above the windows) and breakfast room to the right of the entrance gallery are protected by the long sweep of the machicolated 'barbican' terrace (carriage forecourt), curved in front of the 2 rooms and then running northwards before returning at right-angles to the west to include the gatehouse, which formed the original main entrance to the castle, and ending in a tall rectangular tower with machicolated parapet. To the right of the gatehouse are the recessed buildings of the kitchen court and to the right again the long, largely unbroken outer wall of the stable court, terminated by the square footmen's tower to the left and the rather more exuberant projecting circular dung tower with its spectacularly cantilevered bartizan on the right. From here the wall runs at right-angles to the west incorporating the impressive gatehouse to the stable court.

West elevation: beginning at the left is the hexagonal smithy tower, followed by the long run of the stable court, well provided with windows on this side as the stables lie directly behind. At the end of this the wall turns at right-angles to the west, incorporating the narrow circular-turreted gatehouse to the outer court and terminating in the machicolated circular ice tower. From here the wall runs again at a lower height enclosing the remainder of the outer court. It is, of course, the state apartments which make up the chief architectural display on the central part of this elevation, beginning with a strongly articulated but essentially rectangular tower to the left, while both the drawing room and the library have Norman windows leading directly onto the lawns, the latter terminating in a slender machicolated circular corner tower. To the right is the keep, considerably set back on this side.

Interior

Only those parts of the castle generally accessible to visitors are recorded in this description. Although not described here much of the furniture and many of the paintings (including family portraits) are also original to the house. Similarly, it should be noted that in the interests of brevity and clarity, not all significant architectural features are itemised in the following description.

Entrance gallery: one of the last parts of the castle to be built, this narrow cloister-like passage was added to the main block to heighten the sensation of entering the vast Grand Hall, which is made only partly visible by the deliberate offsetting of the intervening doorways; bronze lamp standards with wolf-heads on stone bases. Grand Hall: entering the columned aisle of this huge space, the visitor stands at a cross-roads between the 3 principal areas of the castle's plan; to the left the passage leads up to the family's private apartments on the 4 floors of the keep, to the right the door at the end leads to the extensive service quarters while ahead lies the sequence of state rooms used for entertaining guests and displayed to the public ever since the castle was built. The hall itself resembles in form, style and scale the transept of a great Norman cathedral, the great clustered columns extending upwards to a "triforium" formed on 2 sides of extraordinary compound arches; stained glass with signs of the zodiac and months of the year as in a book of hours by Thomas Willement (completed 1835). Library: has very much the atmosphere of a gentlemen’s London club with walls, columned arches and ceilings covered in the most lavish ornamentation; superb architectural bookcases and panelled walls are of oak but the arches are plaster grained to match; ornamental bosses and other devices to the rich plaster ceiling refer to the ancestry of the Dawkins and Pennant families, as do the stained glass lunettes above the windows, possibly by David Evans of Shrewsbury; 4 chimneypieces of polished Anglesey "marble", one with a frieze of fantastical carved mummers in the capitals. Drawing room (great hall of the late C18 house and its medieval predecessor): again in a neo-Norman style but the decoration is lighter and the columns more slender, the spirit of the room reflected in the 2000 delicate Maltese gilt crosses to the vaulted ceiling. Ebony room: so called on account of its furniture and "ebonised" chimneypiece and plasterwork, has at its entrance a spiral staircase from the medieval house. Grand Staircase hall: in many ways the greatest architectural achievement at Penrhyn, taking 10 years to complete, the carving in 2 contrasting stones of the highest quality; repeating abstract decorative motifs contrast with the infinitely inventive figurative carving in the newels and capitals; to the top the intricate plaster panels of the domed lantern are formed in exceptionally high relief and display both Norse and Celtic influences. Next to the grand stair is the secondary stair, itself a magnificent structure in grey sandstone with lantern, built immediately next to the grand stair so that family or guests should not meet staff on the same staircase. Reached from the columned aisle of the grand hall are the 2 remaining principal ground-floor rooms, the dining room and the breakfast room, among the last parts of the castle to be completed and clearly intended to be picture galleries as much as dining areas, the stencilled treatment of the walls in the dining room allowing both the provision of an appropriately elaborate "Norman" scheme and a large flat surface for the hanging of paintings; black marble fireplace carved by Richard Westmacott and extremely ornate ceiling with leaf bosses encircled by bands of figurative mouldings derived from the Romanesque church of Kilpeck, Herefordshire. Breakfast room has cambered beam ceiling with oak-grained finish.

Grand hall gallery: at the top of the grand staircase is vaulted and continues around the grand hall below to link with the passage to the keep, which at this level (as on the other floors) contains a suite of rooms comprising a sitting room, dressing room, bedroom and small ante-chamber, the room containing the famous slate bed also with a red Mona marble chimneypiece, one of the most spectacular in the castle. Returning to the grand hall gallery and continuing straight on rather than returning to the grand staircase the Lower India room is reached to the right: this contains an Anglesey limestone chimneypiece painted to match the ground colour of the room's Chinese wallpaper. Coming out of this room, the chapel corridor leads to the chapel gallery (used by the family) and the chapel proper below (used by staff), the latter with encaustic tiles probably reused from the old medieval chapel; stained and painted glass by David Evans (c1833).

The domestic quarters of the castle are reached along the passage from the breakfast room, which turns at right-angles to the right at the foot of the secondary staircase, the most important areas being the butler's pantry, steward's office, servants' hall, housekeeper's room, still room, housekeeper's store and housemaids' tower, while the kitchen (with its cast-iron range flanked by large and hygienic vertical slabs of Penrhyn slate) is housed on the lower ground floor. From this kitchen court, which also includes a coal store, oil vaults, brushing room, lamp room, pastry room, larder, scullery and laundry are reached the outer court with its soup kitchen, brewhouse and 2-storey ice tower and the much larger stables court which, along with the stables themselves containing their extensive slate-partitioned stalls and loose boxes, incorporates the coach house, covered ride, smithy tower, dung tower with gardeners' messroom above and footmen's tower.

Reasons for Listing

Included at Grade I as one of the most important large country houses in Wales; a superb example of the relatively short-lived Norman Revival of the early C19 and generally regarded as the masterpiece of its architect, Thomas Hopper.

A look around the inside of the castle / house.

Grand Staircase

stained glass window - was two of these ones, but only ended up getting the one (columns in the way I think).

A visit to the National Trust property that is Penrhyn Castle

Penrhyn Castle is a country house in Llandygai, Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, in the form of a Norman castle. It was originally a medieval fortified manor house, founded by Ednyfed Fychan. In 1438, Ioan ap Gruffudd was granted a licence to crenellate and he founded the stone castle and added a tower house. Samuel Wyatt reconstructed the property in the 1780s.

The present building was created between about 1822 and 1837 to designs by Thomas Hopper, who expanded and transformed the building beyond recognition. However a spiral staircase from the original property can still be seen, and a vaulted basement and other masonry were incorporated into the new structure. Hopper's client was George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, who had inherited the Penrhyn estate on the death of his second cousin, Richard Pennant, who had made his fortune from slavery in Jamaica and local slate quarries. The eldest of George's two daughters, Juliana, married Grenadier Guard, Edward Gordon Douglas, who, on inheriting the estate on George's death in 1845, adopted the hyphenated surname of Douglas-Pennant. The cost of the construction of this vast 'castle' is disputed, and very difficult to work out accurately, as much of the timber came from the family's own forestry, and much of the labour was acquired from within their own workforce at the slate quarry. It cost the Pennant family an estimated £150,000. This is the current equivalent to about £49,500,000.

Penrhyn is one of the most admired of the numerous mock castles built in the United Kingdom in the 19th century; Christopher Hussey called it, "the outstanding instance of Norman revival." The castle is a picturesque composition that stretches over 600 feet from a tall donjon containing family rooms, through the main block built around the earlier house, to the service wing and the stables.

It is built in a sombre style which allows it to possess something of the medieval fortress air despite the ground-level drawing room windows. Hopper designed all the principal interiors in a rich but restrained Norman style, with much fine plasterwork and wood and stone carving. The castle also has some specially designed Norman-style furniture, including a one-ton slate bed made for Queen Victoria when she visited in 1859.

Hugh Napier Douglas-Pennant, 4th Lord Penrhyn, died in 1949, and the castle and estate passed to his niece, Lady Janet Pelham, who, on inheritance, adopted the surname of Douglas-Pennant. In 1951, the castle and 40,000 acres (160 km²) of land were accepted by the treasury in lieu of death duties from Lady Janet. It now belongs to the National Trust and is open to the public. The site received 109,395 visitors in 2017.

Grade I Listed Building

Penrhyn Castle

History

The present house, built in the form of a vast Norman castle, was constructed to the design of Thomas Hopper for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant between 1820 and 1837. It has been very little altered since.

The original house on the site was a medieval manor house of C14 origin, for which a licence to crenellate was given at an unknown date between 1410 and 1431. This house survived until c1782 when it was remodelled in castellated Gothick style, replete with yellow mathematical tiles, by Samuel Wyatt for Richard Pennant. This house, the great hall of which is incorporated in the present drawing room, was remodelled in c1800, but the vast profits from the Penrhyn slate quarries enabled all the rest to be completely swept away by Hopper's vast neo-Norman fantasy, sited and built so that it could be seen not only from the quarries, but most parts of the surrounding estate, thereby emphasizing the local dominance of the Dawkins-Pennant family. The total cost is unknown but it cannot have been less than the £123,000 claimed by Catherine Sinclair in 1839.

Since 1951 the house has belonged to the National Trust, together with over 40,000 acres of the family estates around Ysbyty Ifan and the Ogwen valley.

Exterior

Country house built in the style of a vast Norman castle with other later medieval influences, so huge (its 70 roofs cover an area of over an acre (0.4ha)) that it almost defies meaningful description. The main components of the house, which is built on a north-south axis with the main elevations to east and west, are the 124ft (37.8m) high keep, based on Castle Hedingham (Essex) containing the family quarters on the south, the central range, protected by a 'barbican' terrace on the east, housing the state apartments, and the rectangular-shaped staff/service buildings and stables to the north. The whole is constructed of local rubblestone with internal brick lining, but all elevations are faced in tooled Anglesey limestone ashlar of the finest quality jointing; flat lead roofs concealed by castellated parapets. Close to, the extreme length of the building (it is about 200 yards (182.88m) long) and the fact that the ground slopes away on all sides mean that almost no complete elevation can be seen. That the most frequent views of the exterior are oblique also offered Hopper the opportunity to deploy his towers for picturesque effect, the relationship between the keep and the other towers and turrets frequently obscuring the distances between them. Another significant external feature of the castle is that it actually looks defensible making it secure at least from Pugin's famous slur of 1841 on contemporary "castles" - "Who would hammer against nailed portals, when he could kick his way through the greenhouse?" Certainly, this could never be achieved at Penrhyn and it looks every inch the impregnable fortress both architect and patron intended it to be.

East elevation: to the left is the loosely attached 4-storey keep on battered plinth with 4 tiers of deeply splayed Norman windows, 2 to each face, with chevron decoration and nook-shafts, topped by 4 square corner turrets. The dining room (distinguished by the intersecting tracery above the windows) and breakfast room to the right of the entrance gallery are protected by the long sweep of the machicolated 'barbican' terrace (carriage forecourt), curved in front of the 2 rooms and then running northwards before returning at right-angles to the west to include the gatehouse, which formed the original main entrance to the castle, and ending in a tall rectangular tower with machicolated parapet. To the right of the gatehouse are the recessed buildings of the kitchen court and to the right again the long, largely unbroken outer wall of the stable court, terminated by the square footmen's tower to the left and the rather more exuberant projecting circular dung tower with its spectacularly cantilevered bartizan on the right. From here the wall runs at right-angles to the west incorporating the impressive gatehouse to the stable court.

