In south Gloucestershire, Thornbury Castle raises its wrought brick chimneys and its octagonal towers: it is the interrupted dream of one of the greatest lords of Tudor England, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. Its history is that of the power and the fall of the great feudal lords under Henry VIII.
The palace of a very great lord
Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, was the richest man in England: eleven castles, one hundred and twenty-four manors. From 1510 to 1521, he undertook to build at Thornbury not a fortress, but a sumptuous pleasure palace in the Tudor fashion — a symmetrical façade with octagonal corner towers, wrought brick chimneys (a then very costly luxury), careful ashlar. Thornbury was to proclaim, in stone, the magnificence of his house. But such wealth, in a man of royal blood, alarmed the king.
The fall and the confiscation
In 1521, Edward Stafford was accused of treason, tried and beheaded by order of Henry VIII — a victim of the king's suspicions towards the great lords liable to threaten the throne. The Crown immediately seized Thornbury, whose building stopped at once: the duke never saw his palace finished, and the edifice remained partly incomplete. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn stayed here in 1535; Mary Tudor also stayed here. Thornbury is thus the very symbol of the fate reserved by the first of the authoritarian Tudors for the old nobility: grandeur, then the scaffold. To see: the symmetrical façade with octagonal corner towers, the wrought brick chimneys, the cut ashlar (today a Grade I listed luxury hotel).
Did you know?
The Duke of Buckingham never slept in the palace he was building: beheaded in 1521 for treason, he left Thornbury unfinished, and the work stopped abruptly. His very wealth had undone him — a lord of royal blood, too powerful and too splendid, was a danger in the eyes of Henry VIII. The splendid castle he wanted for his glory became the monument of his fall.
Notes
Thornbury Castle lies at Thornbury, Gloucestershire (South Gloucestershire); a Grade I listed castle, today a luxury hotel. Access according to the hotel's services.
Quiz
- Who built Thornbury Castle (1510-1521)?
- Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham
- Cardinal Wolsey
- Walter Raleigh
- What happened to him in 1521?
- He was beheaded for treason
- He was crowned
- He went on crusade
- Why did the castle remain unfinished?
- The work stopped at Buckingham's death
- A fire
- A lack of stone