(568) Cavendish-Bentinck of Welbeck Abbey, Dukes of Portland - part 1

Cavendish-Bentinck, Dukes of Portland 

This post has been divided into three parts. This part consists of my introduction to the family and its property, and an account of  Welbeck Abbey and Bolsover Castle. Part 2 contains histories of the other houses built or acquired by the family. Part 3 gives the biographical and genealogical details of the family. 

General Hans Willem Bentinck (1649-1709) was a Dutch cavalry officer who rose to prominence as a childhood friend and later close confidant of Prince William of Orange (1650-1702), Stadtholder of the Netherlands, who was invited to assume the throne of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales in 1688 as King William III. General Bentinck accompanied William to England in 1688, and subsequently fought with him in Ireland and on the continent in the 1690s. He was richly rewarded for his support in titles, offices and lands, being raised to the English peerage as Earl of Portland in 1689 and made Groom of the Stole, First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Keeper of the Privy Purse and Superintendent of the Royal Gardens, offices which brought him an income of about £3,000 a year. This was in addition to his income from investments in stocks and bonds in the Netherlands, and from lands in Britain. In 1689 he was granted Theobalds Park (Herts), where the Jacobean palace had, however, been demolished during the Commonwealth. In the later 1690s he received a succession of royal grants of land across England, culminating in the grant of an extremely valuable estate in Soho and Westminster in 1698, but he seems not to have maintained a country house until he was made Ranger of Windsor Great Park, a post which he held from 1697 to 1702 and which came with the occupation of the Great Lodge (later Cumberland Lodge). On the death of King William III he was removed from this post and bought an estate at Bagshot (Surrey), before in 1706 settling at Bulstrode Park (Bucks) for his final years, where he began major improvements to the gardens. As a foreigner close to the king, on whom offices and gifts were showered, he was understandably unpopular with the native English aristocracy, and until he retired from most of his positions in 1700, he probably deliberately avoided the conspicuous display which his wealth could have commanded. He is said to have made some improvements to the Great Lodge at Windsor, but only at Bulstrode did he begin to create a setting appropriate to his position, and his death in 1709 meant that it was his son who completed those works.

The Earl of Portland married first, in 1678, Anne Villiers, an English lady who was maid of honour to Mary Stuart, the wife of William of Orange. She bore him two sons and five daughters, but died in 1688, while her husband was in England supporting William's bid for the throne. Not until he had withdrawn from most of his public offices in 1700 did he marry again, this time to Lady Berkeley, a young widow who was twenty-three years his junior. By her he had a further two sons and four daughters, the last of whom was born only a month before his death. His widow survived until 1751 and later had a career as governess to the children of King George II. The Earl divided his estates between the only surviving son of his first marriage, the Dutch-born Henry Bentinck (1682-1726), who succeeded him as 2nd Earl of Portland and inherited the majority of his English estates, and the elder son of his second marriage, the English-born William Bentinck (1704-74), who received his Dutch estates and was later ennobled by the Holy Roman Emperor as Count Bentinck. The English landholdings and descendants of the latter are considered in my post on the Bentincks of Indio House.

Henry Bentinck (1682-1726), 2nd Earl of Portland, undertook an extensive Grand Tour in 1701-03, and soon after his return was married in 1704 to the elder daughter of the 2nd Earl of Gainsborough, who brought him a dowry of £60,000 and a moiety of the Titchfield estate in Hampshire (sold by their son in the 1730s), where the couple seem to have settled. He entered Parliament as Whig MP for Southampton in 1705 and sat for Hampshire from 1708, but in 1709, on his father's death, he was summoned to the House of Lords. He could expect no office under the Tory administrations of Queen Anne, and took a commission in the Life Guards for a few years, but with the Hanoverian succession in 1714 he came back into favour, being promoted in the peerage in 1716 by King George I to be Duke of Portland, and becoming a Lord of the Bedchamber in 1717. Unfortunately, he was a heavy loser in the South Sea Bubble, and his finances seem to have been temporarily so embarrassed that he accepted an appointment as Governor of Jamaica, a post which offered both a useful salary and a reduction in living costs, but which had a poor survival rate. He did not arrive in Jamaica until December 1722, and survived for just three and a half years before dying at the early age of 44.

The 1st Duke was succeeded by his elder son, William Bentinck (1709-62), 2nd Duke of Portland, who was then a youth of seventeen. He was noted for his handsome good looks, but seems to have had a retiring disposition, and socially he certainly played second fiddle to his remarkable wife, Lady Margaret Cavendish Harley (1715-85), the daughter and sole heiress of Edward Harley (1689-1741), 2nd Earl of Oxford. She brought the Ogle family properties (including Bothal Castle) and the Cavendish seats of Welbeck Abbey and Bolsover Castle into the Bentinck family, and also the 203 acre Harley estate in Westminster and Marylebone, where the streets took their names from family estates and titles, including Oxford St., Cavendish Sq., Harley St., Wigmore St. and Wimpole St. The development of this property, which had been begun by her father in 1717, was to be a major source of wealth for the Dukes of Portland in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Duchess of Portland was a witty and gifted woman, with a passion for botany, collecting and handcrafts, especially wood turning. She had a wide circle of intellectual friends, including Garrick and Rousseau, and we know so much about her because she features with great regularity in the letters of her friend, Mary Delany (1700-88). She formed a museum of shells, insects and plants, for which Mrs. Delany produced hundreds of her meticulous and distinctive watercolour-and-collage views of plants. 

Collage by Mary Delany from the 
Duchess of Portland's museum.

The Portland vase

She also collected in more traditional fields, including objets d'art and portraits. Her most famous acquisition was a Roman glass cameo vase dating from the early 1st century AD, which she bought in 1782, and which has been known since as the Portland Vase. This remained in the ownership of the family until 1945 (and is now in the British Museum), but the majority of her collections were dispersed at a 38 day sale after the Duchess' death in 1785.

The 2nd Duke died in 1762 and was succeeded by his son, William Henry Cavendish Bentinck (1738-1809), 3rd Duke of Portland. In contrast to his father, who took no part in public affairs, he played an active role in the House of Lords, becoming one of the leaders of the Whig party alongside Charles James Fox. He was briefly and ingloriously Prime Minister for nine months in 1783 and remained leader of the Whig opposition for the rest of the 1780s. The French Revolution created increasing differences of opinion between him and Fox, and in 1794 he reluctantly transferred his support to William Pitt the younger, joining his government as Home Secretary. In this role, which he held until 1801, he proved himself an able administrator. He was subsequently Lord President of the Council, 1801-05 and on the collapse of the Ministry of All the Talents in 1807 he again became Prime Minister, serving until shortly before his death, although by this time he was ageing and not fully up to the role.

