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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.
It is perhaps most famously known for being the final home of Katherine of Aragon, the first wife of King Henry VIII. It was the home of the Earl and Dukes of Manchester for over three hundred years. The Castle in its present form dates almost entirely to between 1690 and 1720, when it was remodelled in two stages by Charles Edward Montagu, the fourth Earl. The first stage was undertaken by Henry Bell with Vanbrugh responsible for the second. In 1764 Robert Adam designed the gatehouse to blend with Vanbrugh’s masculine style. In 1950 the Castle was bought by Kimbolton School whose home it has been ever since.
Vanbrugh was friendly with the Earl of Manchester from his time as Ambassador in Paris in 1699. They shared an interests in opera and Italian design and exchanged gossip on the London social scene. They were also political soulmates as supporters of William of Orange, the Whigs and prominent members of the Kit-Cat Club.
Whilst the Earl was serving as Ambassador to Venice in 1707 the south-east corner of the Castle collapsed. Vanbrugh and his assistant Nicholas Hawksmoor were called in to help the local contractor William Coleman and drew up ambitions plans to redesign the whole of the South Front. Although the Earl would have preferred a more conventionally classical front, Vanbrugh wanted to remodel the building to give it what he called a ‘castle air’ in acknowledgement of its medieval origins. Vanbrugh persuaded the Earl to let him reface the other three parts of the castle in a similar style with battlementing that takes the place of the usual classical parapet.
Vanbrugh revised the layout of the rooms on the South Front building the Saloon as a large ‘room of parade’ between the drawing room and bedchamber. Kimbolton is an excellent example of how Vanbrugh was influenced by both his romantic attitude to the medieval past and his love of all things theatrical. By contrasting the castellations with a plain, more austere style he created what he called a ‘manly beauty’, he was conscious of the fact that Kimbolton, unlike Blenheim, was a genuine castle and he wanted that to be clear to all who saw it.
(Vanbrugh's Secrets)
The Earl of Manchester was British Ambassador to Venice and a mutual interest in opera first brought them together. It was through Charles Montagu that Handel met Vanbrugh. Unlike at Castle Howard, the letters between patron and architect, show how Vanbrugh was able to convince a sceptical Earl to make more widespread changes to Kimbolton than he envisaged with the addition of an extra great room, the Saloon, on the south front. They also show how Vanbrugh was happy to work with existing local contractors such as William Coleman declaring that “if we had such a man at Blenheim he would save a thousand pounds a year.”
It was the Earl who introduced Vanbrugh to the Venetian painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini. Pellegrini worked on set painting at Vanbrugh’s Queen’s Theatre at the Haymarket and murals at Castle Howard. Some of his best work can be seen at Kimbolton in including the dramatic “Triumph of Caesar” on the staircase.
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The South Front at Kimbolton is most harmonious example of Vanrugh’s architectural style. The original and conventional layout of the rooms with the drawing room next to the bedchamber would make it impossible to preserve the symmetrical design and maintain harmony with the formal garden and central canal. Vanbrugh resolved this adding the “room of parade” and moving the doorway to the centre of the front. This results in a well-marked central doorway and a flight of steps linable with the now defunct canal. It is a very good example of Vanbrugh’s willingness to flout convention to harness design.
The round-headed windows, keystones and heavily grooved angle pilasters help to give the front the “manly beauty” which Vanbrugh wanted.
Inside, the giant fluted Corinthian pilasters and columns in the Saloon are typical of Vanbrugh’s theatrical style, creating a perfect English Baroque backdrop.