West elevation: beginning at the left is the hexagonal smithy tower, followed by the long run of the stable court, well provided with windows on this side as the stables lie directly behind. At the end of this the wall turns at right-angles to the west, incorporating the narrow circular-turreted gatehouse to the outer court and terminating in the machicolated circular ice tower. From here the wall runs again at a lower height enclosing the remainder of the outer court. It is, of course, the state apartments which make up the chief architectural display on the central part of this elevation, beginning with a strongly articulated but essentially rectangular tower to the left, while both the drawing room and the library have Norman windows leading directly onto the lawns, the latter terminating in a slender machicolated circular corner tower. To the right is the keep, considerably set back on this side.

Interior

Only those parts of the castle generally accessible to visitors are recorded in this description. Although not described here much of the furniture and many of the paintings (including family portraits) are also original to the house. Similarly, it should be noted that in the interests of brevity and clarity, not all significant architectural features are itemised in the following description.

Entrance gallery: one of the last parts of the castle to be built, this narrow cloister-like passage was added to the main block to heighten the sensation of entering the vast Grand Hall, which is made only partly visible by the deliberate offsetting of the intervening doorways; bronze lamp standards with wolf-heads on stone bases. Grand Hall: entering the columned aisle of this huge space, the visitor stands at a cross-roads between the 3 principal areas of the castle's plan; to the left the passage leads up to the family's private apartments on the 4 floors of the keep, to the right the door at the end leads to the extensive service quarters while ahead lies the sequence of state rooms used for entertaining guests and displayed to the public ever since the castle was built. The hall itself resembles in form, style and scale the transept of a great Norman cathedral, the great clustered columns extending upwards to a "triforium" formed on 2 sides of extraordinary compound arches; stained glass with signs of the zodiac and months of the year as in a book of hours by Thomas Willement (completed 1835). Library: has very much the atmosphere of a gentlemen’s London club with walls, columned arches and ceilings covered in the most lavish ornamentation; superb architectural bookcases and panelled walls are of oak but the arches are plaster grained to match; ornamental bosses and other devices to the rich plaster ceiling refer to the ancestry of the Dawkins and Pennant families, as do the stained glass lunettes above the windows, possibly by David Evans of Shrewsbury; 4 chimneypieces of polished Anglesey "marble", one with a frieze of fantastical carved mummers in the capitals. Drawing room (great hall of the late C18 house and its medieval predecessor): again in a neo-Norman style but the decoration is lighter and the columns more slender, the spirit of the room reflected in the 2000 delicate Maltese gilt crosses to the vaulted ceiling. Ebony room: so called on account of its furniture and "ebonised" chimneypiece and plasterwork, has at its entrance a spiral staircase from the medieval house. Grand Staircase hall: in many ways the greatest architectural achievement at Penrhyn, taking 10 years to complete, the carving in 2 contrasting stones of the highest quality; repeating abstract decorative motifs contrast with the infinitely inventive figurative carving in the newels and capitals; to the top the intricate plaster panels of the domed lantern are formed in exceptionally high relief and display both Norse and Celtic influences. Next to the grand stair is the secondary stair, itself a magnificent structure in grey sandstone with lantern, built immediately next to the grand stair so that family or guests should not meet staff on the same staircase. Reached from the columned aisle of the grand hall are the 2 remaining principal ground-floor rooms, the dining room and the breakfast room, among the last parts of the castle to be completed and clearly intended to be picture galleries as much as dining areas, the stencilled treatment of the walls in the dining room allowing both the provision of an appropriately elaborate "Norman" scheme and a large flat surface for the hanging of paintings; black marble fireplace carved by Richard Westmacott and extremely ornate ceiling with leaf bosses encircled by bands of figurative mouldings derived from the Romanesque church of Kilpeck, Herefordshire. Breakfast room has cambered beam ceiling with oak-grained finish.

Grand hall gallery: at the top of the grand staircase is vaulted and continues around the grand hall below to link with the passage to the keep, which at this level (as on the other floors) contains a suite of rooms comprising a sitting room, dressing room, bedroom and small ante-chamber, the room containing the famous slate bed also with a red Mona marble chimneypiece, one of the most spectacular in the castle. Returning to the grand hall gallery and continuing straight on rather than returning to the grand staircase the Lower India room is reached to the right: this contains an Anglesey limestone chimneypiece painted to match the ground colour of the room's Chinese wallpaper. Coming out of this room, the chapel corridor leads to the chapel gallery (used by the family) and the chapel proper below (used by staff), the latter with encaustic tiles probably reused from the old medieval chapel; stained and painted glass by David Evans (c1833).

The domestic quarters of the castle are reached along the passage from the breakfast room, which turns at right-angles to the right at the foot of the secondary staircase, the most important areas being the butler's pantry, steward's office, servants' hall, housekeeper's room, still room, housekeeper's store and housemaids' tower, while the kitchen (with its cast-iron range flanked by large and hygienic vertical slabs of Penrhyn slate) is housed on the lower ground floor. From this kitchen court, which also includes a coal store, oil vaults, brushing room, lamp room, pastry room, larder, scullery and laundry are reached the outer court with its soup kitchen, brewhouse and 2-storey ice tower and the much larger stables court which, along with the stables themselves containing their extensive slate-partitioned stalls and loose boxes, incorporates the coach house, covered ride, smithy tower, dung tower with gardeners' messroom above and footmen's tower.

Reasons for Listing

Included at Grade I as one of the most important large country houses in Wales; a superb example of the relatively short-lived Norman Revival of the early C19 and generally regarded as the masterpiece of its architect, Thomas Hopper.

A look around the inside of the castle / house.

The Keep

corridor

Don't exactly remember what this room was called, the map in my book shows it being near a bedroom, but I didn't go through a bedroom at this point!

fireplace

A visit to the National Trust property that is Penrhyn Castle

Penrhyn Castle is a country house in Llandygai, Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, in the form of a Norman castle. It was originally a medieval fortified manor house, founded by Ednyfed Fychan. In 1438, Ioan ap Gruffudd was granted a licence to crenellate and he founded the stone castle and added a tower house. Samuel Wyatt reconstructed the property in the 1780s.

The present building was created between about 1822 and 1837 to designs by Thomas Hopper, who expanded and transformed the building beyond recognition. However a spiral staircase from the original property can still be seen, and a vaulted basement and other masonry were incorporated into the new structure. Hopper's client was George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, who had inherited the Penrhyn estate on the death of his second cousin, Richard Pennant, who had made his fortune from slavery in Jamaica and local slate quarries. The eldest of George's two daughters, Juliana, married Grenadier Guard, Edward Gordon Douglas, who, on inheriting the estate on George's death in 1845, adopted the hyphenated surname of Douglas-Pennant. The cost of the construction of this vast 'castle' is disputed, and very difficult to work out accurately, as much of the timber came from the family's own forestry, and much of the labour was acquired from within their own workforce at the slate quarry. It cost the Pennant family an estimated £150,000. This is the current equivalent to about £49,500,000.

Penrhyn is one of the most admired of the numerous mock castles built in the United Kingdom in the 19th century; Christopher Hussey called it, "the outstanding instance of Norman revival." The castle is a picturesque composition that stretches over 600 feet from a tall donjon containing family rooms, through the main block built around the earlier house, to the service wing and the stables.

It is built in a sombre style which allows it to possess something of the medieval fortress air despite the ground-level drawing room windows. Hopper designed all the principal interiors in a rich but restrained Norman style, with much fine plasterwork and wood and stone carving. The castle also has some specially designed Norman-style furniture, including a one-ton slate bed made for Queen Victoria when she visited in 1859.

Hugh Napier Douglas-Pennant, 4th Lord Penrhyn, died in 1949, and the castle and estate passed to his niece, Lady Janet Pelham, who, on inheritance, adopted the surname of Douglas-Pennant. In 1951, the castle and 40,000 acres (160 km²) of land were accepted by the treasury in lieu of death duties from Lady Janet. It now belongs to the National Trust and is open to the public. The site received 109,395 visitors in 2017.

Grade I Listed Building

Penrhyn Castle

History

The present house, built in the form of a vast Norman castle, was constructed to the design of Thomas Hopper for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant between 1820 and 1837. It has been very little altered since.

The original house on the site was a medieval manor house of C14 origin, for which a licence to crenellate was given at an unknown date between 1410 and 1431. This house survived until c1782 when it was remodelled in castellated Gothick style, replete with yellow mathematical tiles, by Samuel Wyatt for Richard Pennant. This house, the great hall of which is incorporated in the present drawing room, was remodelled in c1800, but the vast profits from the Penrhyn slate quarries enabled all the rest to be completely swept away by Hopper's vast neo-Norman fantasy, sited and built so that it could be seen not only from the quarries, but most parts of the surrounding estate, thereby emphasizing the local dominance of the Dawkins-Pennant family. The total cost is unknown but it cannot have been less than the £123,000 claimed by Catherine Sinclair in 1839.

Since 1951 the house has belonged to the National Trust, together with over 40,000 acres of the family estates around Ysbyty Ifan and the Ogwen valley.

Exterior

Country house built in the style of a vast Norman castle with other later medieval influences, so huge (its 70 roofs cover an area of over an acre (0.4ha)) that it almost defies meaningful description. The main components of the house, which is built on a north-south axis with the main elevations to east and west, are the 124ft (37.8m) high keep, based on Castle Hedingham (Essex) containing the family quarters on the south, the central range, protected by a 'barbican' terrace on the east, housing the state apartments, and the rectangular-shaped staff/service buildings and stables to the north. The whole is constructed of local rubblestone with internal brick lining, but all elevations are faced in tooled Anglesey limestone ashlar of the finest quality jointing; flat lead roofs concealed by castellated parapets. Close to, the extreme length of the building (it is about 200 yards (182.88m) long) and the fact that the ground slopes away on all sides mean that almost no complete elevation can be seen. That the most frequent views of the exterior are oblique also offered Hopper the opportunity to deploy his towers for picturesque effect, the relationship between the keep and the other towers and turrets frequently obscuring the distances between them. Another significant external feature of the castle is that it actually looks defensible making it secure at least from Pugin's famous slur of 1841 on contemporary "castles" - "Who would hammer against nailed portals, when he could kick his way through the greenhouse?" Certainly, this could never be achieved at Penrhyn and it looks every inch the impregnable fortress both architect and patron intended it to be.

East elevation: to the left is the loosely attached 4-storey keep on battered plinth with 4 tiers of deeply splayed Norman windows, 2 to each face, with chevron decoration and nook-shafts, topped by 4 square corner turrets. The dining room (distinguished by the intersecting tracery above the windows) and breakfast room to the right of the entrance gallery are protected by the long sweep of the machicolated 'barbican' terrace (carriage forecourt), curved in front of the 2 rooms and then running northwards before returning at right-angles to the west to include the gatehouse, which formed the original main entrance to the castle, and ending in a tall rectangular tower with machicolated parapet. To the right of the gatehouse are the recessed buildings of the kitchen court and to the right again the long, largely unbroken outer wall of the stable court, terminated by the square footmen's tower to the left and the rather more exuberant projecting circular dung tower with its spectacularly cantilevered bartizan on the right. From here the wall runs at right-angles to the west incorporating the impressive gatehouse to the stable court.

West elevation: beginning at the left is the hexagonal smithy tower, followed by the long run of the stable court, well provided with windows on this side as the stables lie directly behind. At the end of this the wall turns at right-angles to the west, incorporating the narrow circular-turreted gatehouse to the outer court and terminating in the machicolated circular ice tower. From here the wall runs again at a lower height enclosing the remainder of the outer court. It is, of course, the state apartments which make up the chief architectural display on the central part of this elevation, beginning with a strongly articulated but essentially rectangular tower to the left, while both the drawing room and the library have Norman windows leading directly onto the lawns, the latter terminating in a slender machicolated circular corner tower. To the right is the keep, considerably set back on this side.

Interior

Only those parts of the castle generally accessible to visitors are recorded in this description. Although not described here much of the furniture and many of the paintings (including family portraits) are also original to the house. Similarly, it should be noted that in the interests of brevity and clarity, not all significant architectural features are itemised in the following description.