The 3rd Duke made alterations to Welbeck Abbey to the designs of John Carr and Humphry Repton before handing the house over to his eldest son in 1795. He also undertook landscaping works at Bulstrode Park after his mother's death. Unfortunately, the attention which the 3rd Duke gave to politics was not matched by his attention to his private affairs, and his eldest son and heir, William Henry Cavendish Scott-Bentinck (1768-1854), 4th Duke of Portland, found on inheriting that his father had left half a million pounds of debts, despite having sold much of the outlying family property and the Soho estate in London in the 1790s. To address this situation, he sold Bulstrode Park to the Duke of Somerset and the lay rectorship of Marylebone to the Crown, as well as further estate sales in Cumberland and Northumberland, and turned his attention to improving the return from his remaining estates, investing particularly in drainage schemes. His wife brought him an estate around Kilmarnock (Ayrshire) and Balcomie House (Fife), and although he sold the latter he expanded the Ayrshire estate, buying Fullarton House and developing the port of Troon on his lands. He was successful in paying off his father's debts and increasing estate income, and in his later years was able to turn his attention to other interests, including shipbuilding and horse-racing, although he eschewed gambling in all its forms. Perhaps because he was obliged to give detailed attention to estate management he did not pursue his political career after his father's death, returning to Government only briefly in 1827-28 to serve under his friend, George Canning.

The 4th Duke had a long life, and outlived his eldest son, William Henry Cavendish Scott-Bentinck (1796-1824), whose promising parliamentary career was cut short by his early death. His next son, William John Cavendish Scott-Bendinck (1800-79), later 5th Duke of Portland, succeeded to his brother's parliamentary seat but clearly had no taste for public affairs, and it was left to a younger son, Lord George Scott-Bentinck (1802-48) to pursue the family's political interests, becoming a leader of the protectionist group within the Tory party. Protectionism was something both the 4th Duke and Lord George supported, but the 5th Duke took the opposite view, and he may at first have kept out of politics because he did not wish to advertise this difference. However, the 5th Duke became increasingly eccentric and reclusive as time passed. In this, he probably took after his mother, who hated being observed by her servants as she moved through the house at Welbeck, and the 5th Duke took this to new extremes, communicating with his servants only in writing and seldom leaving his small suite of rooms at Welbeck. When he did travel, to London or Scotland, he did so in a closed carriage which could be loaded directly onto a train. In London, high walls prevented passers-by seeing into his London house. He was not, however, a miser and he took a close interest in the management of his estates, buying the Langwell estate in Caithness as a Scottish retreat. At Welbeck, he conducted large-scale building operations, partly because he enjoyed building but probably also as a way of providing meaningful work on his estates. 

The 5th Duke never married, and so on his death without issue, his property was divided under the terms of the 4th Duke's will. Welbeck, Bolsover and the Langwell estate passed to his first cousin once removed, William John Arthur Charles James Cavendish-Bentinck (1857-1943), who also succeeded him as 6th Duke of Portland, but the Ayrshire and London estates passed to his surviving married sisters, Lady Ossington and Lady Howard de Walden. It is for this reason that the (much reduced) London estate is today known as the Howard de Walden estate.

The young man who inherited Welbeck, Bolsover and Langwell, aged just twenty-one, had been acknowledged as heir by the 5th Duke but had neither met him nor been to Welbeck. He came with his stepmother and half-sister on a journey of discovery, and found that apart from the few rooms the 5th Duke had occupied, the house was stripped of furnishings and the grounds were a building site. The 6th Duke was not then terribly interested in the house, and his stepmother, created Baroness Bolsover in her own right in 1880, took on the task of making it habitable again. A decade later the duke commissioned the conversion of the 17th century riding house (already extended and reroofed by the 5th Duke) into a new library and chapel, which was done in 1891-96, but hardly was the mortar dry on this when, in 1900, an electrical fault caused a devastating fire which gutted the Oxford Wing of the house, although most of the contents were saved. The house was given a baroque makeover by Sir Ernest George, who created new and richly decorated but rather bland interiors. During the late 19th and early 20th century, the estate revenues were greatly bolstered by the income from coal mining in Nottinghamshire and Northumberland, allowing the 6th Duke to maintain a lifestyle that was little affected by fluctuating agricultural revenues or rising taxation. As he grew older, the 6th Duke became much more interested in the house and his possessions and family history, and he commissioned a series of books to document these topics: Turberville's two volume History of Welbeck and its owners (1938-39), as well as catalogues of the plate and pictures.

By the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the 6th Duke was an elderly man. He had handed over much of the management of the estate to his heir, William Arthur Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (1893-1977), 7th Duke of Portland, who had built Welbeck Woodhouse as a new residence on the estate. After the 6th Duke died in 1943, the combination of death duties and the nationalisation of the coal industry made retrenchment necessary, and the Portland Vase was sold to the British Museum in 1945 (where it had been on loan for many years). The 7th Duke remained living at Welbeck Woodhouse, and when the dowager duchess died in 1954, the Abbey itself was leased to the Government as an army college, which remained in occupation until 2005. Compensation for the nationalisation of the coal industry was invested wisely in stocks and shares as well as in estate improvements, and the estate was admirably run throughout the post-war period. The 7th Duke had no sons, but he did have two daughters. The elder, Lady Anne Cavendish-Bentinck (1916-2008), never married, while her sister, Lady Margaret (1918-55) married and had a son, but died young. In these circumstances the 7th Duke broke the entail on the estates, so that they could pass to Lady Anne, and then to her nephew, William Parente, while the dukedom passed to a distant cousin. Mr Parente has recently moved out of the Abbey into a refurbished Welbeck Woodhouse, and the Oxford Wing is being extensively restored prior to his heir, Joe Parente, moving in. The dukedom became extinct in 1990, but there were still heirs to the earldom of Portland created in 1689, and this title is now held by the actor, Tim Bentinck (b. 1953), 12th Earl of Portland, who is best known to the wider public as the character David Archer in the long-running radio soap opera, The Archers.

Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire

The architectural development of Welbeck Abbey is perhaps more complicated than that of any other house which I have yet described for the Landed Families project, with the exception of Fonthill in Wiltshire. But whereas at Fonthill successive owners built a series of new houses, mostly on different sites to their predecessors, creating a series of self-contained stories, Welbeck was subject to a constant series of remodellings, demolitions and additions to the original house, which was itself a remodelling of parts of the abbey which stood on the site until its dissolution in 1538. The present house consists of two main ranges set at right-angles to one another, and known today as the North Wing (running north-south) and the Oxford Wing (running east-west), and these terms are employed below although they were not used before the mid 18th century when the house broadly assumed its present form. To try and make sense of the building, I have broken its history down into six chronological phases, which are treated in turn below.

Phase 1: The Premonstratensian abbey and the first Tudor house. 

The Premonstratensian abbey founded by Thomas de Cuckney in 1153-54 became the senior house of its order in England in 1512. The church is thought to have stood to the north-east of the present house, but was probably demolished soon after the dissolution. The claustral buildings that stood south of the church were then converted into a house, and the vaulted undercroft of the present North Wing is a survival - dating to about 1250 - of the west claustral range. If the abbey was arranged in the usual way, this range would have had the abbot's hall and lodgings on the first floor, and since this residential accommodation was so often the part of a monastic site most readily adapted for domestic use after the dissolution, it helps to explain why the undercroft has survived. 

Welbeck Abbey: drawing of the south front by S.H. Grimm c.1780, apparently based on a 17th century drawing, showing, on the right, the part of the house adapted from the south claustral range of the abbey, which was demolished by Lady Oxford in the 1750s.

