Sudeley Castle: A Royal Sanctuary Through the Ages

Overview

With origins in the 11th century, Sudeley Castle has seen extensive transformations from its early days as a manor to its renovation in the 19th century by the Dent family, serving as a royal residence, a Civil War base, and finally as the burial site of Catherine Parr, now managed by Lady Ashcombe and open to the public.

History

The origins of Sudeley Castle date back to at least the 11th century, when it was formed of a manor house set in a deer park, given as a gift from the Saxon king Æthelred the Unready to his daughter Goda on her wedding day in 1024. Miraculously, the family held on to Sudeley after the Norman Conquest, where they stayed put for the next 400 years. In 1443, Lord High Treasurer of England Ralph Boteler began work on a new castle at Sudeley, building a house with a double courtyard – an outer layer for his staff, and the inner court for his family. When Boteler was compelled to sell Sudeley in 1469, the house passed to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III, who built the large banqueting house at the castle, a fashionable ground floor entertaining space. After Richard III’s death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, Sudeley passed to Henry VII. His son Henry VIII stayed at Sudeley in 1535 with his second wife Anne Boleyn, and after his death in 1547 his sixth wife Catherine Parr married the courtier Thomas Seymour, with whom she moved to Sudeley with her retinue. Seymour had done it up especially for her, but his wife died there in 1548, and was buried in the grounds. The house soon passed into the hands of the Brydges family, who thrice hosted Elizabeth I, remodelling the castle in the 1560s and 1570s, and creating the functional building lived in by the custodians today. In 1592, the Brydges threw a magnificent three-day party for the queen, landscaping the grounds in preparation, and almost bankrupting themselves in the process. During the Civil War, Charles I used Sudeley as a base in Gloucestershire; at the end of the war, the house was dismantled and left for dead, the family unable to repair it. Sudeley spent the next 200 years neglected and ruined until 1837, when glove makers John and William Dent bought the house and restored it, leaving part of it in picturesque ruins, and filling it with art and antiques. The Dent family continued to look after Sudeley right up until the Second World War, during which the house was used as storage by the Tate, and a prisoner of war camp was located in the grounds. The house’s current custodian Elizabeth, Lady Ashcombe, came to Sudeley in 1962 after her marriage to Mark Dent-Brocklehurst. In 1970, the Dent-Brocklehursts opened Sudeley to the public, but two years later Mark died, leaving his wife to manage Sudeley alone. She remarried to Harry Cubitt, 4th Baron Ashcombe in 1979, and together they ran the house until his death in 2013.

Don’t go home without seeing

The gardens, especially the Queens’ Garden, which is home to more than 80 rose varieties

Drop by…

The Lion Inn, a 15th century coaching in, just a few minutes from Sudeley, for food, drink, and rooms

Need another local heritage fix?

Check out Stanway House, four miles away, best known for its 300-foot fountain

Our favourite line

‘Few residences can boast