Entrance gallery: one of the last parts of the castle to be built, this narrow cloister-like passage was added to the main block to heighten the sensation of entering the vast Grand Hall, which is made only partly visible by the deliberate offsetting of the intervening doorways; bronze lamp standards with wolf-heads on stone bases. Grand Hall: entering the columned aisle of this huge space, the visitor stands at a cross-roads between the 3 principal areas of the castle's plan; to the left the passage leads up to the family's private apartments on the 4 floors of the keep, to the right the door at the end leads to the extensive service quarters while ahead lies the sequence of state rooms used for entertaining guests and displayed to the public ever since the castle was built. The hall itself resembles in form, style and scale the transept of a great Norman cathedral, the great clustered columns extending upwards to a "triforium" formed on 2 sides of extraordinary compound arches; stained glass with signs of the zodiac and months of the year as in a book of hours by Thomas Willement (completed 1835). Library: has very much the atmosphere of a gentlemen’s London club with walls, columned arches and ceilings covered in the most lavish ornamentation; superb architectural bookcases and panelled walls are of oak but the arches are plaster grained to match; ornamental bosses and other devices to the rich plaster ceiling refer to the ancestry of the Dawkins and Pennant families, as do the stained glass lunettes above the windows, possibly by David Evans of Shrewsbury; 4 chimneypieces of polished Anglesey "marble", one with a frieze of fantastical carved mummers in the capitals. Drawing room (great hall of the late C18 house and its medieval predecessor): again in a neo-Norman style but the decoration is lighter and the columns more slender, the spirit of the room reflected in the 2000 delicate Maltese gilt crosses to the vaulted ceiling. Ebony room: so called on account of its furniture and "ebonised" chimneypiece and plasterwork, has at its entrance a spiral staircase from the medieval house. Grand Staircase hall: in many ways the greatest architectural achievement at Penrhyn, taking 10 years to complete, the carving in 2 contrasting stones of the highest quality; repeating abstract decorative motifs contrast with the infinitely inventive figurative carving in the newels and capitals; to the top the intricate plaster panels of the domed lantern are formed in exceptionally high relief and display both Norse and Celtic influences. Next to the grand stair is the secondary stair, itself a magnificent structure in grey sandstone with lantern, built immediately next to the grand stair so that family or guests should not meet staff on the same staircase. Reached from the columned aisle of the grand hall are the 2 remaining principal ground-floor rooms, the dining room and the breakfast room, among the last parts of the castle to be completed and clearly intended to be picture galleries as much as dining areas, the stencilled treatment of the walls in the dining room allowing both the provision of an appropriately elaborate "Norman" scheme and a large flat surface for the hanging of paintings; black marble fireplace carved by Richard Westmacott and extremely ornate ceiling with leaf bosses encircled by bands of figurative mouldings derived from the Romanesque church of Kilpeck, Herefordshire. Breakfast room has cambered beam ceiling with oak-grained finish.

Grand hall gallery: at the top of the grand staircase is vaulted and continues around the grand hall below to link with the passage to the keep, which at this level (as on the other floors) contains a suite of rooms comprising a sitting room, dressing room, bedroom and small ante-chamber, the room containing the famous slate bed also with a red Mona marble chimneypiece, one of the most spectacular in the castle. Returning to the grand hall gallery and continuing straight on rather than returning to the grand staircase the Lower India room is reached to the right: this contains an Anglesey limestone chimneypiece painted to match the ground colour of the room's Chinese wallpaper. Coming out of this room, the chapel corridor leads to the chapel gallery (used by the family) and the chapel proper below (used by staff), the latter with encaustic tiles probably reused from the old medieval chapel; stained and painted glass by David Evans (c1833).

The domestic quarters of the castle are reached along the passage from the breakfast room, which turns at right-angles to the right at the foot of the secondary staircase, the most important areas being the butler's pantry, steward's office, servants' hall, housekeeper's room, still room, housekeeper's store and housemaids' tower, while the kitchen (with its cast-iron range flanked by large and hygienic vertical slabs of Penrhyn slate) is housed on the lower ground floor. From this kitchen court, which also includes a coal store, oil vaults, brushing room, lamp room, pastry room, larder, scullery and laundry are reached the outer court with its soup kitchen, brewhouse and 2-storey ice tower and the much larger stables court which, along with the stables themselves containing their extensive slate-partitioned stalls and loose boxes, incorporates the coach house, covered ride, smithy tower, dung tower with gardeners' messroom above and footmen's tower.

Reasons for Listing

Included at Grade I as one of the most important large country houses in Wales; a superb example of the relatively short-lived Norman Revival of the early C19 and generally regarded as the masterpiece of its architect, Thomas Hopper.

Clocks - went up a tower and they had thousands of clocks all over the place!

Harrison's Garden

An installation of over 5000 clocks creates an imagined landscape in the derelict 'unloved' rooms of the keep.

You needed a token to go up here, and only a certain number of people were allowed up here at each time.

A visit to the National Trust property that is Penrhyn Castle

Penrhyn Castle is a country house in Llandygai, Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, in the form of a Norman castle. It was originally a medieval fortified manor house, founded by Ednyfed Fychan. In 1438, Ioan ap Gruffudd was granted a licence to crenellate and he founded the stone castle and added a tower house. Samuel Wyatt reconstructed the property in the 1780s.

The present building was created between about 1822 and 1837 to designs by Thomas Hopper, who expanded and transformed the building beyond recognition. However a spiral staircase from the original property can still be seen, and a vaulted basement and other masonry were incorporated into the new structure. Hopper's client was George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, who had inherited the Penrhyn estate on the death of his second cousin, Richard Pennant, who had made his fortune from slavery in Jamaica and local slate quarries. The eldest of George's two daughters, Juliana, married Grenadier Guard, Edward Gordon Douglas, who, on inheriting the estate on George's death in 1845, adopted the hyphenated surname of Douglas-Pennant. The cost of the construction of this vast 'castle' is disputed, and very difficult to work out accurately, as much of the timber came from the family's own forestry, and much of the labour was acquired from within their own workforce at the slate quarry. It cost the Pennant family an estimated £150,000. This is the current equivalent to about £49,500,000.

Penrhyn is one of the most admired of the numerous mock castles built in the United Kingdom in the 19th century; Christopher Hussey called it, "the outstanding instance of Norman revival." The castle is a picturesque composition that stretches over 600 feet from a tall donjon containing family rooms, through the main block built around the earlier house, to the service wing and the stables.

It is built in a sombre style which allows it to possess something of the medieval fortress air despite the ground-level drawing room windows. Hopper designed all the principal interiors in a rich but restrained Norman style, with much fine plasterwork and wood and stone carving. The castle also has some specially designed Norman-style furniture, including a one-ton slate bed made for Queen Victoria when she visited in 1859.

Hugh Napier Douglas-Pennant, 4th Lord Penrhyn, died in 1949, and the castle and estate passed to his niece, Lady Janet Pelham, who, on inheritance, adopted the surname of Douglas-Pennant. In 1951, the castle and 40,000 acres (160 km²) of land were accepted by the treasury in lieu of death duties from Lady Janet. It now belongs to the National Trust and is open to the public. The site received 109,395 visitors in 2017.

Grade I Listed Building

Penrhyn Castle

History

The present house, built in the form of a vast Norman castle, was constructed to the design of Thomas Hopper for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant between 1820 and 1837. It has been very little altered since.

The original house on the site was a medieval manor house of C14 origin, for which a licence to crenellate was given at an unknown date between 1410 and 1431. This house survived until c1782 when it was remodelled in castellated Gothick style, replete with yellow mathematical tiles, by Samuel Wyatt for Richard Pennant. This house, the great hall of which is incorporated in the present drawing room, was remodelled in c1800, but the vast profits from the Penrhyn slate quarries enabled all the rest to be completely swept away by Hopper's vast neo-Norman fantasy, sited and built so that it could be seen not only from the quarries, but most parts of the surrounding estate, thereby emphasizing the local dominance of the Dawkins-Pennant family. The total cost is unknown but it cannot have been less than the £123,000 claimed by Catherine Sinclair in 1839.

Since 1951 the house has belonged to the National Trust, together with over 40,000 acres of the family estates around Ysbyty Ifan and the Ogwen valley.

Exterior

Country house built in the style of a vast Norman castle with other later medieval influences, so huge (its 70 roofs cover an area of over an acre (0.4ha)) that it almost defies meaningful description. The main components of the house, which is built on a north-south axis with the main elevations to east and west, are the 124ft (37.8m) high keep, based on Castle Hedingham (Essex) containing the family quarters on the south, the central range, protected by a 'barbican' terrace on the east, housing the state apartments, and the rectangular-shaped staff/service buildings and stables to the north. The whole is constructed of local rubblestone with internal brick lining, but all elevations are faced in tooled Anglesey limestone ashlar of the finest quality jointing; flat lead roofs concealed by castellated parapets. Close to, the extreme length of the building (it is about 200 yards (182.88m) long) and the fact that the ground slopes away on all sides mean that almost no complete elevation can be seen. That the most frequent views of the exterior are oblique also offered Hopper the opportunity to deploy his towers for picturesque effect, the relationship between the keep and the other towers and turrets frequently obscuring the distances between them. Another significant external feature of the castle is that it actually looks defensible making it secure at least from Pugin's famous slur of 1841 on contemporary "castles" - "Who would hammer against nailed portals, when he could kick his way through the greenhouse?" Certainly, this could never be achieved at Penrhyn and it looks every inch the impregnable fortress both architect and patron intended it to be.

East elevation: to the left is the loosely attached 4-storey keep on battered plinth with 4 tiers of deeply splayed Norman windows, 2 to each face, with chevron decoration and nook-shafts, topped by 4 square corner turrets. The dining room (distinguished by the intersecting tracery above the windows) and breakfast room to the right of the entrance gallery are protected by the long sweep of the machicolated 'barbican' terrace (carriage forecourt), curved in front of the 2 rooms and then running northwards before returning at right-angles to the west to include the gatehouse, which formed the original main entrance to the castle, and ending in a tall rectangular tower with machicolated parapet. To the right of the gatehouse are the recessed buildings of the kitchen court and to the right again the long, largely unbroken outer wall of the stable court, terminated by the square footmen's tower to the left and the rather more exuberant projecting circular dung tower with its spectacularly cantilevered bartizan on the right. From here the wall runs at right-angles to the west incorporating the impressive gatehouse to the stable court.

West elevation: beginning at the left is the hexagonal smithy tower, followed by the long run of the stable court, well provided with windows on this side as the stables lie directly behind. At the end of this the wall turns at right-angles to the west, incorporating the narrow circular-turreted gatehouse to the outer court and terminating in the machicolated circular ice tower. From here the wall runs again at a lower height enclosing the remainder of the outer court. It is, of course, the state apartments which make up the chief architectural display on the central part of this elevation, beginning with a strongly articulated but essentially rectangular tower to the left, while both the drawing room and the library have Norman windows leading directly onto the lawns, the latter terminating in a slender machicolated circular corner tower. To the right is the keep, considerably set back on this side.

Interior

Only those parts of the castle generally accessible to visitors are recorded in this description. Although not described here much of the furniture and many of the paintings (including family portraits) are also original to the house. Similarly, it should be noted that in the interests of brevity and clarity, not all significant architectural features are itemised in the following description.