We are fortunate to have a watercolour by Samuel Hieronymous Grimm dating from about 1780 but evidently based on a 17th century drawing, which shows that the south claustral range also became part of the Tudor house. In 1597 the estate was described as having a 'fair' house and gatehouse, but, after the property passed to Sir Charles Cavendish in 1607, the site underwent further significant development.

Phase II: Works by John Smythson for Sir Charles and William Cavendish.

Sir Charles Cavendish had been renting Welbeck from his brother-in-law for some years, but in 1607 he bought it and made it his main residence. At much the same time he bought Bolsover Castle and developed it as a place of retreat from Welbeck. By 1608 he had brought in John Smythson (and possibly at first his father, Robert Smythson) with a view to remodelling both properties. Sir Charles died in 1617 and work continued at both sites for his son Sir William (1593-1676), who was ennobled as Viscount Mansfield in 1620 and progressed through the ranks of the peerage until he was created Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1665. 

Welbeck Abbey: proposed design for a new house by Robert or John Smythson, 1610 (north at the top). Image: RIBA

The Smythsons' first proposal seems to have been to demolish the old abbey buildings and to build a new courtyard house, comparable in scale to the great Jacobean prodigy houses like Theobalds or Hatfield, and entered through a great court to the east. Although the house would have been much more traditional in layout than the tall compact houses that the Smythsons built at Hardwick, Worksop and Wollaton, it would still have had correctly symmetrical elevations, with the single exception of a long and less regular wing (now the Oxford Wing) at the south-west corner. This departure from symmetry has led to the suggestion that this wing already existed when the scheme was drawn up, and - perhaps because it had only recently been built or remodelled - was incorporated within it rather than being marked for destruction. Lucy Worsley has suggested that it was in origin the guesthouse range of the abbey. 

Perhaps because of the death of Sir Charles Cavendish in 1617, the grand scheme for a courtyard house was never realised, but John Smythson carried out some work to the house in a piecemeal fashion. The square projecting tower elements on the south front of the Oxford Wing are typical of the Smythsons and correspond to the towers shown on the 1610 plan. They are apparent on the Grimm drawing illustrated above, and indeed despite many later alterations are still recognisable today. The flat balustraded parapet and the lantern and cupola shown by Grimm are also clearly from the Smythson repertoire. 

Welbeck Abbey: an engraving published in 1657 showing the west side of the North Wing from the Duke of Newcastle's treatise on horsemanship. The Oxford Wing ought to be visible on the right of the picture, but has been omitted.

An engraving showing the west side of the north range was published in the Duke of Newcastle's treatise on horsemanship, La Nouvelle Methode, in 1657, and shows Dutch gables of the type employed on the riding school at Bolsover Castle, but between these gables and the Oxford wing it shows a traditional great hall with a steeply-pitched roof and a chunky porch which looks remarkably like the 'Porch at Welbeck' shown in two John Smythson drawings. A horse painting of c.1640 by Abraham van Diepenbeck showing a mighty steed in front of a rambling an ancient mansion, depicts the east front of Welbeck at this time, and shows that this whole side of the house was untouched by Smythson improvements. 

Welbeck Abbey: east front c.1640. The late Tudor character of the house remodelled from the earlier monastic premises is here fully apparent.

Little survives (and even less in situ) of the Smythson interiors, but on what is now the ground floor is the small but elaborately decorated Horsemanship Room, which has a sexpartite stone rib-vault with a large pendant boss, strongly reminiscent of some of the rooms in the Little Castle at Bolsover (see below). A stone tablet in this room is carved with symbols of the Ogle family, recalling the marriage of Sir Charles Cavendish to Catherine Ogle in 1591, but the unusual Mannerist fireplace, probably of the late 17th century, is an insertion. A room on the first floor has a large chimneypiece similar to the Serlian Doric type used by Robert Smythson at Wollaton, and with a moulded surround like those in the Little Castle at Bolsover (by John Smythson), but it appears to have been moved here from an unknown location in the 18th century.

The Duke of Newcastle's ruling passion was for the art of horsemanship, or 'Haute Ecole', and although he clearly did some work on the house at Welbeck, he devoted at least as much attention to the construction of a riding school and stable block, which were the predecessors of the better-known ones at Bolsover. These buildings stood on the north and west sides, respectively, of a large and not completely enclosed courtyard, of which the east and south sides were formed by the North Wing and the Oxford Wing. Between the Riding School and the Stables there was a large gatehouse block, which seems to have been demolished around 1700. The Riding School was designed by John Smythson in 1622, and still stands north-west of the house, although altered in the 19th century, when it was extended and converted into a library and chapel (discussed below). Externally, it was an embattled but plain block, housing a single covered space, but dignified with two fine Mannerist doorcases at either end.

Welbeck Abbey: design by John Smythson for the riding house, 1622. Image: RIBA

Welbeck Abbey: design by John Smythson for the stables, c.1625. Image: RIBA

The designs for the rather more elaborate stable block date from 1625, and it seems to have been built more or less to this design, but to have been joined on to the gatehouse block. The gatehouse was no doubt earlier in date (a gatehouse is mentioned in 1597) but the shaped gables above the entrance archway suggest it had also been altered by Smythson by the time it was the subject of another engraving in La Nouvelle Methode in 1657. 

Welbeck Abbey: the stable block (left) and gatehouse range (right) seen from the courtyard before the house,
from an engraving published in 1657 in La Nouvelle Methode. The riding house was just out of view to the right.

Phase III: Changes from the late 17th century to 1755.

In 1691 the Welbeck estate descended to the 1st Duke's granddaughter and her husband, the 4th Earl of Clare, who became the 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne of the second creation in 1694. In about 1703 they consulted William Talman, then the foremost country house architect in England, who provided several different designs for a large new Baroque mansion. Although skilfully planned, these designs were rather academic exercises in the manipulation of elements drawn from continental engravings, and they seem not to have found favour with the Duke and Duchess, who turned instead to Sir John Vanbrugh, then building Castle Howard (Yorks NR). He provided a much more lively design, seemingly based on and responding to one of Talman's proposals, but for whatever reason, neither architect's designs were pursued. 

Welbeck Abbey: unexecuted design by William Talman for a new house, 1703. Image: RIBA

Welbeck Abbey: unexecuted design by Sir John Vanbrugh for a new house, c.1703. Image: RIBA

The fact that both Talman and Vanbrugh incorporated domed towers either side of the centrepiece in their designs has led some previous commentators to suggest that their proposals were actually for the remodelling of the Oxford Wing, but the scale seems to make that unlikely: there are presently only five bays between the towers on the Oxford Wing and both Talman and Vanbrugh placed seven bays between their towers. Although neither Talman nor Vanbrugh seem to have enjoyed the Duke's patronage, it would seem that quite extensive work on the house was completed before his death in 1711, for while in 1697 Celia Fiennes noted that 'the house is but old and low buildings', Daniel Defoe in the early 1720s described Welbeck as 'beautify'd with large additions, fine apartments, and good gardens'. These works are unlikely to have been initiated after 1711 because the Duke's will, which bequeathed Welbeck away from his wife and daughter, so outraged them that the estate was mired in legal wrangling until 1719 when a private Act of Parliament settled the dispute and left the Duke's daughter and her husband, the scholar and bibliophile Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford, in possession. The couple lived first at Wimpole Hall (Cambs), but a financial crisis in 1736, caused by the Earl's reckless collecting and generosity, caused Wimpole to be sold. By 1740 most of the Earl's debts had been cleared, and when he died in 1741, leaving the bulk of his remaining estate to his widow absolutely, Lady Oxford settled permanently at Welbeck and was in a position to begin building.

