Chastleton House

History

Chastleton House was built between 1607 and 1612, for Walter Jones, who had made his fortune from the law, although his family were originally Welsh wool merchants. The estate was bought in 1604 from Robert Catesby, although his residence was demolished to make way for the new house and no traces of the original building on this spot remain. The house is built of Cotswold stone, round a small courtyard, called the Dairy Court.

Chastleton House is famous for an episode from the Civil War in which a loyal wife duped (and drugged) Roundhead soldiers to save her husband. Sarah Jewell, granddaughter of the last owners of manor, recalls her childhood reenactments of the scene:

"My sisters and I used to love running around searching for the secret room where Arthur Jones, the grandson of Walter Jones, hid after the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Arthur was a Royalist and had been fighting for Charles II but the troops were defeated by Cromwell and Arthur galloped back to Chastleton with Cromwell's soldiers in hot pursuit. His quick-witted wife, Sarah - my childhood heroine - hid him in the secret closet over the porch and although the pursuing soldiers found his exhausted horse in the stables they couldn't find him. Sarah saved Arthur's life by lacing the soldiers' beer with laudanum and saddling up one of their horses for his escape as the soldiers slumbered. My sisters and I used to lie on the bed in the secret room and pretend we could hear the horses galloping towards us. The bed has now gone and the entrance to the room is barred with one of the National Trust's trademarks: a rope."

Chastleton Garden

The Grade II listed garden at Chastleton has undergone a number of revisions since the completion of the house in 1612. There is no archaeological evidence of a garden on this site before this date: indeed, the North Garden is split by an old field boundary.

There is no map or written evidence to suggest how the garden was laid out by Walter Jones in 1612, but the walls that enclose the garden are 17th century and archaeological evidence that suggests that the garden has been laid out the same way for the last 400 years. It is laid out according to the recommendation proposed by Gervase Markham in his book The English Husbandman (1613) – a fore court to the front of the house, with the base (or bass) court on one side, which included the stables and other farm buildings. The other two sides of the house should be composed of gardens, divided into an orchard, a kitchen garden and a best (or pleasure) garden, planted with more ornamental plants

At the time, the Forecourt at Chastleton described the entrance area below the House court (the area directly in front of the house). The House court was raised slightly above the forecourt by a small retaining wall, probably with a balustrade on top. There were likely to be few plants in the front of the house in the early 17th century, with the House Court possibly being paved or having two grass plats on each side of the central path like the Forecourt.

To the east of this was the Pleasaunce or Pleasure Garden. This was the Best Garden, which was levelled, but with a viewing terrace along one side which also gave entrance to the church at the opposite end. The design of this garden is not known, but it was almost certainly surrounded by high walls with fruit trees trained against it. The Best Garden was laid out in the circular pattern we see today by Dorothy Whitmore Jones in 1833, although it is suggested that there were already box plants there. Beds were added within the circular hedge in the 1890s or 1900s and then grassed over again by 1972. During the periods of time when money came into the family the planting in this garden was always renewed.

To the north are terraces, levelled from the sloping ground. There is evidence of a medieval cultivation terrace and the remnants of the old boundary wall of the garden. There was a Bowling Green on the Middle terrace and the third terrace may also have been the site of the original kitchen garden.

Today, the middle terraces are the site of two croquet lawns, originally laid out by Walter Whitmore-Jones in the 1860s. His version of the rules of croquet published in The Field in 1865 became definitive, and Chastleton is considered the birthplace of croquet as a competitive sport.

The Kitchen Garden as it is now was enclosed in 1847 and was formed of the existent garden and from part of the adjoining field. It was laid out as four plots on one side of a broad path and two on the other side, and the kitchen garden today has been recently rejuvenated to form this pattern as well.

Film Location

Chastleton House was used as one of the locations for the 2015 BBC Two television series Wolf Hall and represented 'Wolf Hall,' home of the Seymours.