Entrance gallery: one of the last parts of the castle to be built, this narrow cloister-like passage was added to the main block to heighten the sensation of entering the vast Grand Hall, which is made only partly visible by the deliberate offsetting of the intervening doorways; bronze lamp standards with wolf-heads on stone bases. Grand Hall: entering the columned aisle of this huge space, the visitor stands at a cross-roads between the 3 principal areas of the castle's plan; to the left the passage leads up to the family's private apartments on the 4 floors of the keep, to the right the door at the end leads to the extensive service quarters while ahead lies the sequence of state rooms used for entertaining guests and displayed to the public ever since the castle was built. The hall itself resembles in form, style and scale the transept of a great Norman cathedral, the great clustered columns extending upwards to a "triforium" formed on 2 sides of extraordinary compound arches; stained glass with signs of the zodiac and months of the year as in a book of hours by Thomas Willement (completed 1835). Library: has very much the atmosphere of a gentlemen’s London club with walls, columned arches and ceilings covered in the most lavish ornamentation; superb architectural bookcases and panelled walls are of oak but the arches are plaster grained to match; ornamental bosses and other devices to the rich plaster ceiling refer to the ancestry of the Dawkins and Pennant families, as do the stained glass lunettes above the windows, possibly by David Evans of Shrewsbury; 4 chimneypieces of polished Anglesey "marble", one with a frieze of fantastical carved mummers in the capitals. Drawing room (great hall of the late C18 house and its medieval predecessor): again in a neo-Norman style but the decoration is lighter and the columns more slender, the spirit of the room reflected in the 2000 delicate Maltese gilt crosses to the vaulted ceiling. Ebony room: so called on account of its furniture and "ebonised" chimneypiece and plasterwork, has at its entrance a spiral staircase from the medieval house. Grand Staircase hall: in many ways the greatest architectural achievement at Penrhyn, taking 10 years to complete, the carving in 2 contrasting stones of the highest quality; repeating abstract decorative motifs contrast with the infinitely inventive figurative carving in the newels and capitals; to the top the intricate plaster panels of the domed lantern are formed in exceptionally high relief and display both Norse and Celtic influences. Next to the grand stair is the secondary stair, itself a magnificent structure in grey sandstone with lantern, built immediately next to the grand stair so that family or guests should not meet staff on the same staircase. Reached from the columned aisle of the grand hall are the 2 remaining principal ground-floor rooms, the dining room and the breakfast room, among the last parts of the castle to be completed and clearly intended to be picture galleries as much as dining areas, the stencilled treatment of the walls in the dining room allowing both the provision of an appropriately elaborate "Norman" scheme and a large flat surface for the hanging of paintings; black marble fireplace carved by Richard Westmacott and extremely ornate ceiling with leaf bosses encircled by bands of figurative mouldings derived from the Romanesque church of Kilpeck, Herefordshire. Breakfast room has cambered beam ceiling with oak-grained finish.

Grand hall gallery: at the top of the grand staircase is vaulted and continues around the grand hall below to link with the passage to the keep, which at this level (as on the other floors) contains a suite of rooms comprising a sitting room, dressing room, bedroom and small ante-chamber, the room containing the famous slate bed also with a red Mona marble chimneypiece, one of the most spectacular in the castle. Returning to the grand hall gallery and continuing straight on rather than returning to the grand staircase the Lower India room is reached to the right: this contains an Anglesey limestone chimneypiece painted to match the ground colour of the room's Chinese wallpaper. Coming out of this room, the chapel corridor leads to the chapel gallery (used by the family) and the chapel proper below (used by staff), the latter with encaustic tiles probably reused from the old medieval chapel; stained and painted glass by David Evans (c1833).

The domestic quarters of the castle are reached along the passage from the breakfast room, which turns at right-angles to the right at the foot of the secondary staircase, the most important areas being the butler's pantry, steward's office, servants' hall, housekeeper's room, still room, housekeeper's store and housemaids' tower, while the kitchen (with its cast-iron range flanked by large and hygienic vertical slabs of Penrhyn slate) is housed on the lower ground floor. From this kitchen court, which also includes a coal store, oil vaults, brushing room, lamp room, pastry room, larder, scullery and laundry are reached the outer court with its soup kitchen, brewhouse and 2-storey ice tower and the much larger stables court which, along with the stables themselves containing their extensive slate-partitioned stalls and loose boxes, incorporates the coach house, covered ride, smithy tower, dung tower with gardeners' messroom above and footmen's tower.

Reasons for Listing

Included at Grade I as one of the most important large country houses in Wales; a superb example of the relatively short-lived Norman Revival of the early C19 and generally regarded as the masterpiece of its architect, Thomas Hopper.

Clocks - went up a tower and they had thousands of clocks all over the place!

Harrison's Garden

An installation of over 5000 clocks creates an imagined landscape in the derelict 'unloved' rooms of the keep.

You needed a token to go up here, and only a certain number of people were allowed up here at each time.

Spiral staircase

Originally uploaded for the Guess Where Group www.flickr.com/groups/guesswhereuk/</a</a

Waltham Cross Embassy in 1986. A former Shipman and King cinema with internal plasterwork by Mollo & Egan, opened in November 1937, the Embassy was quadrupled, hiding all decoration - however the plasterwork largely survived behind partition walls. Renamed Cannon, then MGM before closing in September 1993. Internal partitions removed for bingo, but original decor not restored. Bingo ceased in 2017, the building was demolished in May 2022.

Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, England - Embassy Cinema, High Street

A scanned negative from 1986, image reworked 2024

A visit to the National Trust property that is Penrhyn Castle

Penrhyn Castle is a country house in Llandygai, Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, in the form of a Norman castle. It was originally a medieval fortified manor house, founded by Ednyfed Fychan. In 1438, Ioan ap Gruffudd was granted a licence to crenellate and he founded the stone castle and added a tower house. Samuel Wyatt reconstructed the property in the 1780s.

The present building was created between about 1822 and 1837 to designs by Thomas Hopper, who expanded and transformed the building beyond recognition. However a spiral staircase from the original property can still be seen, and a vaulted basement and other masonry were incorporated into the new structure. Hopper's client was George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, who had inherited the Penrhyn estate on the death of his second cousin, Richard Pennant, who had made his fortune from slavery in Jamaica and local slate quarries. The eldest of George's two daughters, Juliana, married Grenadier Guard, Edward Gordon Douglas, who, on inheriting the estate on George's death in 1845, adopted the hyphenated surname of Douglas-Pennant. The cost of the construction of this vast 'castle' is disputed, and very difficult to work out accurately, as much of the timber came from the family's own forestry, and much of the labour was acquired from within their own workforce at the slate quarry. It cost the Pennant family an estimated £150,000. This is the current equivalent to about £49,500,000.

Penrhyn is one of the most admired of the numerous mock castles built in the United Kingdom in the 19th century; Christopher Hussey called it, "the outstanding instance of Norman revival." The castle is a picturesque composition that stretches over 600 feet from a tall donjon containing family rooms, through the main block built around the earlier house, to the service wing and the stables.

It is built in a sombre style which allows it to possess something of the medieval fortress air despite the ground-level drawing room windows. Hopper designed all the principal interiors in a rich but restrained Norman style, with much fine plasterwork and wood and stone carving. The castle also has some specially designed Norman-style furniture, including a one-ton slate bed made for Queen Victoria when she visited in 1859.

Hugh Napier Douglas-Pennant, 4th Lord Penrhyn, died in 1949, and the castle and estate passed to his niece, Lady Janet Pelham, who, on inheritance, adopted the surname of Douglas-Pennant. In 1951, the castle and 40,000 acres (160 km²) of land were accepted by the treasury in lieu of death duties from Lady Janet. It now belongs to the National Trust and is open to the public. The site received 109,395 visitors in 2017.

Grade I Listed Building

Penrhyn Castle

History

The present house, built in the form of a vast Norman castle, was constructed to the design of Thomas Hopper for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant between 1820 and 1837. It has been very little altered since.

The original house on the site was a medieval manor house of C14 origin, for which a licence to crenellate was given at an unknown date between 1410 and 1431. This house survived until c1782 when it was remodelled in castellated Gothick style, replete with yellow mathematical tiles, by Samuel Wyatt for Richard Pennant. This house, the great hall of which is incorporated in the present drawing room, was remodelled in c1800, but the vast profits from the Penrhyn slate quarries enabled all the rest to be completely swept away by Hopper's vast neo-Norman fantasy, sited and built so that it could be seen not only from the quarries, but most parts of the surrounding estate, thereby emphasizing the local dominance of the Dawkins-Pennant family. The total cost is unknown but it cannot have been less than the £123,000 claimed by Catherine Sinclair in 1839.

Since 1951 the house has belonged to the National Trust, together with over 40,000 acres of the family estates around Ysbyty Ifan and the Ogwen valley.

Exterior

Country house built in the style of a vast Norman castle with other later medieval influences, so huge (its 70 roofs cover an area of over an acre (0.4ha)) that it almost defies meaningful description. The main components of the house, which is built on a north-south axis with the main elevations to east and west, are the 124ft (37.8m) high keep, based on Castle Hedingham (Essex) containing the family quarters on the south, the central range, protected by a 'barbican' terrace on the east, housing the state apartments, and the rectangular-shaped staff/service buildings and stables to the north. The whole is constructed of local rubblestone with internal brick lining, but all elevations are faced in tooled Anglesey limestone ashlar of the finest quality jointing; flat lead roofs concealed by castellated parapets. Close to, the extreme length of the building (it is about 200 yards (182.88m) long) and the fact that the ground slopes away on all sides mean that almost no complete elevation can be seen. That the most frequent views of the exterior are oblique also offered Hopper the opportunity to deploy his towers for picturesque effect, the relationship between the keep and the other towers and turrets frequently obscuring the distances between them. Another significant external feature of the castle is that it actually looks defensible making it secure at least from Pugin's famous slur of 1841 on contemporary "castles" - "Who would hammer against nailed portals, when he could kick his way through the greenhouse?" Certainly, this could never be achieved at Penrhyn and it looks every inch the impregnable fortress both architect and patron intended it to be.

East elevation: to the left is the loosely attached 4-storey keep on battered plinth with 4 tiers of deeply splayed Norman windows, 2 to each face, with chevron decoration and nook-shafts, topped by 4 square corner turrets. The dining room (distinguished by the intersecting tracery above the windows) and breakfast room to the right of the entrance gallery are protected by the long sweep of the machicolated 'barbican' terrace (carriage forecourt), curved in front of the 2 rooms and then running northwards before returning at right-angles to the west to include the gatehouse, which formed the original main entrance to the castle, and ending in a tall rectangular tower with machicolated parapet. To the right of the gatehouse are the recessed buildings of the kitchen court and to the right again the long, largely unbroken outer wall of the stable court, terminated by the square footmen's tower to the left and the rather more exuberant projecting circular dung tower with its spectacularly cantilevered bartizan on the right. From here the wall runs at right-angles to the west incorporating the impressive gatehouse to the stable court.

West elevation: beginning at the left is the hexagonal smithy tower, followed by the long run of the stable court, well provided with windows on this side as the stables lie directly behind. At the end of this the wall turns at right-angles to the west, incorporating the narrow circular-turreted gatehouse to the outer court and terminating in the machicolated circular ice tower. From here the wall runs again at a lower height enclosing the remainder of the outer court. It is, of course, the state apartments which make up the chief architectural display on the central part of this elevation, beginning with a strongly articulated but essentially rectangular tower to the left, while both the drawing room and the library have Norman windows leading directly onto the lawns, the latter terminating in a slender machicolated circular corner tower. To the right is the keep, considerably set back on this side.

Interior

Only those parts of the castle generally accessible to visitors are recorded in this description. Although not described here much of the furniture and many of the paintings (including family portraits) are also original to the house. Similarly, it should be noted that in the interests of brevity and clarity, not all significant architectural features are itemised in the following description.