The Countess of Oxford's widowhood is one of the seminal periods in the development of Welbeck Abbey, and her work has a wider interest from several standpoints. Like her 3x great-grandmother, Bess of Hardwick, she was a strong-willed woman with a passion for building, who not only commissioned major changes to the building but directed the aesthetic outcomes in detail. She was clearly animated by an intense pride in her lineage, filling the house with portraits and other relics of her Cavendish, Harley, Holles, Vere and Ogle ancestors, and stating in a letter that her purpose in building was 'to incline my family to reside at the only Habitable seat of my Ancestors', an ambition in which she was successful. Her exterior work was largely demolition (of the remaining part of the south claustral range of the old abbey buildings) and remodelling rather than rebuilding, and was plain to the point of severity, but it concealed a series of fine new interiors which mixed the fashionable Palladian style with the Gothick revival and even a pioneering Jacobean revivalism. The Gothick and Jacobean work was no doubt felt to provide a sympathetic setting for the collection of family portraits and to evoke the interiors which those ancestors had occupied. It is notable that in executing the neo-Jacobean decoration, she both re-used and copied original Smythson work, clearly expressing a reverence for the home of her ancestors.

Work began in 1741 with the underpinning of the west end of the Oxford Wing. In 1742, Lady Oxford brought in John James (d. 1746) to oversee the transformation of the house, with Joseph Martyr as joiner and Anthony and Thomas Ince as masons, later replaced by James Osborne. The Oxford Wing was given a new central doorway on the south front dated 1743, designed to accord stylistically with the original Smythson cornice to either side, and the lantern on this range was rebuilt and repositioned in 1749. Little is known about the interior of the Oxford Wing, which was remodelled after a major fire in 1900, but a plan of 1750 shows that it remained a warren of small rooms. Photographs survive of one bedroom in this wing, which show conventional if fairly rich Palladian decoration. 

Welbeck Abbey: the Gothick Hall, c.1985. Image: Pete Smith.

More radical changes were made to the North Wing, where the old Great Hall with its steeply-pitched roof was pulled down and replaced by the two storey Gothick Hall in 1747-51. This is the most remarkable (if only partially surviving) interior, with an ambitious fan-vaulted ceiling, based on that in the Henry VII chapel at Westminster Abbey. It was executed by Joseph Rose, presumably to a design by John James, who as surveyor of Westminster Abbey would have been familiar with the original, although he had died before work began. The room originally had plaster piers around the walls, running up to support the vault, doorways with ogee heads, and a fine fireplace, carved by Christopher Richardson, of which the upper part survives. 

Welbeck Abbey: an engraving of the Gothick Hall in use as a library in 1821, showing the original decorative scheme. 

The present entrance hall (originally the dining room) has a Jacobean-style chimneypiece dated 1744 made by Thomas Carter the elder and based on that in the Star Chamber at Bolsover Castle.  Little is known about the original decoration of the rooms on the east side of the North Wing, which were replaced in the later 18th century, but a corridor with Gothick panelling survives, as does the Gothick plaster vault and skylight formerly over the Great Stair, again by Joseph Rose.

Welbeck Abbey: ceiling of the Gothick Room. Image: Pete Smith

Welbeck Abbey: ceiling over the former Great Stair, c.1750.
Image: Pete Smith 

At the north end of the North Wing, Lady Oxford added a new block to provide a new north entrance, dated 1749, which partly survives behind later additions, and mixes classical, Gothick and Jacobean motifs in an idiosyncratic way. The entrance opens into the Vaulted Hall, rising through one-and-a-half storeys, with neo-Jacobean details based on Smythson's Horsemanship Room, including a central pendant. Above this were three rooms forming Lady Oxford's private suite. The central room, lit by the Venetian window in the north front, has another fine Gothick ceiling, with plasterwork and panelling incorporating the Ogle and Cavendish crests. One of the side rooms reuses an original Smythson fireplace which is much too large for the room. 

Welbeck Abbey: the driveway to the north entrance between the Smythson riding school and the 18th century service block.
Image: Nick Kingsley. Some rights reserved.

The creation of the new north entrance led to the demolition of Smythson's stables and the construction (by William Birch, mason) of a new range of offices parallel to the Smythson riding school and almost identical to it in external detail. The two blocks are separated by a drive leading to the new entrance, which was at first approached between a pair of small battlemented Gothick lodges, but these were later moved further north when the present arrangement of stone screens and boldly rusticated 17th century gatepiers was created.

Phase IV: Welbeck from 1755 to 1854.

On the death of the 2nd Duke of Portland in 1762, his widow was left Welbeck Abbey for life, while the 3rd Duke inherited Bulstrode Park. Since the 3rd Duke preferred Welbeck, however, he agreed an exchange with his mother. In 1775-77 he commissioned John Carr of York to remodel the east front of the North Wing and to create a suite of rooms (drawing room, ante room, dining room and library) which entirely replaced Lady Oxford's interiors in this part of the house. His alterations to the exterior included the construction of a single-storey chapel which projected to the east from the south-east corner of the house, and which had a bellcote surmounted by a cupola above the east end. 

Welbeck Abbey: watercolour by Repton from the first Red Book for Welbeck, showing the east side of the North Wing as altered by Carr,
and the north front created by Lady Oxford c.1750. Image: Pete Smith.

The chapel was demolished in about 1860, and the rest of Carr's work was further remodelled by Sir Ernest George in the early 20th century, although some elements of his interiors were retained, but the appearance of the east side of the house at this time is recorded in a watercolour by Humphry Repton. Repton was at Welbeck because he was called in by the 3rd Duke in 1790 to make (unexecuted) proposals for landscaping the grounds, and he also suggested alterations to the house, which were at least partly carried out. These included alterations to the west side of the North Wing, removing the central pediment and adding small attic towers, and banking up earth on both sides of the wing so that the ground floor became a subterranean basement and the former piano nobile became the ground floor.

Welbeck Abbey: detail of an early 19th century painting of the house, showing the castellations added by Jearrad in 1809.

After the 3rd Duke handed Welbeck over to his son in the late 1790s, Repton was brought back and prepared a further Red Book suggesting alterations to the grounds, but once again, nothing was done, although in 1809 R.W. Jearrad of Cheltenham added castellations to the parapet of the North Wing, enlarged the lake and built a bridge.

