June 21, 2026 to June 22, 2026
Artist in Residence: Dominic McHenry at Eastnor Castle
This summer, Eastnor Castle opens its doors to artist Dominic McHenry, who will spend the month living and working within the castle walls.
McHenry's work is concerned with geometric forms and repeating patterns. Alongside being a sculptor, McHenry has been developing a series of paintings using classical techniques, housed in hand-made frames that extend his geometric language - totems in their own right.
Eastnor is, in many ways, a natural counterpoint to McHenry's precise, ordered vision. Its layered stonework, vaulted ceilings and centuries of accumulated texture offer a richly imperfect backdrop - one that throws the clarity of his forms into sharp relief. Here, geometry meets history. Pattern meets patina. The dialogue between the work and its setting is the exhibition.
On 21st & 22nd June, we invite small groups to experience this first-hand. Guided tours of the castle will move through rooms where McHenry's sculptures and paintings have been placed in conversation with the architecture - an intimate encounter with art and place, inseparable from one another.
Set times will be released when tickets are released. Places are limited - details to follow.
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MORE ABOUT THIS LOCATION
EASTNOR CASTLE
Eastnor Castle
Situated at the foot of the Malvern Hills, Eastnor castle is surrounded by a beautiful deer park, arboretum, and lake – the perfect setting for a day of discovery.
When the 1st Earl Somers inherited the manor of Castleditch in 1806, his family had owned it for two hundred years. But he found his ancestral seat unworthy and commissioned Robert Smirke - otherwise known for his work on the British Museum - to build the castle, on a commanding position up the hill. The idea was to build a castle that gave the impression of a medieval fortress guarding the Welsh borders, an assertion of power by Lord Somers in the wake of the French Revolution. In the first 18 months of the build, 4,000 tons of stone, 16,000 tons of mortar, and 600 tons of wood were used for Eastnor.
In 1849, another John Somers Cocks, 2nd Earl Somers, commissioned Augustus Pugin, the well-known designer of the Palace of Westminster interiors, to decorate the drawing room at Eastnor in the Gothic Revival style. His son Charles Somers Cockes, 3rd Earl Somers went a step further, doing more decorative work at Eastnor in the 1860s and 1870s, the result being a house that represents three styles of 19th century domestic interior taste.
When Arthur Somers Cocks, 6th Baron Somers inherited the estate in 1920, much had been sold, and the collection split up among family members. Appointed Governor of Victoria in 1926, he moved to Australia with his family. Five years later, on his return home, he set about redecorating some of the rooms and installing rudimentary central heating. Eastnor was left empty during the Second World War and available for requisition, but the government never took the family up on it, and after the war his wife Daisy returned to the castle where she lived in the servants’ wing in reduced circumstances following payment of the enormous death duties that her husband’s death in 1944 incurred.
The castle began to come back to life when in 1949 the Hon. Elizabeth Somers Cocks and her husband Benjamin Hervey-Bathurst, parents of the incumbent custodian James, took over Eastnor. Restoring and renovating the house, they transformed it back into a comfortable family home, which James Hervey-Bathurst took on in 1988.
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