Entrance gallery: one of the last parts of the castle to be built, this narrow cloister-like passage was added to the main block to heighten the sensation of entering the vast Grand Hall, which is made only partly visible by the deliberate offsetting of the intervening doorways; bronze lamp standards with wolf-heads on stone bases. Grand Hall: entering the columned aisle of this huge space, the visitor stands at a cross-roads between the 3 principal areas of the castle's plan; to the left the passage leads up to the family's private apartments on the 4 floors of the keep, to the right the door at the end leads to the extensive service quarters while ahead lies the sequence of state rooms used for entertaining guests and displayed to the public ever since the castle was built. The hall itself resembles in form, style and scale the transept of a great Norman cathedral, the great clustered columns extending upwards to a "triforium" formed on 2 sides of extraordinary compound arches; stained glass with signs of the zodiac and months of the year as in a book of hours by Thomas Willement (completed 1835). Library: has very much the atmosphere of a gentlemen’s London club with walls, columned arches and ceilings covered in the most lavish ornamentation; superb architectural bookcases and panelled walls are of oak but the arches are plaster grained to match; ornamental bosses and other devices to the rich plaster ceiling refer to the ancestry of the Dawkins and Pennant families, as do the stained glass lunettes above the windows, possibly by David Evans of Shrewsbury; 4 chimneypieces of polished Anglesey "marble", one with a frieze of fantastical carved mummers in the capitals. Drawing room (great hall of the late C18 house and its medieval predecessor): again in a neo-Norman style but the decoration is lighter and the columns more slender, the spirit of the room reflected in the 2000 delicate Maltese gilt crosses to the vaulted ceiling. Ebony room: so called on account of its furniture and "ebonised" chimneypiece and plasterwork, has at its entrance a spiral staircase from the medieval house. Grand Staircase hall: in many ways the greatest architectural achievement at Penrhyn, taking 10 years to complete, the carving in 2 contrasting stones of the highest quality; repeating abstract decorative motifs contrast with the infinitely inventive figurative carving in the newels and capitals; to the top the intricate plaster panels of the domed lantern are formed in exceptionally high relief and display both Norse and Celtic influences. Next to the grand stair is the secondary stair, itself a magnificent structure in grey sandstone with lantern, built immediately next to the grand stair so that family or guests should not meet staff on the same staircase. Reached from the columned aisle of the grand hall are the 2 remaining principal ground-floor rooms, the dining room and the breakfast room, among the last parts of the castle to be completed and clearly intended to be picture galleries as much as dining areas, the stencilled treatment of the walls in the dining room allowing both the provision of an appropriately elaborate "Norman" scheme and a large flat surface for the hanging of paintings; black marble fireplace carved by Richard Westmacott and extremely ornate ceiling with leaf bosses encircled by bands of figurative mouldings derived from the Romanesque church of Kilpeck, Herefordshire. Breakfast room has cambered beam ceiling with oak-grained finish.

Grand hall gallery: at the top of the grand staircase is vaulted and continues around the grand hall below to link with the passage to the keep, which at this level (as on the other floors) contains a suite of rooms comprising a sitting room, dressing room, bedroom and small ante-chamber, the room containing the famous slate bed also with a red Mona marble chimneypiece, one of the most spectacular in the castle. Returning to the grand hall gallery and continuing straight on rather than returning to the grand staircase the Lower India room is reached to the right: this contains an Anglesey limestone chimneypiece painted to match the ground colour of the room's Chinese wallpaper. Coming out of this room, the chapel corridor leads to the chapel gallery (used by the family) and the chapel proper below (used by staff), the latter with encaustic tiles probably reused from the old medieval chapel; stained and painted glass by David Evans (c1833).

The domestic quarters of the castle are reached along the passage from the breakfast room, which turns at right-angles to the right at the foot of the secondary staircase, the most important areas being the butler's pantry, steward's office, servants' hall, housekeeper's room, still room, housekeeper's store and housemaids' tower, while the kitchen (with its cast-iron range flanked by large and hygienic vertical slabs of Penrhyn slate) is housed on the lower ground floor. From this kitchen court, which also includes a coal store, oil vaults, brushing room, lamp room, pastry room, larder, scullery and laundry are reached the outer court with its soup kitchen, brewhouse and 2-storey ice tower and the much larger stables court which, along with the stables themselves containing their extensive slate-partitioned stalls and loose boxes, incorporates the coach house, covered ride, smithy tower, dung tower with gardeners' messroom above and footmen's tower.

Reasons for Listing

Included at Grade I as one of the most important large country houses in Wales; a superb example of the relatively short-lived Norman Revival of the early C19 and generally regarded as the masterpiece of its architect, Thomas Hopper.

Clocks - went up a tower and they had thousands of clocks all over the place!

Harrison's Garden

An installation of over 5000 clocks creates an imagined landscape in the derelict 'unloved' rooms of the keep.

You needed a token to go up here, and only a certain number of people were allowed up here at each time.

Levens Hall is a magnificent Elizabethan mansion that was built around 1350 by the Redman family as a pele (or peel) tower and was later expanded and rebuilt towards the end of the 16th Century. It is the family home of the Bagots, and contains a collection of Jacobean furniture, fine paintings, the earliest English patchwork and many other beautiful objects. (No photos from inside the house as photography is not allowed)

The world-famous award winning gardens were laid out in 1694. The topiary beech hedges and colourful seasonal beds create a stunning visual impact. The topiary garden has huge abstract shapes, pyramids and columns reminiscent of monstrous chess men.

These photographs remind me of my many days visiting stately homes during the summer months, hope you enjoy.

© Eric Lafforgue

www.ericlafforgue.com

A visit to the National Trust property that is Penrhyn Castle

Penrhyn Castle is a country house in Llandygai, Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, in the form of a Norman castle. It was originally a medieval fortified manor house, founded by Ednyfed Fychan. In 1438, Ioan ap Gruffudd was granted a licence to crenellate and he founded the stone castle and added a tower house. Samuel Wyatt reconstructed the property in the 1780s.

The present building was created between about 1822 and 1837 to designs by Thomas Hopper, who expanded and transformed the building beyond recognition. However a spiral staircase from the original property can still be seen, and a vaulted basement and other masonry were incorporated into the new structure. Hopper's client was George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, who had inherited the Penrhyn estate on the death of his second cousin, Richard Pennant, who had made his fortune from slavery in Jamaica and local slate quarries. The eldest of George's two daughters, Juliana, married Grenadier Guard, Edward Gordon Douglas, who, on inheriting the estate on George's death in 1845, adopted the hyphenated surname of Douglas-Pennant. The cost of the construction of this vast 'castle' is disputed, and very difficult to work out accurately, as much of the timber came from the family's own forestry, and much of the labour was acquired from within their own workforce at the slate quarry. It cost the Pennant family an estimated £150,000. This is the current equivalent to about £49,500,000.

Penrhyn is one of the most admired of the numerous mock castles built in the United Kingdom in the 19th century; Christopher Hussey called it, "the outstanding instance of Norman revival." The castle is a picturesque composition that stretches over 600 feet from a tall donjon containing family rooms, through the main block built around the earlier house, to the service wing and the stables.

It is built in a sombre style which allows it to possess something of the medieval fortress air despite the ground-level drawing room windows. Hopper designed all the principal interiors in a rich but restrained Norman style, with much fine plasterwork and wood and stone carving. The castle also has some specially designed Norman-style furniture, including a one-ton slate bed made for Queen Victoria when she visited in 1859.

Hugh Napier Douglas-Pennant, 4th Lord Penrhyn, died in 1949, and the castle and estate passed to his niece, Lady Janet Pelham, who, on inheritance, adopted the surname of Douglas-Pennant. In 1951, the castle and 40,000 acres (160 km²) of land were accepted by the treasury in lieu of death duties from Lady Janet. It now belongs to the National Trust and is open to the public. The site received 109,395 visitors in 2017.

Grade I Listed Building

Penrhyn Castle

History

The present house, built in the form of a vast Norman castle, was constructed to the design of Thomas Hopper for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant between 1820 and 1837. It has been very little altered since.

The original house on the site was a medieval manor house of C14 origin, for which a licence to crenellate was given at an unknown date between 1410 and 1431. This house survived until c1782 when it was remodelled in castellated Gothick style, replete with yellow mathematical tiles, by Samuel Wyatt for Richard Pennant. This house, the great hall of which is incorporated in the present drawing room, was remodelled in c1800, but the vast profits from the Penrhyn slate quarries enabled all the rest to be completely swept away by Hopper's vast neo-Norman fantasy, sited and built so that it could be seen not only from the quarries, but most parts of the surrounding estate, thereby emphasizing the local dominance of the Dawkins-Pennant family. The total cost is unknown but it cannot have been less than the £123,000 claimed by Catherine Sinclair in 1839.

Since 1951 the house has belonged to the National Trust, together with over 40,000 acres of the family estates around Ysbyty Ifan and the Ogwen valley.

Exterior

Country house built in the style of a vast Norman castle with other later medieval influences, so huge (its 70 roofs cover an area of over an acre (0.4ha)) that it almost defies meaningful description. The main components of the house, which is built on a north-south axis with the main elevations to east and west, are the 124ft (37.8m) high keep, based on Castle Hedingham (Essex) containing the family quarters on the south, the central range, protected by a 'barbican' terrace on the east, housing the state apartments, and the rectangular-shaped staff/service buildings and stables to the north. The whole is constructed of local rubblestone with internal brick lining, but all elevations are faced in tooled Anglesey limestone ashlar of the finest quality jointing; flat lead roofs concealed by castellated parapets. Close to, the extreme length of the building (it is about 200 yards (182.88m) long) and the fact that the ground slopes away on all sides mean that almost no complete elevation can be seen. That the most frequent views of the exterior are oblique also offered Hopper the opportunity to deploy his towers for picturesque effect, the relationship between the keep and the other towers and turrets frequently obscuring the distances between them. Another significant external feature of the castle is that it actually looks defensible making it secure at least from Pugin's famous slur of 1841 on contemporary "castles" - "Who would hammer against nailed portals, when he could kick his way through the greenhouse?" Certainly, this could never be achieved at Penrhyn and it looks every inch the impregnable fortress both architect and patron intended it to be.

East elevation: to the left is the loosely attached 4-storey keep on battered plinth with 4 tiers of deeply splayed Norman windows, 2 to each face, with chevron decoration and nook-shafts, topped by 4 square corner turrets. The dining room (distinguished by the intersecting tracery above the windows) and breakfast room to the right of the entrance gallery are protected by the long sweep of the machicolated 'barbican' terrace (carriage forecourt), curved in front of the 2 rooms and then running northwards before returning at right-angles to the west to include the gatehouse, which formed the original main entrance to the castle, and ending in a tall rectangular tower with machicolated parapet. To the right of the gatehouse are the recessed buildings of the kitchen court and to the right again the long, largely unbroken outer wall of the stable court, terminated by the square footmen's tower to the left and the rather more exuberant projecting circular dung tower with its spectacularly cantilevered bartizan on the right. From here the wall runs at right-angles to the west incorporating the impressive gatehouse to the stable court.

West elevation: beginning at the left is the hexagonal smithy tower, followed by the long run of the stable court, well provided with windows on this side as the stables lie directly behind. At the end of this the wall turns at right-angles to the west, incorporating the narrow circular-turreted gatehouse to the outer court and terminating in the machicolated circular ice tower. From here the wall runs again at a lower height enclosing the remainder of the outer court. It is, of course, the state apartments which make up the chief architectural display on the central part of this elevation, beginning with a strongly articulated but essentially rectangular tower to the left, while both the drawing room and the library have Norman windows leading directly onto the lawns, the latter terminating in a slender machicolated circular corner tower. To the right is the keep, considerably set back on this side.

Interior

Only those parts of the castle generally accessible to visitors are recorded in this description. Although not described here much of the furniture and many of the paintings (including family portraits) are also original to the house. Similarly, it should be noted that in the interests of brevity and clarity, not all significant architectural features are itemised in the following description.

