Building with bricks has a long history in the United Kingdom, right back to their introduction by the Romans in the first century AD. Their remains can be found everywhere that the Romans put up buildings, such as Burgh Castle in Norfolk, Newsteads in Scotland and, nearer to home, at Pevensey Castle, where they can be found in the outer wall. The Romans withdrew from our shores in the fifth century, and the craft of making bricks seems to have gone with them, being reintroduced in the 12th century. Before then, Roman brick buildings were used as quarries when bricks were needed, as in, for example, the nave of the abbey at St. Alban’s, begun in the 11th century, using bricks from the old Roman town of Verulamium.
The earliest post Roman new brick building seems to be Coggeshall Abbey in Essex, which was founded in 1190. Beverley North Bar, a gate in the East Riding of Yorkshire, was built of brick in about 1409. The English made bricks are thin and of odd sizes and shapes. here was no standard size for bricks until the 18th century. However, a brick tax was introduced in 1784 and charged on each brick. From then it wasn’t unusual to find much larger bricks, to reduce the number needed and so the amount of tax that was levied.
One of the oldest, most important brick buildings in the country, Herstmonceux Castle, is just 23 miles from Rye. The site has a long and interesting history. We know that in 1066, the owner was a Saxon priest called Edmer. By the time that William the Conqueror’s Domesday Book was commissioned in 1086, as a record of what there was in his realm, who owned it and what it was worth, it was held by one of William’s most loyal supporters, a knight called Wilbert. By about 1200, the Manor of Herst was held by Idonea de Herst, who was married to a Norman knight named Ingelram de Monceux. The word herst (or sometimes hurst,) means a wood. Some people join their surname when they marry, and this couple were no exception, except that they changed the name of the manor, calling it Herst of the Monceux, which eventually became just Herstmonceux. The manor remained in the possession of the Monceux family for half a dozen generations until, in 1330, Maude de Monceux married Sir John Fiennes.
Construction on the new brick castle at Herstmonceux began in 1441, for Sir Roger Fiennes. Its bricks, made by brickmakers from Flanders, were made of local clay. Use of brick is an interesting choice for a castle, which was principally a place of defence. Strong stone was far more usual, whilst brick would be very unlikely to withstand a concerted siege. Its large windows also were not ideal against an attack. One is drawn to the conclusion that the local political situation was relatively settled. Sir Roger was Household Treasurer to King Henry VI, so a large house was necessary to add to the prestige bestowed on him by that position. It was the tenure of the position that brought him the £3,800 cost of building his brick castle. Sir Roger died in 1449 and the castle was completed by his son, Richard, who married Joan, the Baroness Dacre, when he became Baron Dacre.
During the 16th century things began to go awry for the family. Sir Thomas, Lord Dacre, took to poaching on a neighbour’s estate. His exploits caused to the death of one of the gamekeepers, which led to Sir Thomas being tried for stealing the King’s deer and murder. He was found guilty and, although his position should have caused him to be executed by the ‘mercy’ of beheading by axe, he was hanged as a common man. After his death, King Henry VIII confiscated the Herstmonceux estate. Queen Mary Tudor returned it to his brother Gregory in 1553. His sister, Margaret, inherited the castle in 1594, and it passed into the Lennard family in 1612, when her son, Henry Lennard, 12th Baron Dacre, inherited.
The 15th Baron Dacre, Thomas, when aged 20 in 1674, was created Earl of Sussex by King Charles II. The reason was his marriage to Lady Anne Fitzroy, illegitimate daughter of King Charles and Lady Barbara Palmer. One of Thomas’s main interests was cricket. We know that in 1677, £3 was paid when he went to see a match at ‘Ye Dicker,’ a common near Hailsham. He died, with no heir, in 1715, when the Dacre Barony went into abeyance. Thomas was a very extravagant man, and to settle his debts, in 1708 he was obliged to sell Herstmonceux to George Naylor, a London lawyer, for the sum of £38, 215. He was also Member of Parliament for Seaford, through his father in law, Lord Pelham, who controlled the seat.
