Description

SO 50 NE NEWLAND CLEARWELL

8/74 Clearwell Castle

15.3.83 II*

Country house. Built 1727 by Roger Morris for Thomas Wyndham in Gothick style. Built of Forest stone which has survived a fire in 1929 and a period of ruin when the floors and roof were removed in 1948. The entrance front has a 2 storey central portion flanked by symmetrical 3 storey towers, all with embattlements alternately carved with the Wyndham lion. The towers have diagonal buttresses in the 2 lower stages. The windows have stone mullions and transoms, with pointed arched heads on the ground floor and elsewhere. The central doorway which opens directly into the great hall is approached up a double flight of steps with turned balusters, and has flanking clustered colonnettes. Here and all along the basement are attractive round windows. The house is built on a sloping site and the side elevations are irregular possibly owing to C19 additions in the same style. The library has a large bow window on the south which appears at one time to have been used as a chapel. At the opposite end leading into the hall, there are tall Ionic columnns in antis and this room like many others has a typical early C18 cornice, and a splendid stone fireplace with carved baroque overmantel. Some original fireplaces survive, the best is in the hall with carved hunting equipment in the frieze. The house was restored after the fire, and many of the ceilings are facsimile rather than original; there does not seems to have been any Gothic decoration inside, and the surviving fireplaces are more typical of the baroque phase of the early C18.

Listing NGR: SO5701207746

External Links

• Clearwell Castle at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q5130970

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Churches: An Architectural Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides): Written by Charles O'Brien, 2014 Edition, Publisher: Yale University Press [Hardcover]
• 
  London 3: North West: North West v. 3 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Yorkshire: York and the East Riding (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)