Grimsthorpe Castle

Grimsthorpe Castle is a country house in Lincolnshire, England 4 miles (6.4 km) north-west of Bourne on the A151.

While Grimsthorpe is not a castle in the strict sense of the word, its character is massive and martial – the towers and outlying pavilions recalling the bastions of a great fortress in classical dress.

The present occupant is Jane Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby, 28th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, granddaughter of Nancy Astor, who died at Grimsthorpe in 1964.

In 1539, Henry VIII granted Charles Suffolk the lands of the nearby suppressed Vaudey Abbey, founded in 1147, and he used its stone as building material for his new house.

Suffolk set about extending and rebuilding his wife's house, and in only eighteen months it was ready for a visit in 1541 by King Henry, on his way to York to meet his nephew, James V of Scotland.

During Mary's reign the castle's owners, Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk (née Willoughby) and her second husband, Richard Bertie, were forced to leave it owing to their Anglican views.

On Elizabeth's succeeding to the throne, they returned with their daughter, Susan, later Countess of Kent and their new son Peregrine, later the 13th Baron.

However, in 1715, Robert Bertie, the 16th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, employed Sir John Vanbrugh to design a Baroque front to the house to celebrate his ennoblement as the first Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven.

The State Dining Room occupies Vanbrugh's north-east tower, with its painted ceiling lit by a Venetian window.

The King James and State Drawing Rooms have been redecorated over the centuries, and contain portraits by Reynolds and Van Dyck, European furniture, and yellow Soho Tapestries woven by Joshua Morris around 1730.

The South Corridor contains thrones used by Prince Albert and Edward VII, as well as the desk on which Queen Victoria signed her coronation oath.

The present Grimsthorpe Castle park was designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown (1771) and implemented by his patron, the 3rd Duke of Ancaster.

Intricate parterres marked with box hedges lie close to the Castle, and a dramatic herbaceous border frames views across the lake.