Entrance gallery: one of the last parts of the castle to be built, this narrow cloister-like passage was added to the main block to heighten the sensation of entering the vast Grand Hall, which is made only partly visible by the deliberate offsetting of the intervening doorways; bronze lamp standards with wolf-heads on stone bases. Grand Hall: entering the columned aisle of this huge space, the visitor stands at a cross-roads between the 3 principal areas of the castle's plan; to the left the passage leads up to the family's private apartments on the 4 floors of the keep, to the right the door at the end leads to the extensive service quarters while ahead lies the sequence of state rooms used for entertaining guests and displayed to the public ever since the castle was built. The hall itself resembles in form, style and scale the transept of a great Norman cathedral, the great clustered columns extending upwards to a "triforium" formed on 2 sides of extraordinary compound arches; stained glass with signs of the zodiac and months of the year as in a book of hours by Thomas Willement (completed 1835). Library: has very much the atmosphere of a gentlemen’s London club with walls, columned arches and ceilings covered in the most lavish ornamentation; superb architectural bookcases and panelled walls are of oak but the arches are plaster grained to match; ornamental bosses and other devices to the rich plaster ceiling refer to the ancestry of the Dawkins and Pennant families, as do the stained glass lunettes above the windows, possibly by David Evans of Shrewsbury; 4 chimneypieces of polished Anglesey "marble", one with a frieze of fantastical carved mummers in the capitals. Drawing room (great hall of the late C18 house and its medieval predecessor): again in a neo-Norman style but the decoration is lighter and the columns more slender, the spirit of the room reflected in the 2000 delicate Maltese gilt crosses to the vaulted ceiling. Ebony room: so called on account of its furniture and "ebonised" chimneypiece and plasterwork, has at its entrance a spiral staircase from the medieval house. Grand Staircase hall: in many ways the greatest architectural achievement at Penrhyn, taking 10 years to complete, the carving in 2 contrasting stones of the highest quality; repeating abstract decorative motifs contrast with the infinitely inventive figurative carving in the newels and capitals; to the top the intricate plaster panels of the domed lantern are formed in exceptionally high relief and display both Norse and Celtic influences. Next to the grand stair is the secondary stair, itself a magnificent structure in grey sandstone with lantern, built immediately next to the grand stair so that family or guests should not meet staff on the same staircase. Reached from the columned aisle of the grand hall are the 2 remaining principal ground-floor rooms, the dining room and the breakfast room, among the last parts of the castle to be completed and clearly intended to be picture galleries as much as dining areas, the stencilled treatment of the walls in the dining room allowing both the provision of an appropriately elaborate "Norman" scheme and a large flat surface for the hanging of paintings; black marble fireplace carved by Richard Westmacott and extremely ornate ceiling with leaf bosses encircled by bands of figurative mouldings derived from the Romanesque church of Kilpeck, Herefordshire. Breakfast room has cambered beam ceiling with oak-grained finish.

Grand hall gallery: at the top of the grand staircase is vaulted and continues around the grand hall below to link with the passage to the keep, which at this level (as on the other floors) contains a suite of rooms comprising a sitting room, dressing room, bedroom and small ante-chamber, the room containing the famous slate bed also with a red Mona marble chimneypiece, one of the most spectacular in the castle. Returning to the grand hall gallery and continuing straight on rather than returning to the grand staircase the Lower India room is reached to the right: this contains an Anglesey limestone chimneypiece painted to match the ground colour of the room's Chinese wallpaper. Coming out of this room, the chapel corridor leads to the chapel gallery (used by the family) and the chapel proper below (used by staff), the latter with encaustic tiles probably reused from the old medieval chapel; stained and painted glass by David Evans (c1833).

The domestic quarters of the castle are reached along the passage from the breakfast room, which turns at right-angles to the right at the foot of the secondary staircase, the most important areas being the butler's pantry, steward's office, servants' hall, housekeeper's room, still room, housekeeper's store and housemaids' tower, while the kitchen (with its cast-iron range flanked by large and hygienic vertical slabs of Penrhyn slate) is housed on the lower ground floor. From this kitchen court, which also includes a coal store, oil vaults, brushing room, lamp room, pastry room, larder, scullery and laundry are reached the outer court with its soup kitchen, brewhouse and 2-storey ice tower and the much larger stables court which, along with the stables themselves containing their extensive slate-partitioned stalls and loose boxes, incorporates the coach house, covered ride, smithy tower, dung tower with gardeners' messroom above and footmen's tower.

Reasons for Listing

Included at Grade I as one of the most important large country houses in Wales; a superb example of the relatively short-lived Norman Revival of the early C19 and generally regarded as the masterpiece of its architect, Thomas Hopper.

First views of the castle.

clock - little did I know that there would be loads of clocks inside!

A collage of the stunning decoration on the walls and the floor of this incredibly beautiful Cathedral.

See what I meant by visual overload ?

www.flickr.com/photos/abbietabbie/4519815893/in/photostream/

Palace, Gorbals at the Theatre Museum. Opened in 1870 in the Gorbals as the Grand National Halls, the auditorium was rebuilt in 1904 to the design of Bertie Crewe. Opened by Thomas Barrasford as a music hall, the interior featured sumptuous plasterwork in the Indian style. Films were introduced during WW1, and it became a full-time cinema in the 1930s. Bingo followed until a fire caused closure. It was demolished in 1972, but some Elephants were rescued and displayed in the next door Citizens Theatre, whilst a complete box was removed and displayed in the Theatre Museum, now transferred to the V&A.

Gorbals, Glasgow, Scotland - Palace Theatre (as seen in the Theatre Museum, Covent Garden), Gorbals Street

February 2005, image reworked 2021

A visit to the National Trust property that is Penrhyn Castle

Penrhyn Castle is a country house in Llandygai, Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, in the form of a Norman castle. It was originally a medieval fortified manor house, founded by Ednyfed Fychan. In 1438, Ioan ap Gruffudd was granted a licence to crenellate and he founded the stone castle and added a tower house. Samuel Wyatt reconstructed the property in the 1780s.

The present building was created between about 1822 and 1837 to designs by Thomas Hopper, who expanded and transformed the building beyond recognition. However a spiral staircase from the original property can still be seen, and a vaulted basement and other masonry were incorporated into the new structure. Hopper's client was George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, who had inherited the Penrhyn estate on the death of his second cousin, Richard Pennant, who had made his fortune from slavery in Jamaica and local slate quarries. The eldest of George's two daughters, Juliana, married Grenadier Guard, Edward Gordon Douglas, who, on inheriting the estate on George's death in 1845, adopted the hyphenated surname of Douglas-Pennant. The cost of the construction of this vast 'castle' is disputed, and very difficult to work out accurately, as much of the timber came from the family's own forestry, and much of the labour was acquired from within their own workforce at the slate quarry. It cost the Pennant family an estimated £150,000. This is the current equivalent to about £49,500,000.

Penrhyn is one of the most admired of the numerous mock castles built in the United Kingdom in the 19th century; Christopher Hussey called it, "the outstanding instance of Norman revival." The castle is a picturesque composition that stretches over 600 feet from a tall donjon containing family rooms, through the main block built around the earlier house, to the service wing and the stables.

It is built in a sombre style which allows it to possess something of the medieval fortress air despite the ground-level drawing room windows. Hopper designed all the principal interiors in a rich but restrained Norman style, with much fine plasterwork and wood and stone carving. The castle also has some specially designed Norman-style furniture, including a one-ton slate bed made for Queen Victoria when she visited in 1859.

Hugh Napier Douglas-Pennant, 4th Lord Penrhyn, died in 1949, and the castle and estate passed to his niece, Lady Janet Pelham, who, on inheritance, adopted the surname of Douglas-Pennant. In 1951, the castle and 40,000 acres (160 km²) of land were accepted by the treasury in lieu of death duties from Lady Janet. It now belongs to the National Trust and is open to the public. The site received 109,395 visitors in 2017.

Grade I Listed Building

Penrhyn Castle

History

The present house, built in the form of a vast Norman castle, was constructed to the design of Thomas Hopper for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant between 1820 and 1837. It has been very little altered since.

The original house on the site was a medieval manor house of C14 origin, for which a licence to crenellate was given at an unknown date between 1410 and 1431. This house survived until c1782 when it was remodelled in castellated Gothick style, replete with yellow mathematical tiles, by Samuel Wyatt for Richard Pennant. This house, the great hall of which is incorporated in the present drawing room, was remodelled in c1800, but the vast profits from the Penrhyn slate quarries enabled all the rest to be completely swept away by Hopper's vast neo-Norman fantasy, sited and built so that it could be seen not only from the quarries, but most parts of the surrounding estate, thereby emphasizing the local dominance of the Dawkins-Pennant family. The total cost is unknown but it cannot have been less than the £123,000 claimed by Catherine Sinclair in 1839.

Since 1951 the house has belonged to the National Trust, together with over 40,000 acres of the family estates around Ysbyty Ifan and the Ogwen valley.

Exterior

Country house built in the style of a vast Norman castle with other later medieval influences, so huge (its 70 roofs cover an area of over an acre (0.4ha)) that it almost defies meaningful description. The main components of the house, which is built on a north-south axis with the main elevations to east and west, are the 124ft (37.8m) high keep, based on Castle Hedingham (Essex) containing the family quarters on the south, the central range, protected by a 'barbican' terrace on the east, housing the state apartments, and the rectangular-shaped staff/service buildings and stables to the north. The whole is constructed of local rubblestone with internal brick lining, but all elevations are faced in tooled Anglesey limestone ashlar of the finest quality jointing; flat lead roofs concealed by castellated parapets. Close to, the extreme length of the building (it is about 200 yards (182.88m) long) and the fact that the ground slopes away on all sides mean that almost no complete elevation can be seen. That the most frequent views of the exterior are oblique also offered Hopper the opportunity to deploy his towers for picturesque effect, the relationship between the keep and the other towers and turrets frequently obscuring the distances between them. Another significant external feature of the castle is that it actually looks defensible making it secure at least from Pugin's famous slur of 1841 on contemporary "castles" - "Who would hammer against nailed portals, when he could kick his way through the greenhouse?" Certainly, this could never be achieved at Penrhyn and it looks every inch the impregnable fortress both architect and patron intended it to be.

East elevation: to the left is the loosely attached 4-storey keep on battered plinth with 4 tiers of deeply splayed Norman windows, 2 to each face, with chevron decoration and nook-shafts, topped by 4 square corner turrets. The dining room (distinguished by the intersecting tracery above the windows) and breakfast room to the right of the entrance gallery are protected by the long sweep of the machicolated 'barbican' terrace (carriage forecourt), curved in front of the 2 rooms and then running northwards before returning at right-angles to the west to include the gatehouse, which formed the original main entrance to the castle, and ending in a tall rectangular tower with machicolated parapet. To the right of the gatehouse are the recessed buildings of the kitchen court and to the right again the long, largely unbroken outer wall of the stable court, terminated by the square footmen's tower to the left and the rather more exuberant projecting circular dung tower with its spectacularly cantilevered bartizan on the right. From here the wall runs at right-angles to the west incorporating the impressive gatehouse to the stable court.

West elevation: beginning at the left is the hexagonal smithy tower, followed by the long run of the stable court, well provided with windows on this side as the stables lie directly behind. At the end of this the wall turns at right-angles to the west, incorporating the narrow circular-turreted gatehouse to the outer court and terminating in the machicolated circular ice tower. From here the wall runs again at a lower height enclosing the remainder of the outer court. It is, of course, the state apartments which make up the chief architectural display on the central part of this elevation, beginning with a strongly articulated but essentially rectangular tower to the left, while both the drawing room and the library have Norman windows leading directly onto the lawns, the latter terminating in a slender machicolated circular corner tower. To the right is the keep, considerably set back on this side.

Interior

Only those parts of the castle generally accessible to visitors are recorded in this description. Although not described here much of the furniture and many of the paintings (including family portraits) are also original to the house. Similarly, it should be noted that in the interests of brevity and clarity, not all significant architectural features are itemised in the following description.

