Sherborne Castle

Originally built by Sir Walter Raleigh as Sherborne Lodge, and extended in the 1620s, it stands in a 1,200-acre (490 ha) park which formed a small part of the 15,000-acre (61 km2) Digby estate.

The antiquary John Aubrey described the building as "a delicate Lodge in the park, of Brick, not big, but very convenient for its bignes, a place to retire from the Court in summer time, and to contemplate, etc.

"[3] It had four polygonal corner turrets with angled masonry as if they were to serve for military defence, which Nicholas Cooper suggests "may be an obeisance to the old building".

[4] Its most progressive feature for its date was the entrance, disguised in one of the corner towers so as not to spoil the apparent symmetry of the facade, which was centred on a rectangular forecourt.

During Raleigh's imprisonment in the Tower, King James leased the estate to Robert Carr and then sold it to Sir John Digby, 1st Earl of Bristol in 1617.

King George III visited the house and gardens in 1789, shortly before granting Henry Digby a peerage.