Arundel Castle - Hardcover

Arundel Castle is a great Norman and medieval fortification, built after 1067 to the same plan and at the same time as Windsor. Its revival as a country house in the late-Georgian era added one of the most original and best-preserved Gothic interiors, while the late 19th-century reconstruction of the residential part makes it the largest and grandest Victorian house in England. It is also one of the longest continuously inhabited houses in Britain, the Dukes of Norfolk and their ancestors having lived here for over eight hundred years, since 1138. This book is both a detailed history and a guided tour of the castle, the seat of the Duke of Norfolk, hereditary Earl Marshal of England. It traces the entire architectural history of the site from the year after the Battle of Hastings to the present day. Often assumed to be mainly a Victorian reconstruction, it preserves as much or more of its Norman original as many of the ruined castles through to be more 'genuine'. It has a largely intact series of massive 11th-century earthworks, including an impressive motte, a stone gatehouse dating from 1070, an almost complete 11th- and 12th-century curtain wall, a perfect shell keep erected in 1140 and a very well preserved barbican of about 1300. Within this framework, on the site of the medieval domestic quarters in the south bailey and giving Arundel its dramatic skyline, is the largest Victorian Gothic Revival house in existence - yet even this great 19th-century pile incorporates both the two-storeyed shell and vaulted undercroft of a palace built by Henry II in around 1180 and the vast library built by the 11th Duke's team of Cumberland craftsmen in 1800. The author deals with the entire, long history of Arundel and its owners; the inheritance by the Howards from the Fitzalans in the16th century and subsequent vicissitudes, including a siege in the Civil War, not forgetting such domestic aspects as Queen Victoria's visit in 1846. The guided tour covers every room of interest: the private family accommodation as well as the better known parts open to the public, with full details of the superb collections of furniture, books, silver and paintings. This definitive study, based on profound scholarship and original research, is remarkably readable and entertaining. Well illustrated, it will appeal to a wide readership among non-specialists and visitors, as well as providing the standard work for many years to come for castellogians and students of architecture, for country houses and the ancient families that lived in them.

John Martin Robinson is a well known historian and writer with some seventeen previous major publications to his credit, mainly on aspects of architectural history, country houses and heraldry; including The Dukes of Norfolk (OUP, 1983) and Arundel's Remembrances (Roxburghe Club, 1987). Born in Lancashire, he was educated in Scotland and at Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries at the early age of twenty-nine. Dr Robinson's working career began in the Historical Buildings Division of the old G.L.C., where he served from 1974 to 1986, having been appointed Librarian to the Duke of Norfolk as early as 1978, a position he still holds. In 1982 he became Fitzalan Pursuivant of Arms Extraordinary and is now Maltravers Herald of Arms. Since 1980 he has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Georgian Group, in 1986 he became a member of the Council of the Society of Antiquaries and since 1991 he has been Secretary of the Roxburghe Club. In 1989 he became a partner in Historical Building Consultants.