Phase V: Alterations for the 5th Duke of Portland, 1854-79

The 5th Duke of Portland is perhaps the saddest and most compelling character in the story of Welbeck. He never married and became increasingly shy and reclusive as he became older, achieving a legendary degree of reclusiveness of a kind that is only available to the extremely rich. Despite his morbid disinclination for the society of his fellow man, the 5th Duke had a passion for building which both served his desire for privacy and provided much-needed employment, and he may have been activated partly by philanthropic motives. In about 1860 he demolished Carr's chapel, and remodelled the Oxford Wing, extending it to the east and west and adding an extra storey, but reusing the cupola. The Duke was probably his own architect, but the recent discovery of drawings for Welbeck by the Mansfield architect, C.J. Neale - whose other known works are all minor - suggests that he was employed as a biddable amanuensis to realise the Duke's ideas. Much less was done to the North Wing - although schemes for a radical alteration were considered - but a long range of straight-sided gables were added to the east front, and the whole range was re-roofed in lightweight green copper tiles, which have continued to be used in later alterations. Lastly, both the Smythson riding school and the matching 18th century service wing were extended and re-roofed with the copper tiles. The riding school was given an elaborate roof structure based on Smythson's original design (now concealed) and was used as a library and later as a chapel, while a new and even larger riding school was built in the park, This, together with a covered gallop, new stables and kennels, an estate gasworks (with no less than four gasometers), estate workshops, a timber yard and new farm buildings, were referred to as the "New Works" and seem to have been designed by Neale.

Welbeck Abbey: the house from the south-east after the changes made by the 5th Duke, photographed shortly before the fire of 1900.

The 5th Duke is most famous for the series of toplit 'underground rooms' (actually at the same level as the original ground floor, which Repton had turned into a basement by banking up earth against the North Wing) which he created north and west of the main house. His motive in building below ground is unclear, but perhaps he came to want to hide his buildings as he hid himself. The underground rooms were excavated by navvies with the aid of traction engines and steam ploughs, and were damp-proofed by having double walls with layers of asphalt between them that have proved remarkably effective. They were heated by hot air, and lit by octagonal skylights, supplemented by thousands of gas jets for nocturnal illumination. The first rooms to be completed were a suite of three library rooms some 236 feet long, with a roof supported on cast iron columns. 

Welbeck Abbey: the subterranean ballroom or picture gallery from an early 20th century postcard.

In 1875 a large ballroom or picture gallery was begun south of the Smythson riding school, approached by a series of three small Museum Rooms with a long corridor on each side, one of which was used as a sculpture gallery. The immense scale of the Ballroom (154 x 64 ft) was achieved by using hollow box girders concealed in the roof structure. Beyond the ballroom the Rose Corridor runs yet further west, and was intended to communicate with a huge Bachelors' Hall, construction of which was abandoned at the Duke's death (with the excavation being converted into a sunken garden). The underground rooms were not the Duke's only excavations: he also constructed some three miles of cut-and-cover tunnels to link the house to the "New Works" and to bury drives to the north-east and south.

Phase VI: Alterations since 1880.

When the 5th Duke died without issue, his estates were divided between his surviving sisters (who inherited his London and Ayrshire estates) and his first cousin once removed, who inherited the dukedom, Welbeck, and the Scottish estate which the 5th Duke had purchased himself. Astonishingly, the incoming young 6th Duke had neither met his predecessor nor been to Welbeck, and when he arrived, with his stepmother and half-sister (later Lady Ottoline Morrell), to take up his inheritance, it was to find the house largely uninhabitable. Apart from the 5th Duke's few rooms - themselves sparsely furnished - most of the house was completely unfurnished. Lady Ottoline later recorded how they found the house:

"...almost every room had a water-closet in the corner, with water laid on and in good working order, but not enclosed or sheltered in any way. All the rooms were painted pink, and the large drawing-rooms decorated with gold, but no furniture or pictures were to be seen. At last in [the Gothick Hall] was found a vast gathering of cabinets all more or less in a state of disrepair...[In] the 'ballroom'...were all the pictures belonging to the house - pictures that had come down from generation to generation, but taken out of their frames and set up against gaunt wooden horses. The frames were afterwards found hidden away in a storehouse."

The 6th Duke did not at first pay a great deal of attention to Welbeck, and it was his stepmother (created Baroness Bolsover in her own right in 1880) who repaired the house and made it comfortable again. She persuaded the 6th Duke to convert the extended Smythson riding house into a library and chapel, and he obtained designs from J.D. Sedding, who was recommended by Lord Mildmay of Flete (Devon). Designs were approved in 1889, but before work began on site in 1891, Sedding died suddenly of influenza, and the work was executed by his former assistant, Henry Wilson, who was probably responsible for many of the interior decorative details. Wilson also built a curved two-storey link block containing a corridor joining the North Wing to the Riding House. At either end of it, he built a staircase in a gabled cross-wing to connect the varying levels of the differing structures. A self-effacing new entrance was provided at the east end of the corridor. 

Welbeck Abbey: the Titchfield Library created by Henry Wilson in 1891-96 for the 6th Duke

Stylistically, the interiors mixed English 17th century motifs with the Arts and Crafts and touches of Art Nouveau, to striking effect. The eastern section of the Riding House became 'the Titchfield Library', with a series of eight presses projecting from the walls into the room in a manner reminiscent of an Oxbridge college library. In the centre of the room a deep inglenook fireplace was created, with the arch of the inglenook carved in local alabaster by the sculptor F.W. Pomeroy, and an even more elaborate alabaster fireplace inside. A large round-headed archway with a colourful marble surround, filled with solid bronze doors, separated the library from the chapel, which is arranged like an 18th century collegiate chapel, with full height columns supporting flat entablatures and a barrel vaulted plaster ceiling over the nave. It is encrusted with rich fittings that create a sumptuous, almost Byzantine atmosphere. 

Welbeck Abbey: the chapel created by Henry Wilson, 1891-96. Image: Royal Collection Trust.

In 1900 the house was seriously damaged by a fire which destroyed the upper floors of the Oxford Wing and damaged the rooms below, causing an estimated £50,000 of damage, although the contents were largely rescued thanks to the efforts of the servants and colliers from one of the Duke's pits. To repair the damage, the 6th Duke brought in Sir Ernest George, who was recommended to him by Lord Redesdale, for whom George had rebuilt Batsford Park (Glos). He not only reinstated the damaged areas, but also made architectural changes to the rest of the house. The east and west fronts of the North Wing were given a Baroque makeover, with a pediment on each side containing a carved tympanum and supporting sculptures by Albert Hodge. Heavily rusticated porches were added, that on the east side connecting with the family suites in the Oxford Wing. The external alterations to the Oxford Wing were happier, with the addition to the south side of two-bay pedimented wings with rusticated quoins and a segmental pediment over the entrance bay, adding movement and central emphasis to the facade. The interiors of the Oxford Wing were reinstated in a mix of late 17th century and Palladian styles, and almost all the state rooms in the North Wing were also altered. The 6th Duke was very pleased with the result:

"they [George & Yeates] not only restored and improved the accommodation in the Oxford Wing, but carried out many alterations in the house itself, I think most successfully: for they converted it from an old-fashioned inconvenient barrack into a comfortable modern house. I think Sir Ernest was an excellent architect. He was especially clever at adapting old houses to modern use, without changing their essential character".

Welbeck Abbey: the Oxford wing and the east side of the North Wing in 2008. Image: Nicholas Kingsley. Some rights reserved.

Welbeck Abbey: the new dining room created by Sir Ernest George, 1900-02. Image: Country Life.