Entrance gallery: one of the last parts of the castle to be built, this narrow cloister-like passage was added to the main block to heighten the sensation of entering the vast Grand Hall, which is made only partly visible by the deliberate offsetting of the intervening doorways; bronze lamp standards with wolf-heads on stone bases. Grand Hall: entering the columned aisle of this huge space, the visitor stands at a cross-roads between the 3 principal areas of the castle's plan; to the left the passage leads up to the family's private apartments on the 4 floors of the keep, to the right the door at the end leads to the extensive service quarters while ahead lies the sequence of state rooms used for entertaining guests and displayed to the public ever since the castle was built. The hall itself resembles in form, style and scale the transept of a great Norman cathedral, the great clustered columns extending upwards to a "triforium" formed on 2 sides of extraordinary compound arches; stained glass with signs of the zodiac and months of the year as in a book of hours by Thomas Willement (completed 1835). Library: has very much the atmosphere of a gentlemen’s London club with walls, columned arches and ceilings covered in the most lavish ornamentation; superb architectural bookcases and panelled walls are of oak but the arches are plaster grained to match; ornamental bosses and other devices to the rich plaster ceiling refer to the ancestry of the Dawkins and Pennant families, as do the stained glass lunettes above the windows, possibly by David Evans of Shrewsbury; 4 chimneypieces of polished Anglesey "marble", one with a frieze of fantastical carved mummers in the capitals. Drawing room (great hall of the late C18 house and its medieval predecessor): again in a neo-Norman style but the decoration is lighter and the columns more slender, the spirit of the room reflected in the 2000 delicate Maltese gilt crosses to the vaulted ceiling. Ebony room: so called on account of its furniture and "ebonised" chimneypiece and plasterwork, has at its entrance a spiral staircase from the medieval house. Grand Staircase hall: in many ways the greatest architectural achievement at Penrhyn, taking 10 years to complete, the carving in 2 contrasting stones of the highest quality; repeating abstract decorative motifs contrast with the infinitely inventive figurative carving in the newels and capitals; to the top the intricate plaster panels of the domed lantern are formed in exceptionally high relief and display both Norse and Celtic influences. Next to the grand stair is the secondary stair, itself a magnificent structure in grey sandstone with lantern, built immediately next to the grand stair so that family or guests should not meet staff on the same staircase. Reached from the columned aisle of the grand hall are the 2 remaining principal ground-floor rooms, the dining room and the breakfast room, among the last parts of the castle to be completed and clearly intended to be picture galleries as much as dining areas, the stencilled treatment of the walls in the dining room allowing both the provision of an appropriately elaborate "Norman" scheme and a large flat surface for the hanging of paintings; black marble fireplace carved by Richard Westmacott and extremely ornate ceiling with leaf bosses encircled by bands of figurative mouldings derived from the Romanesque church of Kilpeck, Herefordshire. Breakfast room has cambered beam ceiling with oak-grained finish.

Grand hall gallery: at the top of the grand staircase is vaulted and continues around the grand hall below to link with the passage to the keep, which at this level (as on the other floors) contains a suite of rooms comprising a sitting room, dressing room, bedroom and small ante-chamber, the room containing the famous slate bed also with a red Mona marble chimneypiece, one of the most spectacular in the castle. Returning to the grand hall gallery and continuing straight on rather than returning to the grand staircase the Lower India room is reached to the right: this contains an Anglesey limestone chimneypiece painted to match the ground colour of the room's Chinese wallpaper. Coming out of this room, the chapel corridor leads to the chapel gallery (used by the family) and the chapel proper below (used by staff), the latter with encaustic tiles probably reused from the old medieval chapel; stained and painted glass by David Evans (c1833).

The domestic quarters of the castle are reached along the passage from the breakfast room, which turns at right-angles to the right at the foot of the secondary staircase, the most important areas being the butler's pantry, steward's office, servants' hall, housekeeper's room, still room, housekeeper's store and housemaids' tower, while the kitchen (with its cast-iron range flanked by large and hygienic vertical slabs of Penrhyn slate) is housed on the lower ground floor. From this kitchen court, which also includes a coal store, oil vaults, brushing room, lamp room, pastry room, larder, scullery and laundry are reached the outer court with its soup kitchen, brewhouse and 2-storey ice tower and the much larger stables court which, along with the stables themselves containing their extensive slate-partitioned stalls and loose boxes, incorporates the coach house, covered ride, smithy tower, dung tower with gardeners' messroom above and footmen's tower.

Reasons for Listing

Included at Grade I as one of the most important large country houses in Wales; a superb example of the relatively short-lived Norman Revival of the early C19 and generally regarded as the masterpiece of its architect, Thomas Hopper.

Railway Museum

Kettering Furnace No 3

Kettering Iron and Coal Company Limited 0.4.0 Saddle Tank Locomotive. Built 1885 by Black hawthorn of Gateshead-on-Tyne, No. 859.

Castletown House staircase and plasterwork

www.castletownhouse.ie/About/

IMG_6373b224-105

Sometimes you talk to other explorers who give you hints how to ge in somewhere. I thought I had it all figured out when we arrived here. Until I saw where we should go in. I clearly should have mentioned that I am almost 2 meters long and 120 kilograms.... Luckily it all worked out!

This castle dates back to the 13th century. It was built on a crossing of two very important trade routes and therefor interesting area for people to settle. It has been owned by various aristocrats during the centuries.

The beautiful plaster on the several ceilings was built in the end of the 17th century already. In one room called the 'Bacchus Room' the ceiling is decorated with angels and wine barrels.

Although the decorations inside are some you don't see very often, the rest of the castle is rather empty. They have been working on renovation, but guess this is at a standstill for several years already....

Please visit www.preciousdecay.com for more pictures and follow me on Facebook on www.facebook.com/Preciousdecay

If you like my work and you would like a piece of me on your wall, please contact me for various materials and prices!

Levens Hall is a magnificent Elizabethan mansion that was built around 1350 by the Redman family as a pele (or peel) tower and was later expanded and rebuilt towards the end of the 16th Century. It is the family home of the Bagots, and contains a collection of Jacobean furniture, fine paintings, the earliest English patchwork and many other beautiful objects. (No photos from inside the house as photography is not allowed)

The world-famous award winning gardens were laid out in 1694. The topiary beech hedges and colourful seasonal beds create a stunning visual impact. The topiary garden has huge abstract shapes, pyramids and columns reminiscent of monstrous chess men.

These photographs remind me of my many days visiting stately homes during the summer months, hope you enjoy.

During the Jacobean era, mythical beasts were frequently incorporated into decorative interior architecture, echoing the fascination with folklore and symbolism of the time. Crewe Hall in Cheshire, UK, exemplifies this trend with its portrayal of mythical creatures in various forms such as carved woodwork, plasterwork, and painted murals. These fantastical beasts, ranging from dragons and griffins to unicorns and sphinxes, adorned ceilings, walls, and furnishings, adding an air of mystery and enchantment to the space. Beyond mere decoration, these mythical beings served as symbols of power, protection, and the supernatural, reflecting the cultural and artistic sensibilities of the period.

Looking up the from the basement, the grand staircase looks like a geometric exercise, or the interior of a somewhat formal mollusc's shell. Very Gaudí.

The flattened side of each rotation is a landing, intended by Chambers to be a '"station of repose" from which spectators "might find entertainment, to compensate for the labour past, and be encouraged to proceed"'.

The vast Somerset House was designed by Sir William Chambers and built 1776-1801; this, the North Wing or Strand Building, was completed by 1780 and occupied, for its first 57 years, by Royal Academy of Arts. After accommodating the UK Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths from 1900 until 1970 then standing empty until 1989, the space now houses the University of London's Courtauld Institute of Art and its excellent Courtauld Gallery. Visit soon!

And don't forget the also-excellent café here in the basement.

Better On Black?

This beautiful and impressive jettied, half timber building is sadly currently not in use. It has been a restaurant and a shop but was originally built as dwellings. It's mid C16th and has some plasterwork on the front.

It was extensively restored in the C20th.

Sudbury Hall is one the country's finest Restoration mansions and has Grade I listed building status.

The Vernon family came to Sudbury as a result of the 16th-century marriage of Sir John Vernon to Ellen Montgomery the Sudbury heiress. The house was built between 1660 and 1680 by George Vernon, grandfather of George Venables-Vernon the 1st Baron Vernon and is notable for its superb Great Staircase, fine Long Gallery, and portraits by John Michael Wright, and of Charles II's mistresses. Inside there is a mixture of architectural styles with carvings by Grinling Gibbons and Edward Pearce, murals by Louis Laguerre and elaborate plasterwork by Samuel Mansfield, James Pettifer and Robert Bradbury. The carvings above the main entrance porch were sculpted by William Wilson. There are formal gardens with a tree-fringed lake.

The four churches of STANTA have had no congregations since 1943, and in the intervening years, have just sat there letting time and the occasional bored squaddie do their worst.

Over the past ten years, work has been undertaken to ensure the churches are dried out, with long an elaborate guttering and down pipes to get rain water away from the foundations of the the buildings.

It was almost too late for All Saints, as the plasterwork added to the church by a Victorian Vicar on the Chancel arch began to sag and break.

The Norfolk Churches Trust paid to have a scaffold frame put in the nave to support the plasterwork, and it has been like that for the best part of the decade.

Most of the nave is fenced off for safety reasons, meaning we all were squeezed into a small part of the west end as we were told the history of the building and plans for the future.

All Saints is the only round-towered church in the STANTA area. Te nave and ailses seem wider than the nave and chancel is long. A striking combination.

-------------------------------------------

Stanford is at the very heart of the training area, and so far from civilisation that the silence in the air is stunning. I had not heard such a silence in England before. The sheep were fearless, inquisitive as we let ourselves into the churchyard; their lambs hid behind, chins tilted upwards as they watched. As at Tottington, the roofs are blast-proof panels rather than tiles, but this is so well done that you wouldn't know unless you looked carefully.

This is the only round-towered church in the training area, although there are several more just outside, including Threxton and Merton. Here, the Norman round part is surmounted by an octagonal belfry stage, as at nearby Breckles. It probably dates from the 15th century.

As I wandered about the graveyard, tiny spring rabbits bolted from beneath my feet. At first, this was startling, and then comical; they had never seen a human before, and so they waited until I was right on top of them before running for the scrub. I became wary lest I step on one, but I don't think they were ever in any real danger.

As at West Tofts, this church underwent a considerable 19th century restoration, but the difference here is that it seems to have been carried out by the Rector. You might even say that it was an amateur restoration. His is the chancel with its pastel murals, his the great rood, his even the painted glass in the north aisle window, which Pevsner thought worthy of mention, but which is mostly now lost. The arcades rest on elegant, fluted columns, and something very odd has happened at the east end of the south aisle, where a fomer archway appears to have been truncated by the eastern wall. Or was it begun and never finished? Curious.

Again, the roof tiles are stored here, but the benches are gone, the bells have gone. And yet this still feels as if it must have been a very warm and welcoming building, busy in the years of its restoration, and still a touchstone for generations.

Outside, Quantrills and Clarks, Rudds and Gathercoles. One Quantrill memorial has a very curious inset relief which must have been the height of fashion in the early 19th century. A badly eroded Gathercole memorial is profoundly evangelical: Weep not for us our children dear, because we die and leave you here. But look to Christ the crucified, that you may feel his blood applied.

Another for a Quantrill wife hopes that God shall wipe away all the tears from their eyes. All about, the silence continues.

Simon Knott, May 2004

www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/stanford/stanford.htm

Granada Theatre, Walthamstow. Screen 2 in the former rear stalls area. This will become (re-united with screen 3 on the other side of the wall) the Zigurat Bar with all plasterwork restored. This screen was used as a pop-up cinema and live entertainment space from 2016, the only part of the auditorium in use since 2004.

Opened on the 15 September 1930, designed by Cecil Masey with interiors by Theodore Komisarjevsky, and built on the enlarged site of the earlier Victoria Cinema. The Granada had 2,697 seats in stalls and balcony, with a stongly Moorish influence to the spectacular foyers and auditorium. It was tripled in 1974, with two mini cinemas under the balcony - the front stalls were removed and the stage lost live usage. The theatre was grade 2 listed in 1987 (upped to Grade 2* in 2000). Later known as ABC, MGM and EMD Cinemas, the venue closed in 2003 and was sold to a church, who were refused planning consent for change of use on several occasions. It was sold again, in a derelict state, in 2014 and parts of the building were reopened as a bar and live entertainment venue known as Mirth. In 2019 it was bought by Waltham Forest Borough Council and, in conjunction with the Soho Theatre, they have begun a restoration process. This will see the main auditorium restored as a 1,000 theatre, the rear stalls will, with original plasterwork restored, become a unique bar, the rear of the circle, again with original features, will become a community room, the circle foyer will be converted to a stylish restaurant, and the foyers restored (with full disabled access adaptations) to original splendour. The architects for the scheme are Pilbrow & Partners, and the main contractor is Wilmott Dixon.

