Shirburn Castle is a Grade I listed, moated castle located at the village of Shirburn, near Watlington, Oxfordshire. Originally constructed in the fourteenth century, it was renovated and remodelled in the Georgian era by Thomas Parker, the first Earl of Macclesfield who made it his family seat, and altered further in the early nineteenth century. The Earls of Macclesfield remained in residence until 2004, and the castle is still (2022) owned by the Macclesfield family company. It formerly contained an important, early eighteenth century library which, along with valuable paintings, sculptures, and other artifacts including furniture, remained in the ownership of the 9th Earl and were largely dispersed at auction following his departure from the property; notable among these items were George Stubbs's 1768 painting "Brood Mares and Foals", a record setter for the artist at auction in 2010, the Macclesfield Psalter, numerous rare and valuable books, and personal correspondence of Sir Isaac Newton. Still privately owned, the castle is not open to the public although its exterior and some portions of the interior have been publicly visible on account of its use in a number of film and television productions.
Description and history Eleventh to thirteenth centuries The land on which Shirburn resides was part owned by the Norman nobleman Robert D'Oyly who accompanied William the Conqueror on his conquest of England in 1066. Various nineteenth century sources, stemming in the main from a short "History of Shirburn Castle" compiled by Lady Macclesfield in 1887, state that D'Oyly constructed a castle there, which was described as having been surrendered to Empress Matilda (or Maud) in 1141 as part of a ransom negotiation. Later one Warin(e) de Lisle (or de Insula), apparently possessed the estate; this Warin was executed at York in 1322 for taking part in an insurrection. Subsequently, his widow was pardoned and her late husband's lands restored; whether these included a Norman castle at Shirburn, or whether such a structure even existed in that form, has not been verified by subsequent researchers and may in fact simply reflect a desire of the then occupants to claim a more ancient origin for the castle than was actually the case. The relevant chapter of the Victoria County History notes only the previous existence of a manor (West Shirburn, which together with its counterpart at East Shirburn formed the twin manors of the district), which belonged in the 13th century to Robert de Burghfield, "likely to have been on the site" of the present castle. A supposed account of a pre-1300 visit to a "castle" at Shirburn by Brunetto Latini, the tutor of Dante, also quoted in nineteenth century sources, was revealed as a forgery of a book published in 1948 (see relevant section of the Victoria County History, footnote 18).
1377-1716 (de Lisle/Quatremain/Fowler/Chamberlain/Gage era) A "licence to crenellate" (generally interpreted as permission to build) the present castle was granted to the earlier Warin's grandson, Warin de Lisle in 1377, with actual construction taking place around 1378. The present, still moated, two-to-three storey building has a quadrangular form with four rounded corner towers. Rendered on the exterior (although the plaster has now disappeared in places), it has been stated as being the earliest brick building in Oxfordshire, however this appears to be based on a misconception: Emery, cited below, believes that the original construction was probably built entirely in limestone, with the brick "casing" added only when the castle was remodelled in 1720 in the Georgian style.Emery, Anthony (2006): Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales, 1300–1500: Volume 3, Southern England. Cambridge University Press. Emery writes:
Emery also compares and contrasts de Lisle's castle at Shirburn with that constructed a few years later by Sir Edward Dalyngrigge at Bodiam in Sussex, noting similarities in original architectural features but also that Shirburn "seems to have had less of a martial air than the castle at Bodiam", in particular that the "formidable twin-towered gate-house" at Bodiam presents a stronger front than its equivalent at Shirburn.