In 1930, the then Marquess of Titchfield (later the 7th Duke) commissioned a new house on the estate which he called Welbeck Woodhouse. He chose as his architects the York firm of Brierley & Rutherford, who were the lineal successors of John Carr's 18th century business. Walter Brierley, one of the most interesting architects of the early 20th century, had died in 1926, so the house was actually designed by his partner, James Hervey Rutherford, who based the design closely on one of Brierley's best houses, the neo-Georgian Sion Hill Hall near Thirsk (Yorks NR). The house was built in 1930-32, and in its comfort and simplicity it offered a marked contrast to the complex architectural palimpsest of the Abbey. The new house gave the Marquess and his family (who had earlier rented a house at Calverton near Nottingham) an independent residence on the estate, from which he could conveniently play an increased role in the management of the estate.

During the First World War the army was invited to use the park at Welbeck as a camp, and they returned in the Second World War. The 6th Duke died in 1943 and his widow in 1954, after which the house was leased to the Ministry of Defence as the Army College, although the family retained the right to use the state rooms and private apartments in the house. Welbeck Woodhouse remained the home of the 7th Duke, and, after his death in 1977, of his daughter, Lady Anne Cavendish-Bentinck, while the 7th Duke's widow, Ivy, endowed the Harley Foundation to assist artists and craftsmen working in workshops on the estate. The foundation later built the Harley Gallery to display items from the Portland Collection and further workshops (designed by John Outram). The Army College moved to Leicestershire in 2005 (and closed in 2021), and Lady Anne's nephew and heir, William Parente, took up residence in the private apartments of the Abbey. Since he inherited the estate in 2008, he and his wife have overseen an extensive programme of repairs and investment into the estate buildings, and have collaborated with the Harley Foundation to provide limited public access to the house. He has recently moved to a refurbished Welbeck Woodhouse, and the Oxford Wing is being restored to provide a home for his son and heir, Joe Parente.

Descent: Crown sold 1539 to Richard Whalley (1499-1583); sold 1559 to Edward Osborne; sold? to Crown, which leased it 1573 to Richard Whalley and his son Thomas Whalley, who leased it 1575-82 to Sir John Zouche of Alfreton (Derbys); reverted 1582 to Richard Whalley jr, who granted it 1584 to Gilbert Talbot, later 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, who vested it in trustees for his wife, acquired the freehold and in 1607 sold it to his half-brother, Sir Charles Cavendish (d. 1617); to son, Sir William Cavendish (1593-1676), later created Viscount Mansfield (1620), Earl of Newcastle on Tyne (1628), Marquess of Newcastle on Tyne (1643) and Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne (1665); to son, Henry Cavendish (1630-91), 2nd Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne; to daughter, Lady Margaret Cavendish (1661-1716), wife of John Holles (1662-1711), 4th Earl of Clare and later Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne; to daughter, Lady Henrietta Cavendish-Holles (1694-1755), wife of Edward Harley (d. 1741), 2nd Earl of Oxford and Mortimer; to daughter Lady Margaret (d. 1785), wife of William Bentinck (1709-62), 2nd Duke of Portland; to son, William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (1738-1809), 3rd Duke of Portland; to son, William Henry Cavendish Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck (1768-1854), 4th Duke of Portland; to son, William John Cavendish Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck (1800-79), 5th Duke of Portland; to first cousin once removed, William John Arthur Charles James Cavendish-Bentinck (1857-1943), 6th Duke of Portland; to son, William Arthur Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (1893-1977), 7th Duke of Portland; to daughter, Lady Anne Cavendish-Bentinck (1916-2008); to nephew, William Henry Marcello Parente (b. 1951), Prince of Castel Viscardo.

Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire

Bolsover is in origin an 11th century castle, created by William Peveril (of the Peak Castle in Derbyshire) on a naturally defensible scarp overlooking the broad plain to its west. It was forfeited to the Crown in 1155 and passed backwards and forwards between royal and lay hands during the later medieval period, being last garrisoned in 1322. It consisted of a roughly egg-shaped inner ward surrounded by thick stone walls, and an inner and outer bailey. It is thought not to have had a keep, though in 1540 Leland mentioned a 'great building' of which nothing more is known. In 1553 the site was granted to George Talbot, later 6th Earl of Shrewsbury and one of the four husbands of Bess of Hardwick. Her son, Sir Charles Cavendish, bought it in 1608 from the 7th Earl, and in the winter of 1611/12 he began building the present Little Castle to the designs of John Smythson (whose father Robert was, however, still alive and may conceivably also have been involved). Sir Charles himself was probably responsible for selecting the castle aesthetic of the project, which responds to the history of the site, the military tradition of the family, and the chivalric revival of the Jacobean period. Sir Charles' son and heir, William, belonged to the group of aristocratic jousters (including the Earl of Pembroke and Earl of Arundel) who regularly entertained the Court at this time, and the Little Castle should be seen as belonging to the group of houses, including Lulworth Castle and Ruperra Castle which were influenced by the nostalgia for medieval traditions. In 1617 Sir William Cavendish inherited the site and the project from his father, and the interiors of the castle (which largely date from the 1620s) appear to be influenced by what he had seen or a tour of Europe c.1612.

Bolsover Castle: the Little Castle and the north end of the terrace range from the north-west.

Bolsover Castle: the Little Castle from the west, 2008. Image: Nicholas Kingsley. Some rights reserved.

The Little Castle was built at the north end of the site, across the line of the curtain wall of the inner ward, a section of which was demolished to accommodate it; old stonework from the site was incorporated into the new building. It is entered from the terrace on the western side of the castle site, through a walled forecourt with arrow-slits in the walls and crenellated lodges that immediately establish the castle theme. The house itself is squarish in plan (70 x 54 feet), and its three full storeys above a high basement are also 70 feet high. It was no doubt conceived as being the keep which the medieval castle lacked, and was intended as a retreat from Sir Charles' great house at Welbeck, about six miles further east, rather than a country house in its own right. It was perhaps intended to stand in the same relation to Welbeck as Wothorpe Hall did to Burghley House: a 'secret house' to which Lord Burghley could retire 'when his great house at Burghley was a-sweeping'. Only the forecourt and the west-facing entrance front with its porch tower are symmetrical; the other elevations place windows of different sizes and forms where they are needed. The taller stair turret at the north-east angle of the building projects on both the north and east faces, further disrupting the symmetry. 

Bolsover Castle: plans of Little Castle, based on an original English Heritage plan.

The plan is a triple-pile layout, with rooms either side of a narrower east-west central spine containing the service stairs and closets, but it is more complicated than it seems, for the rooms on each floor are not all of the same height, and are fitted together with remarkable ingenuity as a kind of three-dimensional jigsaw. The vaulted basement was devoted to service accommodation, with the kitchen on the north side and the 'Great Beer Cellar' - which may have doubled as the servants' hall - on the south-east. The ground floor was also vaulted, and the largest room, in the south-east corner, was the three-bay vaulted hall, which is higher than the Pillar Parlour to its north. On the first floor, over the latter, is the Great Chamber of the house, known as the Star Chamber from the decoration of its ceiling, which is higher than the rooms to its south which constituted Sir William Cavendish's private apartments. These needed lower ceiling heights than the Star Chamber, allowing the top floor, occupied by three apartments arranged around the central lantern, to be all on the same level again.