London Borough of Waltham Forest, Walthamstow, London, UK - former Granada Cinema, Hoe Street

August 2020

Holiday to Marrakesh, Morocco, January 2010

Sutton Scarsdale Hall was built in the Baroque style on the site of an existing house between 1724 and 1729 for the 4th Earl of Scarsdale. The architect for the new hall was Francis Smith of Warwick, who skillfully incorporated the earlier building of about 1469 within his design.

Notable craftsmen were employed here. Edward Poynton of Nottingham carved the exterior stonework and the Italian master craftsmen Arturi and Vasalli carried out the fine stucco (plasterwork) detailing in the principal rooms, remnants of which can still be seen.

Grinling Gibbons is believed to have contributed some of the interior wood carvings. The cost of this splendid building left the Scarsdale heirs with depleted funds and they were eventually forced to sell the hall in the 19th century.

John Arkwright, a descendant of the industrialist Richard Arkwright, bought the hall, but in 1919 the family sold it to a company of asset strippers.

Many of its finely decorated rooms were sold off as architectural salvage and the house was reduced to a shell. Some rooms still exist: three interiors are displayed at the Museum of Art in Philadelphia.

A pine-panelled room is at the Huntington Library, California. It was offered to the Huntington by a Hollywood film producer who had used it as a set for a film, Kitty, in 1934. He had bought it from William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate and well-known collector.

The ruins of the hall were saved from demolition by the writer Sir Osbert Sitwell, who bought it in 1946 after he had heard of the impending sale to dismantle the stonework. In 1970 descendants of the Sitwells persuaded the Department of the Environment to take the building into guardianship and preserve it for the nation.

A recent programme of works has been undertaken by English Heritage to preserve and protect the fragments of the original stucco interior.

The ruins of Sutton Scarsdale Hall, with tantalising remnants of a once majestic interior, offer the visitor an opportunity to view the ‘skeleton’ of the building – impossible in more complete country houses. The approach to the hall today is along a narrow driveway. Its spectacular location on a hillside is immediately apparent.

The roofless hall is built of mellow sandstone and stands to its original parapet height. Some areas of stonework have been lost at this level, giving an almost castellated appearance from a distance.

The hall was built with two impressive façades. The eastern front is the grandest, with exuberant Baroque detail typified by attached giant Corinthian columns topped with a central pediment. The central bays housed the formal drawing room. Elements of the 15th century structure such as blocked window openings in earlier brickwork can be seen in this room and in the one behind it.

The slightly plainer north elevation housed the entrance hall, which contains remnants of stucco work. The remains of the paired Ionic pilasters with wreathed swags are clearly visible, as are the remains of the chimney pieces incorporating carved figures.

www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/sutton-scarsdale...

Cathedral Square is located in the historic heart of Waterford City in an area called the Viking Triangle which has been established as the tourist heart of the city.

The buildings in and around Cathedral Square, Waterford were abandoned or unoccupied for many years however they are now part of an exciting urban renewal project which will see them converted into modern living spaces and retail units.

The cathedral is a monumental neo-Classical building of national importance, built to designs prepared by John Roberts (1712 - 1796) - Roberts holds the distinction of having built both the Church of Ireland and Catholic Cathedrals in Waterford City. The cathedral incorporates fragments of an earlier church, 1210, to the interior (including the remains of a Norman clustered pillar), attesting to a long-standing ecclesiastical presence on the site, dating to as early as 1096.

The construction of the entrance (west) front attests to high quality local stone masonry, particularly to the carved detailing including the portico, which retains a crisp intricacy. The cathedral is particularly noteworthy for the quality of the interior, which has been well preserved, and which incorporates plasterwork of artistic importance, together with vaulted ceilings of technical interest.

Set in its own square on a slightly elevated site, the cathedral is an important anchor building at the east end of Waterford City, and forms an attractive landmark in the locality.

The Saloon, Clandon Park, West Clandon, Surrey

Los Angeles, CA - The Los Angeles Theatre

The Los Angeles Theatre opened on January 31, 1931, with the world premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s silent screen classic "City Lights." Celebrities on hand for the opening included Chaplin and Albert Einstein. It was the fourth and final theatre to bear the city’s name, and the last motion picture palace constructed in Los Angeles.

Designed by architects S. Charles Lee with S. Tilden Norton, the opulent interior is said to have been modeled after the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. At a cost of nearly $2 million in depression era dollars and employing fast-track construction methods that had it completed within six months, on a per seat basis it is possibly still the most expensive theatre ever constructed in Los Angeles. The theater has a coffered ceiling, lunette murals by the Anthony Heisenberg Studios, a House Curtain that ranked among the most costly in the nation (a B.F. Shearer panel depicting an 18th century garden scene with three dimensional figures installed at a cost of $50,000 in 1931), and a seat indicator beneath the mezzanine stairs that alerted ushers whenever a patron stood up to leave his seat. The half-block long lobby employs mirrors on either side to disguise its narrow fifty foot frontage. There is a basement ballroom (originally equipped with a periscope viewing screen) for patrons awaiting the next performance, and adjacent to the ballroom are a children’s playroom, ornate powder room, coffee shop and women’s lavatory with full marble rooms instead of stalls.

Note: I had to shoot this off center to avoid the chandeliers and ended up mirroring the image to restore the original symmetry, so this for those looking for architectural accuracy, you won't see it here.

Mainly 3-storey and basement harled with parts 4-storey and angle turrets. Building history: begun 1269, Cumming's tower perhaps partly of that date. S end rebuilt 1747-58 with notable interiors with rich plasterwork. SE wing damaged by fire in 1814, repaired and clock tower built by Archibald Elliot. Remodelled Baronial in 1869-71 by David Bryce, design of west front approximately based on original with Cumming's Tower widened by corbelling, entrance hall added on east side, that side being largely redesigned anew. Ballroom 1876-7 by Bryce, interior panelled 1899; alterations 1920-1 by Sir Robert Lorimer.

Many of the interiors survived one or more of these remodellings leaving a wealth of period interiors from the 18th and 19th centuries. The most magnifIcent of these are the classical interiors from the 1747 to 1758 remodelling. These were designed and executed by craftsmen of the highest order. The plasterwork in the principal apartments is the work of Thomas Clayton of Edinburgh. The woodwork is by Abraham Swan and the stone chimney-pieces are the work of Thomas Carter of London. Much of the 18th century and Regency furniture is of English manufacture.

Cathedral Square is located in the historic heart of Waterford City in an area called the Viking Triangle which has been established as the tourist heart of the city.

The buildings in and around Cathedral Square, Waterford were abandoned or unoccupied for many years however they are now part of an exciting urban renewal project which will see them converted into modern living spaces and retail units.

The cathedral is a monumental neo-Classical building of national importance, built to designs prepared by John Roberts (1712 - 1796) - Roberts holds the distinction of having built both the Church of Ireland and Catholic Cathedrals in Waterford City. The cathedral incorporates fragments of an earlier church, 1210, to the interior (including the remains of a Norman clustered pillar), attesting to a long-standing ecclesiastical presence on the site, dating to as early as 1096.

The construction of the entrance (west) front attests to high quality local stone masonry, particularly to the carved detailing including the portico, which retains a crisp intricacy. The cathedral is particularly noteworthy for the quality of the interior, which has been well preserved, and which incorporates plasterwork of artistic importance, together with vaulted ceilings of technical interest.

Set in its own square on a slightly elevated site, the cathedral is an important anchor building at the east end of Waterford City, and forms an attractive landmark in the locality.

Belton House in the Fog.

One of the finest 17th century country houses in Britain, Belton House epitomises the confidence and optimism of Restoration England. Elaborate plasterwork, intricate wood-carvings and glittering wall mirrors jostle with the stunning collection of paintings in the state rooms. Fine furniture, tapestries and silverware are also on show.

In the 19th century Belton enjoyed a second golden age under the charismatic 3rd Earl Brownlow, who had both house and garden restored to their Charles II splendour. Explore magnificent rooms displayed in 17th century, Regency, Victorian and 1930s style for an unforgettable experience of the past.

Rex Cinema, Berkhamsted. The gorgeous plasterwork, concealed lighting and spaciousness have all been restored - it had been sub-divided to form a bingo hall in the stalls and two mini-cinemas in the balcony. Opened in May 1938, the Rex was designed by David Evelyn Nye for the Shipman & King circuit. It seated 1,100 with more seats in the circle than the stalls due to the location of the café on the ground floor. The circle was twinned - badly - in 1976, and the stalls became a bingo hall. It was closed in 1988 and also listed grade 2 the same year. It was left in a vandalised and derelict state, with calls for its demolition. Almost miraculously, it was restored and reopened in 2004, with enormous success - the majority of performances are sold-out. The large foyer is separated as a restaurant, and the former car park used for flats, but the glorious auditorium renovated as a single screen is once more, now seating 350 in luxurious comfort. The day before these images were taken was a celebratory evening marking the 21st anniversary of the reopening.

therexberkhamsted.com/

An album of images of the cinema across the years can be seen here:-

flic.kr/s/aHsj1wWW9w

Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England - Rex (Studio) Cinema, High Street

December 2025

THIS ELIZABETHAN HALL AND STANDS ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER CALDER IN PADIHAM IN THE HEART OF INDUSTRIAL LANCASHIRE. THE HALL WAS BUILT BETWEEN 1600 AND 1605 GAWTHORPE HALL WAS THE FAMILY HOME OF THE SHUTTLEWORTH FAMILY FOR OVER 300 YEARS. INSIDE THE HOUSE YOU WILL FIND PERIOD ROOMS ON DISPLAY FROM THE 1850 REMODELLING BY RENOWNED ARCHITECT SIR CHARLES BARRY AND PUGIN AS WELL AS ORIGINAL PLASTERWORK CEILINGS, PANELLING AND THE IMPRESSIVE LONG GALLERY. ALSO ON DISPLAY ARE OVER 200 PIECES FROM THE NATIONALLY IMPORTANT GAWTHORPE TEXTILE COLLECTION.

THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY HAS LOANED OVER 20 PAINTINGS TO THE HALL ALL OF WHICH ILLUSTRATE ITS FASCINATING CONNECTIONS AND HISTORY, PARTICULARLY WITH THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR. GAWTHORPE HALL IS AN ARTISTIC AND HISTORIC TREASURE TROVE IN THE MIDDLE OF INDUSTRIAL LANCASHIRE.

GAWTHORPE HALL IS CLOSED COMPLETELY FOR THE REST OF 2015. THIS IS DUE TO MAJOR BUILDING CONSERVATION WORK TO THE HALL, AND IS EXPECTED BE OPEN FULLY FOR 2016.

Cathedral Square is located in the historic heart of Waterford City in an area called the Viking Triangle which has been established as the tourist heart of the city.

The buildings in and around Cathedral Square, Waterford were abandoned or unoccupied for many years however they are now part of an exciting urban renewal project which will see them converted into modern living spaces and retail units.

The cathedral is a monumental neo-Classical building of national importance, built to designs prepared by John Roberts (1712 - 1796) - Roberts holds the distinction of having built both the Church of Ireland and Catholic Cathedrals in Waterford City. The cathedral incorporates fragments of an earlier church, 1210, to the interior (including the remains of a Norman clustered pillar), attesting to a long-standing ecclesiastical presence on the site, dating to as early as 1096.

The construction of the entrance (west) front attests to high quality local stone masonry, particularly to the carved detailing including the portico, which retains a crisp intricacy. The cathedral is particularly noteworthy for the quality of the interior, which has been well preserved, and which incorporates plasterwork of artistic importance, together with vaulted ceilings of technical interest.

Set in its own square on a slightly elevated site, the cathedral is an important anchor building at the east end of Waterford City, and forms an attractive landmark in the locality.