After de Lisle's death in 1382, the castle passed to his daughter, who married Lord Berkeley, and then to her daughter who married Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, whose principal residence was Warwick Castle. Later it was owned or occupied by successive families including the Talbots, Quartremayes (Quatremains), and FowlersThis information from a historical account "admirably compiled by Lady Macclesfield in a little brochure published in 1887" as reported in Money, 1895, p. 293. A more complete account is that found in the Victoria County History, the relevant portion of which reads: "Warin (d. 1382) left his estates to his only daughter Margaret, Baroness Lisle, wife of Thomas, Lord Berkeley, but Warin's widow Joan had a life interest in Shirburn manor (i.e. the D'lvry half) and in the 'manor of Burgfield' until her death in 1392. Berkeley died in 1417, his heir being his daughter Elizabeth, wife of the powerful Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, guardian and tutor of Henry VI. On her death in 1422 her estates were divided between her three daughters and coheiresses, Margaret, Countess of Shrewsbury, Eleanor, Lady Ros, and Elizabeth, Lady Latimer. In 1427 and 1435, however, Richard Quatremain of North Weston bought their Shirburn property (i.e. three parts of the manor), and in 1432 he acquired from the Collingridges the fourth part of Shirburn manor and thus united the whole lordship under himself. Shirburn was not mentioned in Quatremain's will and had probably been granted already to his kinsman and friend Richard Fowler, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (d. 1477), although it is not mentioned in his inquisition post mortem. The chancellor's son Richard Fowler, who was a 'very unthrift' and became a pensioner of his mother Jane Fowler in 1501, gave Shirburn as security for a loan. Sybil Chamberlain, the widow of Sir Richard Chamberlain of Woodstock and the daughter and chief executrix of Jane Fowler, who died in 1505, took possession of Shirburn manor in April 1505 as the debt was unpaid. In May Richard Fowler, by now knighted, leased the manor to his sister and her son Sir Edward Chamberlain for 60 years, and in 1527 Sir Edward obtained full rights over Shirburn by giving his uncle Tilsworth and Stanbridge manors (Beds.) in exchange." and eventually sold to the Chamberlain family, commencing with Edward Chamberlain, whose mother took out a lease on the Shirburn estate from her brother in 1505 and who died there in 1543. The castle's next owner was Sir Leonard Chamberlain (or Chamberlayne), d.1561, who was also the Governor of Guernsey from 1553. An account survives from 1559 documenting something of the internal layout of the rooms at that time, specifically: "the wardrobe, the entry, the great chamber at the lower end of the hall, the inner chamber, 'the brusshynge howse', the hall and the chamber over the parlour, and an inner chamber there; there was also a cellar, buttery, chambers each for the butler, priest, horse-keeper, cook, and chamberlains, an additional chamber, a low parlour, a kitchen larder, boulting house, fish-house, garner, brew-house, and other outhouses". During the 1642–1651 English Civil War Shirburn was held by Richard Chamberlain for the King, but was surrendered to Sir Thomas Fairfax for the Parliamentarian cause in 1646, apparently without damage.
After the end of the Civil War, the castle remained in (or was returned to) the Chamberlain family. The last male of the line, John Chamberlain, died in 1651, leaving no sons but two co-heirs, his daughters Elizabeth, wife of John Neville, Lord [A]bergavenny, and Mary, who was married first to Sir Thomas Gage of Firle, Sussex, and later to Sir Henry Goring. Elizabeth and Lord Abergavenny (d. 1662) possessed the manorial rights there until Elizabeth's death (date not known); by 1682 both Elizabeth and Mary had died and the castle passed to Joseph Gage (1652–1700), Mary's fourth son by her first husband, Thomas Gage.Burke, John, 1839. A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire. 6th Edition. Henry Colburn, London.
The appearance of the castle prior to its sale to Parker in 1716 is not known in detail from contemporary accounts or illustrations; it does appear (as a small icon) on Robert Plot's 1677 "Map of Oxfordshire" (relevant portion reproduced at right), similar to the castle of today, although whether this is intended to be a "stock" castle representation or an actual likeness is unclear. Emery, 2006, suggests that many features of its original external and likely internal appearance probably would have resembled its near-contemporary at Bodiam in Sussex; unlike Bodiam and many other castles of the era, Shirburn appears to have survived the Civil War relatively unscathed, the Victoria County History stating that it was never besieged but surrendered at the time after appropriate terms had been negotiated.
The Gage family outfitted the castle with an armoury in the late seventeenth–early eighteenth century, containing among other items suits of armour and weapons such as broadswords and "pistols and muskets all marked to Gage family ... typical of those used by a Household Militia force in the event of social unrest or more likely, at that time, of French invasion";International Military Antiques: variant=39715889029 Original British 1705 Dated Flintlock Pistol Brace by Henry Delany - Shirburn Castle according to later illustrations, this armoury was retained as a feature of the post-1716 remodelling of the castle by Thomas Parker (refer next section), and can be glimpsed in the 1823 engraving by J. Skelton entitled "Ancient Entrance Hall of Shirburn Castle" (refer "external links").
The castle continued as the seat of that branch of the Gage family until 1714, when the eldest son, another Thomas Gage succeeded his wife Elizabeth's late father to the estate of High Meadow, a property in Gloucestershire, and associated "considerable fortune". He then decided to sell Shirburn.
1716-c.1800 (Parker era, first part)