Qualla: Wardour Castle

Wardour Castle: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Burchell, CC BY-SA 3.0. There is only one hexagonal castle in Britain, and it sits in a quiet Wiltshire valley fifteen miles west of Salisbury. Six sides, six towers, one courtyard at the centre, a design borrowed from France in the 1390s when six-sided castles were briefly fashionable on the Continent. Old Wardour was never copied. Two and a half centuries after it was built, royalist troops blew most of one wall apart during the Civil War, and it has stood like that ever since, a hexagon missing a corner.

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Image: Simon Burchell | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wardour Castle: Built to a French pattern

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodw, Public domain. In 1392 or 1393 King Richard II granted John, the fifth Baron Lovell, permission to build a castle on land the Lovells had picked up after Sir Lawrence de St Martin died in 1385. The master mason was William Wynford, one of the great architects of the Perpendicular Gothic, and th...

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Image: Rodw | Public domain

Wardour Castle: The Arundells, lost and recovered

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodw, Public domain. The Lovells backed the wrong side in the Wars of the Roses. The castle was confiscated in 1461, passed through several owners, and was finally bought in 1544 by Sir Thomas Arundell of Lanherne, a staunch Roman Catholic who served Henry VIII's queen Catherine Howard. In 1552 he wa...

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Image: Rodw | Public domain

Wardour Castle: Blown apart

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Nicholls, CC BY-SA 2.0. By 1643 Wardour was held by Lady Blanche Arundell, in her sixties, while her husband was away fighting for the king. Parliamentarian troops besieged the castle. She held it for six days with a household of about twenty-five before surrendering. The castle changed hands twice more...

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Image: Bill Nicholls | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wardour Castle: Films, album covers, a Georgian grotto

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Trish Steel, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1792 Josiah Lane of Tisbury built a grotto on the grounds using stones taken from the castle ruins, set among three standing stones removed from a vanished Tisbury stone circle. The grotto and the surrounding parkland make a setting that filmmakers cannot resist. Kevin Costner...

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Image: Trish Steel | CC BY-SA 2.0