Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire

 Many country houses can boast stunning architecture and dramatic settings, but few can rival the spectacle of rose-coloured terraces, walls and towers, rising from a green woodland above the vale of Belvoir, which greets the visitor to the seat of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland. Do not be fooled by its pristine Regency appearance, there has been a castle on this site since Norman times. It passed by inheritance, in the sixteenth century, into the hands of the Manners family who remain in residence to this day.

Prior to the High Victorian period, Gothic Revival style was used in a more light-hearted manner, and Belvoir’s well-lit rooms, sweeping staircases and high ceilings are full of Georgian charm. This is one of the grandest houses in the land, brimming with the best of fine and decorative art, yet with the continued presence of its owners, the atmosphere is one of warmth and comfort, escaping that cold, museum-like quality some houses of this calibre can suffer.

The building is a complex one with many layers. The Norman castle was rebuilt as a Tudor mansion from 1528 to 1543, using wealth and masonry from the dissolution of the monasteries. It may be from this phase that the castle gets its skewed quadrangular footprint. Architect John Webb was employed by the eighth Earl and Countess of Rutland to remodel the house in a plain, astylar classical mode, from 1654 to 1668. A model of the house as it appeared at this stage survives at Belvoir, showing a house with a similar plan to the present structure, but without any of the drama of the skyline.

The west front, seen from the Mausoleum. The chapel is in the centre, with the three lancet windows. 

So, the castle today is not a product of the nineteenth century alone. Its plan and arrangement, with the principal rooms on the second floor, is much older than the most recent, Regency coating of architectural flourishes. Had the building been conceived from scratch in c.1800, we could have expected to see a house much more akin to James Wyatt’s Ashridge, Hertfordshire, with principal rooms on the ground floor. It Is also notable that Belvoir’s servants’ quarters are situated beneath the main rooms and in the courtyard, as opposed to the nineteenth-century practice of placing them in a separate wing.

James Wyatt did bring the spirit of the age to Belvoir, placing a top-lit picture gallery at the heart of the second-floor plan, and giving the long gallery a giant bow of five full-length windows. However, Elizabeth, the fifth Duchess of Rutland, should also be credited with the present form of the castle. Having grown up among building work at Castle Howard, she had a gift for architecture, and shortly following her marriage to the Duke, at the age of eighteen in 1799, she was drawing plans for a new castle at Belvoir.

Wyatt was employed from 1801 until his death in 1813 and thereafter it was the Duke’s chaplain Sir John Thoroton, who was relied upon for designs and overseeing the work. He is responsible for the present entrance hall, staircases and rib-vaulted Ballroom, and many details were derived from studying Lincoln Cathedral. There is also an interplay of influences between Belvoir and Windsor Castle. James Wyatt had worked at Windsor for George III and, over the New Year 1814, the Prince Regent visited Belvoir. The prince was obviously taken with the round tower, dubbing it the ‘Regent’s Tower’. He would go on to spend more than a million pounds remodelling Windsor in the 1820s, in much the same spirit as Belvoir, heightening the circular keep by thirty feet to make a more dramatic skyline.

Wyatt's round 'Regent's Tower' with the gallery inside, seen from the garden.

Much of Wyatt’s work at Belvoir had to be replaced by Thoroton because of a major fire in 1816. The Regent’s gallery and tower survived (so the story goes - because the door was bricked up) while the main rooms on the north and east sides were destroyed, along with paintings by Rubens, Titian and Van Dyck. The reinstatement works following the fire took until c.1830 to complete, sadly five years after the Duchess’s death aged only 45. This further complicates the layers of history in the building.

The fine Empire style of the Regent’s Gallery can be attributed to James Wyatt, but the rest of the interiors are recreations by the hands of Thoroton and other members of the Wyatt family. I have no photos of the interior, but when you visit, be sure to pay close attention to the procession of spaces from the front door to the state rooms. A porte cochère in the guise of a barbican leads into a narrow guard chamber, the entrance hall beyond has a grand dividing staircase with flights to left and right to the flanking wings. A further staircase to the east leads up to the Grand Corridor, or Ballroom, and another to the west up to the Earl’s landing. All of these circulation spaces, rib-vaulted in Gothic Revival style, vary in proportion and draw the eye to views through stairs, arcades and connecting rooms - a complex articulation of space typical of Regency architecture at its best. The medievalism of the staircases is consistent with the castle’s outward appearance and leaves you dazzled by the contrast as you enter the sumptuous, gilded environment of the state rooms.

Belvoir is celebrated (and occasionally censured by critics) for being the epitome, the prime example, of the eclecticism and frivolous medievalism of the late Georgian age. Its oriel windows would not keep out invaders, its Picture Gallery and State Dining Room look as though they have come from an Italian Palazzo, while the extraordinary Elizabeth Saloon recalls the French Ancien Régime. However, it is the longer history of the castle which gives it some of its most charming features. For example, at the east end of the Ballroom is a small window in the spandrel of two arches, lit from an internal light well. The arches lead into a small vestibule with walls and doors at odd angles. Had the house been built from scratch to a single design by Wyatt, such a space would not exist, but Belvoir is full of these little anomalies, where the regency interiors are reconciled within archaic walls. There is no need for genuine medieval gloom, it is these features, along with the enduring presence of the Manners family, which give this cheerful, splendid house an atmosphere of ancient permanence.

The north entrance front with porte cochère

The hillside below the house is full of intriguing windows and doors

The fifth Duchess of Rutland's neo-Norman Mausoleum

The east front seen from the public road. The Elizabeth Saloon is within the central tower.

Books: The information in this post was taken from Belvoir Castle: 1000 years of Family, Art and Architecture by the Duchess of Rutland and Jane Pruden, and James Wyatt: Architect to George III by John Martin Robinson.

All photos by the author, 2017.