The castle passed through several other generations, leaving the direct line of descent, until Robert Hare-Naylor, doing as his second wife, Henrietta Heckell insisted, turned the castle into a fashionable ‘picturesque’ ruin, by wrecking the interior, thus rendering it uninhabitable. This, astonishingly, was done on the advice of a member of the well-known Wyatt architectural dynasty, Samuel. Unable to stop the desecration, Thomas, 17th Baron Dacre, commissioned James Lamberts Jnr, a painter from Lewes, to paint the castle, prior to its destruction, in 1776. The terrible work began in 1777, leaving just a shell. Thus it remained for almost 140 years, although having a further six owners during that time.
In 1911, the ruin was bought by Colonel Claude Lowther, a grandson (on, as they say, the wrong side of the blanket,) of the Earl of Lowther. For some years Colonel Lowther was a Conservative Member of Parliament. In 1912 he proposed restoring the castle, to a design by Walter Godfrey. The work was unfinished at Lowther’s death in 1929, when it and the estate of 544 acres, was bought for £65,000 by Reginald Lawson, described as ‘of independent means.’ Lawson had also bought Saltwood Castle in Kent, later famous as the home of the Member of Parliament and former Rye resident, Alan Clark. In December 1930, Lawson, aged 38, was found dead on the Saltwood estate, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. The coroner at the inquest was unable to find any evidence of intent, so a verdict of misadventure was returned.
Herstmonceux was sold again in August 1932, to the baronet Sir Paul Latham. He resumed the restoration, which was described by the famous architectural critic and writer Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘exemplary.’ At one time it was estimated that he had spent about £250,000 on the work, but a recent reassessment reduced that to about £60,000. Latham’s enjoyment of the castle was short-lived, as it was requisitioned at the outbreak of the war in 1939. From then until September 1945, it was the temporary headquarters of the Hearts of Oak Building Society.
Latham, a Member of Parliament since 1931, signed up to serve in the armed forces, despite being exempted by his membership of the House of Commons. His marriage was ended by divorce in America in 1941, his wife claiming mental cruelty. There was possibly another reason. In August of the same year, Latham resigned his seat by accepting ‘an office of profit under the Crown,’ Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead. The reason for this was that he was shortly to stand trial, under military law, for illegal sexual acts with three gunners and a civilian. After a failed attempt to take his own life by riding his motorcycle into a tree, he was court-martialled, found guilty of a total of 11 out of 14 related charges and imprisoned for two years. On his release he commented that the conditions and treatment he received in Maidstone prison were superior to those at Eton. (It used to be said that an Old Etonian could be found in every embassy and every jail in the world. In these more egalitarian days it’s likely to be just the jails.) The writer James Lees-Milne, when working for the National Trust, visited Herstmonceux, to assess its suitability for acceptance by the trust. He wrote that when walking around the house he peeped into a bedroom, where he saw a ’baby-faced American GI fast asleep in bed.’ The house proved unsuitable for acceptance because so much was replacement. Latham died in 1955. Before then, in 1946, he sold Herstmonceux.
The new owner was the Greenwich Royal Observatory, founded in 1675 by King Charles II. He was interested in science, and had already granted Royal Patronage to The Royal Society, our national science academy, and the oldest such establishment in the world. By the early 20th century, increasing urbanisation and light pollution was hampering the work of the observatory, so a move to the country was deemed essential. The clearer skies over Herstmonceux made it ideal as the new location, so in 1946 it was purchased by the Admiralty, which ran the observatory for the government. The move took just over 10 years to complete, including adding a number of new buildings in the grounds. There it remained until 1988, when it was moved once again, this time to Cambridge. Some of the observatory telescopes were left in-situ, and are part of a science centre.
In 1992, a Canadian made a curious offer to his wife. An ex undergraduate of Queen’s University, Ontario, he found that Herstmonceux was for sale, and asked his wife if she would like it. Laughingly she declined, saying that it had, ‘too many rooms to clean.’ Alfred Bader did purchase it though, and in 1994, after more restoration, the Queen’s International Study Centre opened its doors. It is part of the Canadian University Study Abroad Programme, for undergraduates who are studying commerce, the arts or science. It also welcomes graduates who are working on International Business Law and Public International Law. Summer schools offer engineering, international health sciences, law and archaeology. The Bader name is now included in the centre, with the Bader International Study Centre becoming Bader College in 2022.
Visits to the castle interior are not currently offered, but the gardens and grounds are open to the public.
Image Credits: Michael Montagu .