CARLTON TOWERS

HX Suggested Reasons to Visit

Explore opulent Victorian State Rooms, tour the vineyard, sip estate-grown wine, and enjoy Afternoon Tea in the Stables Tearoom. Stay overnight in elegant en-suite rooms and indulge in exclusive wine and dine evenings, farm-to-fork tours, and chef-prepared Sunday lunches.

About

Carlton Towers has passed down entirely by inhertiance since the Norman Conquest, through the Bruces, Bellews and Stapletons, from whom the current owner, Lord Gerald Fitzalan-Howard is descended. It is perhaps the largest, most spectacular and most complete of inhabited Victorian Gothic country houses.

The overwhelming Victorian appearance is, however, only skin deep, and beneath the stunning array of battlements, turrets, towers, coats of arms and gargoyles remains the fabric of the original 1614 house and the stables and chapel added by Thomas Stapleton in 1777. The house was first Gothicised in in the 1840s by the 8th Lord Beaumont, to celebrate the successful resureection of the dormant barony of Beaumont in his favour. He was heir through the marriage of his ancestor Sir Bryan Stapleton to Joan Lovel, neice of the 7th Baron Beaumont who had hied without direct issue in 1507. The Beaumonts were descended from the princely house of Brienne and claimed kinship with the last Christian King of Jerusalem, as well as the Royal House of France.

This illustrious but complicated genealogy furnished material for the heraldic decoration which was worked out by General John de Havilland, York Herald of Arms, and is remarkably extensive even by Victorian antiquarian standards.

The great Victorian state rooms, Armoury, Venetian Drawing Room, Card Room and Picture Gallery, open up to form an enfilade of nearly 200 feet, which would have been twice as long if Lord Beaumont's money hadn't run out. These rooms with their original dark rich colour-schemes contain interesting furniture as well as a collection of paintings by obscure Italian Masters typical of English Catholic houses. 

The current custodians, Lord Gerald Fitzalan-Howard and his wife Emma, moved into a fairly dilapidated Carlton in 1990 with their young family, and set about  tidying it all up, installing en suite bathrooms, and making the house a home again, as well as a popular wedding and events venue. 

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