Sherborne Castle. Sherborne Castle is a 16th-century Tudor mansion southeast of Sherborne in Dorset, England, within the parish of Castleton.
It stands in a 1,200-acre park which formed a small part of the 15,000-acre Digby estate. Sherborne Old Castle is the ruin of a 12th-century castle in the grounds of the mansion.
The castle was built as the fortified palace of Roger de Caen, Bishop of Salisbury and Chancellor of England, and still belonged to the church in the late 16th century. After passing through Sherborne on the way to Plymouth, Sir Walter Raleigh fell in love with the castle, and Queen Elizabeth relinquished the estate, leasing it to Raleigh in 1592, Rather than refurbish the old castle, Raleigh decided to construct a new lodging for temporary visits, in the compact form for secondary habitations of the nobility and gentry, often architecturally sophisticated, that was known as a lodge.
The new house, Sherborne Lodge, was a four-storey, rectangular building completed in 1594. The antiquary John Aubrey remembered it as a delicate Lodge in the park, of Brick, not big, but very convenient for its bignes, a place to retire from the Court in summer time, and to contemplate, etc.
It had four polygonal corner turrets with angled masonry as if they were to serve for military defence, which Nicholas Cooper suggests may be an obeisance to the old building. Its most progressive feature for its
It stands in a 1,200-acre park which formed a small part of the 15,000-acre Digby estate. Sherborne Old Castle is the ruin of a 12th-century castle in the grounds of the mansion.
The castle was built as the fortified palace of Roger de Caen, Bishop of Salisbury and Chancellor of England, and still belonged to the church in the late 16th century. After passing through Sherborne on the way to Plymouth, Sir Walter Raleigh fell in love with the castle, and Queen Elizabeth relinquished the estate, leasing it to Raleigh in 1592, Rather than refurbish the old castle, Raleigh decided to construct a new lodging for temporary visits, in the compact form for secondary habitations of the nobility and gentry, often architecturally sophisticated, that was known as a lodge.
The new house, Sherborne Lodge, was a four-storey, rectangular building completed in 1594. The antiquary John Aubrey remembered it as a delicate Lodge in the park, of Brick, not big, but very convenient for its bignes, a place to retire from the Court in summer time, and to contemplate, etc.
It had four polygonal corner turrets with angled masonry as if they were to serve for military defence, which Nicholas Cooper suggests may be an obeisance to the old building. Its most progressive feature for its
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