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Using money raised by National Lottery players, The National Lottery Heritage Fund supports projects that connect people and communities with the UK’s heritage. Vanbrugh 300 is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, we have been able to develop a nationwide project that aims to broaden the awareness of Vanbrugh through special displays, free education programmes and lectures, throughout his tercentenary year in 2026.
The history of Grimsthorpe Castle in the county of Lincolnshire is a long and complicated one. It goes back to the turn of the twelfth century when Gilbert de Gant, Earl of Lincoln, built the fortified castle on a ridgeline overlooking the fens.
It probably retained its function as a defensive castle for much of the medieval period — you can still see the original crenelations on the south-east tower today. However, Grimsthorpe was already part of a larger domestic building in 1516 when Henry VIII gifted it to William, eleventh Lord Willoughby de Eresby, on his marriage to Maria de Salinas, lady in waiting to Katherine of Aragon.
From the 1530s, William’s daughter, Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, was the first Willoughby to make Grimsthorpe her family home with her first husband, Charles Brandon. It was also a place for royal visits, and Katherine had to hurriedly add on a courtyard to the building in readiness for King Henry VIII to stay for three days in 1542. This Tudor courtyard still provides the architectural bones of the current castle.
As the home of one of England’s elite families, Grimsthorpe continued to evolve over the centuries. These changes reflect the Willoughby’s noble status, changing tastes and styles, and the need to welcome royal visitors in suitably lavish style. Vanbrugh’s design was the most dramatic of the new additions. The grand, new, monumental entrance façade with lots of round-headed windows is also one of his finest masterpieces.
Vanbrugh and Robert Bertie, sixteenth Lord Willoughby de Eresby, were friends for many years, travelling together in France in 1683 and to the Hague in 1688. It is possible that Vanbrugh designed buildings for Bertie in the nearby village of Swinstead in the early 1700s, as a summer house there looks very much like Vanbrugh’s Belvedere Tower, a feature of Claremont Landscape Garden in Surrey.
In 1715 when Bertie became Duke of Ancaster he invited Vanbrugh to remodel Grimsthorpe. Vanbrugh demolished the classical façade built after King Charles II reclaimed the throne in 1660, replacing it with the boldly dramatic front we see today. The central portion, an arcade of arched windows on two levels set around a pedimented entrance door, is punctured by two pairs of banded Tuscan columns, and topped by the Ancaster crest and figures from classical mythology. At the outer edges, monumental three-storey towers reach forward giving the whole a grandeur of scale. You see it as you approach from a distance across the Lincolnshire wolds, unchanged
(Vanbrugh's Secrets)
After the Duke’s death in 1722, his son and heir, Peregrine Bertie, continued with the building works. Although Vanbrugh had created new designs for all four ranges of Grimsthorpe, only the North front was completed. This was no doubt due to Vanbrugh’s own death in 1726 but perhaps also because of the huge amount of money needed to bring Vanbrugh’s vision to life.
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The entrance hall which has been called unquestionably Vanbrugh’s finest room. It is a breathtaking replacement of the old Tudor great hall, and it has remained unchanged. Here you can see Vanbrugh’s genius for interior architecture, his love of theatre, symmetry and an attention to the classical orders. This is a room of mature Vanbrugh style. The oval domed ceiling is mirrored in the marble inset into the floor. The double arcade of arches on both sides of the hall give a glimpse of the fine ironwork balustrades of the staircases leading to the upper floor. They are repeated in niches on the South wall and the exterior windows of the North. You will also see the work of other trusted artists here: the painters Sir James Thornhill and Francesco Sleter, the cabinet-makers Gumley and Moore, and probably traces of Vanbrugh’s colleague, architect Nicholas Hawksmoor