Bolsover Castle: anteroom of Little Castle. Copyright unknown. 

The building accounts show that almost all the interior decoration of the Little Castle was undertaken for Sir William Cavendish after he inherited in 1617. Like the exterior it is an echo of the antique, but in this case of the Classical antique, spiced with an overlay of Spenserian fantasy and Jacobean wit. The interiors preserve their original fireplaces, panelling and painted decoration, and allow us to see a rare intact themed sequence. The porch leads into a small inner hall, from which opens, to the north, the Anteroom, where the lunettes on the walls under the vaulting are painted with scenes representing three of the four Humours, after Maarten de Vos, and an architectural scene (it is not clear why this was preferred to the fourth humour, 'Sanguine'). On the other side of the lobby is the three-bay hall, with a rib-vault carried on two Tuscan columns. This was the only interior where the fitting out began in Sir Charles Cavendish's lifetime, and the plain hooded fireplace is dated 1616. The wall paintings and panelling were added after 1617 and here the paintings depict four of the Labours of Hercules after engravings by Antonio Tempesta published in 1608; the pattern of the vaulted ceiling is continued in fictive perspective in the background of the figures. 

Bolsover Castle: the hall of the Little Castle. Digitally corrected image. Copyright unknown.

Bolsover Castle: Pillar Parlour in Little Castle. Image: English Heritage.

A door at the upper (east) end of the hall leads into another lobby in the central spine of the house from which can be entered both the main staircase in the north-east corner and the richly-decorated Pillar Parlour. The latter is a vaulted chamber with a ribbed vault carried on a single cental column. The room was probably intended as a Winter Parlour, since it stands directly above the kitchen and has, in the centre of the north wall, a magnificent hooded fireplace (loosely based on designs in Serlio) of pale limestone, with columns, panels and cabochons of Ashford Black Marble, alabaster, and other local contrasting stones. The panelling is copied from wainscoting at the king's palace of Theobalds (Herts) which John Smythson visited and sketched in 1618. The lunette paintings show allegories of the Senses from engravings by Cornelius Cort after Frans Floris. 

Bolsover Castle: Star Chamber in Little Castle. Image: Glyn Ryles.

The wide stone staircase leads up to the first floor, and gives access through a lobby into the great chamber of the house, known as the Star Chamber from the applique stars of gilded lead on the geometric plaster ceiling. The very rich arcaded panelling is decorated with figures of Old Testament prophets and saints, one of which is dated 1621. The fireplace is the most elaborate in the house, and has the arms of the 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, who sold the estate to Sir Charles Cavendish in 1608. Opening off the Star Chamber is the Marble Closet, which extends into the space above the porch. It has a monochrome theme, with a black and white marble vaulted ceiling, a chequerwork marble floor, and a black and white fireplace, but colour is introduced by the lunette paintings of the Virtues, here represented as langorous maidens after engravings of c.1582 by Hendrick Goltzius. A French window provides access to the balcony over the porch. 

Bolsover Castle: vault of the Marble Closet in Little Castle. Image: Nicholas Kingsley. Some rights reserved.

On the south side of the first floor is Sir William's private apartment, which has another elaborate Smythson chimneypiece and partially gilded panelling, but is nonetheless something of a respite between the sequence of grand public rooms and the richness of the two adjoining closets, known as the Heaven Closet and the Elysium Closet, which both have painted ceilings and friezes and richly decorated panelling. The decoration of the closets appears to offer Sir William two versions of his immortality: he can choose to rise either into a Christian heaven or into a classical Elysium, but it is fairly clear that Sir William, who had a reputation for his amours, will choose the earthier delights of Elysium, from which a balcony opens with a view of the Fountain Garden, with its statue of a naked Venus standing in her fountain. 

Bolsover Castle: ceiling of the Heaven Closet in the Little Castle.

Bolsover Castle: ceiling of the Elysium Closet in the Little Castle. Image: Nicholas Kingsley. Some rights reserved.

The two closets are the climax of the decoration, but the main stair continues to the second floor, where three apartments surround a charming octagonal lobby below the central lantern, which may have been used as a banqueting area, like the rooftop pavilions at Longleat House (Wilts).

Bolsover Castle: the Fountain Garden. Image: Mark Bush. Some rights reserved.

In conjunction with the building and decoration of the Little Castle, the remaining walls of the inner ward were retained and reconstructed to contain a pleasure ground known as the Fountain Garden. Apart from the features which survive, it is not known how this was laid out, but it seems possible that it was the intended setting for Ben Jonson's masque on the theme of courtly love which was performed during Charles I's visit in 1634. A walkway, accessed from the main stair of the Little Castle, ran round the top of the walls, and the parapets, which had been lost by the late 18th century, were reinstated in 2013 by English Heritage. Three garden rooms - perhaps marking the sites of medieval towers and a gateway - were created in the thickness of the walls, and the most elaborate of them has a groin vault with a pendant boss and hooded fireplaces like those in the Little Castle. 

Bolsover Castle: Venus Fountain. Image: Nicholas Kingsley. Some rights reserved.

Near the centre of the court is the famous Venus Fountain, built to a design by John Smythson in the late 1620s. It consists of a sunken basin with niches in each face carrying busts of Roman emperors, priapic beasts and Satyrs. The extraordinary central plinth, covered in vermiculation, supports lead figures of urinating cherubs, and the fountain bowl, on top of which stands a statue of a naked Venus emerging from her bath, after Giambologna. The concept of the design seems to be the contrast of animal lusts with pure love, as symbolised by Venus.

Bolsover Castle: terrace range, looking south. The steps up to the Little Castle are on the left. Image: Nicholas Kingsley. Some rights reserved.

Having completed the Little Castle and Fountain Garden by the late 1620s, Sir William Cavendish (later the Earl, Marquess and eventually Duke of Newcastle), went on to built the Terrace Range along the western edge of the former inner bailey, in two main campaigns of c.1627-30 and c.1630-34, once more under the direction of John Smythson, who had become a full-time employee and bailiff of some of the Cavendish estates. Although physically detached from the Little Castle (a link being provided by a bridge from the upper level to the wall walk around the Fountain Garden), the Terrace Range provided the accommodation needed to make Bolsover Castle an independent mansion. The earliest part is the north end of the range, which stands at a strange skewed angle to everything else, and the four bays of the west front to its south, which have an elevation of two storeys above a basement. The Dutch gables here were completed in 1633. This part of the building provided additional domestic accommodation. 

Bolsover Castle: a view of the west side of the terrace range and the Little Castle from an engraving published in 1657 in La Nouvelle Methode.

From about 1630, by which time Sir William had become Earl of Newcastle, a grander scheme was entertained, and Smythson provided designs for a Long Gallery facing the prospect to the west, backed by a state apartment facing east onto the inner bailey, which was probably completed in time for a visit by King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria in 1634. Smythson also proposed a chapel, which was never built, the upper floor of the north end of the terrace range being fitted up as a chapel instead. The Long Gallery has a single storey over a high basement, with a main entrance from the terrace approached by a long flight of steps set against the basement wall on either side. The windows have skied and rather ungrammatical pediments, and between them are attached shafts, loosely suggesting the barrels of cannons, which are set like columns against the wall. They have neither bases nor capitals and die into the stonework at top and bottom, and no architectural source has been found for them. This facade seems originally to have had straight-sided gables, replaced by a crenellated parapet when the building was restored after the Civil War.

