Near Banbury, in Oxfordshire, Broughton Castle raises its crenellated silhouette on an island surrounded by a moat. A medieval fortified manor deeply remodelled in Tudor times, it was the house of the Fiennes, Viscounts Saye and Sele — a family that played a leading role, from Elizabethan refinement to the plots that preceded the Civil War.
A fortress turned Tudor house
Broughton was originally a manor of 1306, crenellated in 1406, passed to the Fiennes in 1451. From 1550, Richard Fiennes undertook to transform it into an elegant Tudor house: plaster ceilings, ornate Renaissance chimneypieces, comfortable arrangements grafted onto the old defensive structure. The room called 'Anne of Denmark's' keeps a fine Renaissance chimneypiece. This remodelling makes Broughton an example of those medieval manors modernised in the Elizabethan taste, without giving up their picturesque moated silhouette — a charm the family managed to preserve.
From royal favour to plots
Broughton received the Stuart court: James I and Queen Anne of Denmark stayed here. But the house was soon to play a quite different role. William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, made it a hotbed of Puritan and Parliamentary opposition to royal power. The house has a secret room, the 'Room that hath no ears', where the conspirators met safe from indiscretions — although its most famous use, with Pym and Hampden, dates from the pre-Civil-War generation, just after our period. Broughton thus illustrates the shift of a house from royal favour to contestation. To see: the crenellated manor on its moated island, the 'Anne of Denmark' room and its Renaissance chimneypiece, the plaster ceilings, the fourteenth-century Gothic chapel, the 'Room that hath no ears'.
Did you know?
Broughton Castle has a 'room that hath no ears': a small isolated room, at the top of the house, where the Fiennes could plot without fear of being heard. It was there, it is said, that part of the Puritan resistances to royal power that prepared the Civil War were woven. Few houses have, literally, fitted out a room for conspiracy.
Notes
Broughton Castle lies at Broughton, near Banbury, Oxfordshire; a castle still inhabited by the Fiennes family, open to the public seasonally. Hours to check.
Quiz
- From when was Broughton remodelled into a Tudor house?
- From 1550 (Richard Fiennes)
- In 1066
- In the nineteenth century
- Which Stuart royal couple stayed here?
- James I and Anne of Denmark
- Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
- Mary I and Philip
- What was the 'room that hath no ears' for?
- Plotting safe from indiscretions
- Storing grain
- Imprisoning captives