Bolsover Castle: the new facade of the state apartment to the inner bailey, as rebuilt in the 1660s. It has been a ruin since at least 1785.
Image: Nicholas Kingsley. Some rights reserved.

Newcastle was a prominent Royalist, and he was eventually obliged to flee to the Continent, where he lived at Rubens' house in Antwerp. In the years when he was abroad, he developed his long-standing interest in horsemanship into the serious study of the art of manège, and he evidently acquainted himself with current continental architectural fashions. Serious damage was done to his buildings at Bolsover during the Civil War, and after Newcastle recovered the property at the Restoration, he restored and re-roofed the Terrace Range. His architectural adviser this time was Samuel Marsh, who later built Nottingham Castle for him, to a very Italianate design. It is thought likely that the Duke of Newcastle played an important part in the design of these buildings, which seem to owe a lot to the illustrations in Rubens' Palazzi di Genova (1622), which he almost certainly encountered while in exile. The state apartment on the east side of the terrace range was widened and its internal layout was altered. The decoration here was more conventional than Smythson's earlier 'cannon columns'; the leathery strapwork (now very worn) around the upper windows of the state apartment being typical of mid-century Artisan Mannerism. The state apartment was given a central entrance, aligned with the doorway into the Long Gallery and that in turn with the grand doorway from the gallery to the terrace. This (no doubt very draughty) feature was known as 'the Bellavista'.

Bolsover Castle: the stables and riding school built in the 1660s. Image: John Chapman. Some rights reserved.

Bolsover Castle: interior of the riding school, looking east towards the viewing gallery. Image: Nicholas Kingsley. Some rights reserved.

At the same time as the terrace range was being restored and altered in the 1660s, Lord Newcastle built the Riding House and Stables as a long block running east from the south end of the Terrace Range. The riding house, occupying five slightly projecting bays in the middle of the range, was intended a setting for the display of horsemanship, and was provided with a viewing gallery at the east end. It comprises a single grand space with an elaborate open timber roof, and is entered in the centre through a massive rusticated doorway. To the west were the stables, converted into chambers in the 1680s, while to the east was a smithy, and beyond that a massive gateway with rusticated columns from the outer bailey. After the Duke's death in 1676, and more particularly after the death of his son in 1691, Bolsover fell out of regular use and was tenanted and partially dismantled. The whole of the terrace range had been unroofed by 1785, but the riding house range and the Little Castle were kept in repair. The castle descended with the Welbeck estate until 1946, when the castle was given to the nation by the 7th Duke of Portland. It is now in the care of English Heritage, which has undertaken several phases of meticulous conservation and repair.

Descent: Crown granted 1553 to George Talbot, later 6th Earl of Shrewsbury; to son, Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury; who sold 1608 to his half-brother, Sir Charles Cavendish (d. 1617); to son, Sir William Cavendish (1593-1676), later created Viscount Mansfield (1620), Earl of Newcastle on Tyne (1628), Marquess of Newcastle on Tyne (1643) and Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne (1665); to son, Henry Cavendish (1630-91), 2nd Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne; to daughter, Lady Margaret Cavendish (1661-1716), wife of John Holles (1662-1711), 4th Earl of Clare and later Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne; to daughter, Lady Henrietta Cavendish-Holles (1694-1755), wife of Edward Harley (d. 1741), 2nd Earl of Oxford and Mortimer; to daughter Lady Margaret (d. 1785), wife of William Bentinck (1709-62), 2nd Duke of Portland; to son, William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (1738-1809), 3rd Duke of Portland; to son, William Henry Cavendish Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck (1768-1854), 4th Duke of Portland; to son, William John Cavendish Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck (1800-79), 5th Duke of Portland; to first cousin once removed, William John Arthur Charles James Cavendish-Bentinck (1857-1943), 6th Duke of Portland; to son, William Arthur Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (1893-1977), 7th Duke of Portland; who gave it 1946 to HM Government.

To continue to part 2 of this post, click here.

Principal sources

Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 2003, pp. 3181-87; H. Repton, Observations on the theory and practice of landscape gardening, 1803, pp. 65-72; T. Besterman, The Druce-Portland Case, 1935; A. Hamilton Thompson, The Premonstratensian Abbey of Welbeck, 1938; A.S. Turberville, A history of Welbeck and its owners, 1938-39 (2 vols); J. Harris, William Talman: maverick architect, 1982, pp. 19, 46; M.C. Davis, The castles and mansions of Ayrshire, 1991, pp. 261-63; Sir N. Pevsner, I. Richmond, J. Grundy, G. McCombie, P. Ryder & H. Welfare, The buildings of England: Northumberland, 2nd edn., 1992, p.199; S. Daniels, Humphry Repton, 1999, pp. 166-70; P. Smith, 'Welbeck Abbey and the 5th Duke of Portland', in M. Airs (ed.), The Victorian Great House, 2000, pp. 147-64; P. Smith, ‘Lady Oxford’s alterations at Welbeck Abbey, 1741-55’, Georgian Group Journal, 2001, pp. 133-68; P. Smith, 'Welbeck Abbey and the 6th Duke of Portland', in M. Airs (ed.), The Edwardian Great House, 2001, pp. 77-92; L. Worsley & T. Addyman, ‘Riding houses and horses: William Cavendish’s architecture for the art of horsemanship’, Architectural History, 2002, pp. 194-229; P. Smith, 'The survival of the fittest: Welbeck Abbey and the great houses of Nottinghamshire in the 20th century' in M. Airs (ed.), The Twentieth-Century Great House, 2002, pp. 35-56; D.M.L. Onnekink, The Anglo-Dutch Favourite.The career of Hans Willem Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland (1649-1709), PhD thesis, Univ. of Utrecht, 2004; L. Worsley, ‘Female architectural patronage in the 18th century and the case of Henrietta Cavendish Holles Harley’, Architectural History, 2005, pp. 139-162; A. Gomme & A. Maguire, Design and plan in the country house, 2008, pp. 70-72; H.J. Grainger, The architecture of Sir Ernest George, 2011, pp. 315-22; R. Close & A. Riches, The buildings of Scotland: Ayrshire and Arran, 2012, pp. 326-27; C. Hartwell, Sir N. Pevsner and E. Williamson, The buildings of England: Derbyshire, 3rd edn., 2016, pp. 167-79; C. Hartwell, Sir N. Pevsner and E. Williamson, The buildings of England: Nottinghamshire, 3rd edn., 2020, pp. 678-90; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entries for 1st Earl, 2nd Duchess, and 3rd and 5th Dukes of Portland, and for Lord William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck;

https://her.highland.gov.uk/Monument/MHG24066;

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols33-4/pp37-41;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYEXf1RgM1E;

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/member/cavendish-bentinck-lord-william-1802-1848.

Revision and acknowledgements

This post was first published 5 February 2024 and was updated 7 February 2024. I am grateful for the assistance of Pete Smith, Alex Bond and Gregor Matheson Pierrepont with preparing the articles on this family, and to Dart Montgomery for suggesting improvements.