For those listening on the podcast networks, we will do our best to describe everything we're looking at. If you want more historical background on Thornbury Castle, please listen to the previous episode, and you'll get all that background stuff. And we'll also have a ton of links in the show notes for all the background that you need to understand this wonderful place. So, thank you for being with us today, Tony. My pleasure. All right. So what do you want to tell us about this room?

Well, this is a very interesting room. Edward Stafford built his castle from about 1507. He got a license to make it a castle in 1510, and then building came to a halt in 1521 when he was beheaded by Henry VIII. Oh, dear. Yes. That'll ruin your day. Yeah. And as a result of that, building came to a halt. But Henry the 8th came here in 158. 1535 with Anne Boleyn. And very often people say, can you tell me which broom Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn stayed in?

And the answer to that is, I can tell you where Henry VIII stayed, but I can't necessarily tell you whether Anne Boleyn was with him. Because in those days, it was quite common for them to have separate chambers and separate bedrooms. So this is where Henry the 8th would have slept. Whether he was accompanied by Anne Boleyn or anybody else, I don't know. But it's interesting that from about 1521, he was quite paranoid and he always had somebody search his bed for knives before he got into it.

to it. So what he was expected from his companions in those circumstances, I don't know. But anyway, this was the room that he stayed in. And what a room. It's a room fit for a king. One of the features we've got over here is this little room here. And in Henry VIII era, this was known as the guardy robe. The guardy robes were the Tudor toilets, so this would have been the equivalent of the Tudor-en suite.

It's still the toilet now, but the plumbing has been uprated since that time. Well, that's good. You can tell in Castles the high-status rooms because they would have guardy robes attached to them. Very often you'd get a situation where to not put too fine a point on it. Everything would drop into the moat below. There was not a moat here. So this is the former guardy robe. The other washing facilities and showers are the other side of the room.

I don't want you to think that people are still living in the Tudor era when it comes to ablution. From here you obviously go, a lovely view of the outer courtyard and although we can't see it because of the weather, beyond that is the River Severn and then Wales. Nice view of his kingdom, kingdoms. One of the interesting things about this castle is if you understand the character and personality of Edward Stafford, you can see it throughout the building.

And I'll tell you one of two stories which tell us about his character. In June 1509, Henry VIII rode from the Tower of London to Westminster Abbey. A chronicler saw that journey and wrote it up and wrote about what fantastic clothing was being worn. But it wasn't Henry the Eighth's clothing he was talking about. It was Edward Stafford's. So we have somebody who is a fashionista, wants the very latest of everything, wants to flaunt his wealth and is only too happy to outdo the king.

Story number two, Edward Stafford wanted the title of Lord High Constable of England, which was effectively the Minister of Defence. And Henry VIII gave him the title but for one day and one day only, which was his coronation day, and so he had it for ceremonial purposes. So that was 1509. And Edward Stafford kept on to Henry VIII about wanting the title permanently. Henry VIII wouldn't give it to him. So what do you do if the king won't give you a title?

Well, Edward Stafford decided he would take he would take Henry the 8th to court. So you can imagine the judges are sat there thinking, gosh, this is a hard one. We have got to choose between Henry the 8th and the Duke of Buckingham. And it may not come as a surprise to you to know that he actually, the judge is found in favour of King Henry the 8th. So there we are with somebody who is very arrogant, who wants titles based upon his heritage, particularly through the de Bohun family.

Story number three. On one occasion, Edward Stafford, Third Duke of Buckingham, was holding a bowl of water for Henry VIII to wash his hands. And after he had washed his hands, Cardinal Wolsey put his hands in the water. And Stafford, Stafford, immediately poured the water straight over the Duke of Buckingham. Sorry. poured the water straight over Cardinal Wolsey. Oh no. Wolsey may have been the right-hand man of the king, and he may have been all-powerful, but he was the son of a butcher.

And there was no way that Edward Stafford, with his heritage, was going to act as a servant for the son of a butcher. of a butcher. So he was overly proud of his family heritage. And when we walk round the building, we will see that all the while. He did not hesitate to tell people that he was from a long line of noble families. One of the interesting things about Edward Stafford was he was a fashionista.

But at the same time, he wanted a castle. Castles were going out of fashion during the Tudor period. So why were the fashionista want a castle? And I think it was partly because the manor house was fortified originally. And also it was a nod to his ancestors. When they were all powerful, they had castles. So he had a half and half. Half castle, half palace. So, Half was a fortress. Half was about style and a land.

And as we stand here, we are at the halfway point. That side is castle. That's hard power. This side is a palace that's soft power. I will go and look at the castle first of all, and then we'll come back and look at the soft power. Sounds lovely. All right. Let's go. So this side is the fortress. side of things. One of the things we need to bear in mind is that Edward Stafford, when he was building his castle, he was the richest man in the country, apart from the king.

He had an income of six thousand a year, and he was spending a thousand a year building his castle. Building came to a halt in 1521 when Henry VIII took off his head. So... Inconvenient. The castle, it's is not completed. But if I can show you one or two of the fortifications, out there we have the main gate. And that faces towards the river seven. And the reason it does that is because if this castle was likely to be attacked by an army, it would come from the river.

Our roads were even worse then than they are now. So it would be by boat that they would come. Now. If they did that, they would get quite a greeting because there are gun ports there for cannons. So the gate itself would be manned. There was a port-cullis there. There are grooves in the gate for a port-cullis to be raised. But if they saw an army coming, they would give them a warm greeting. These buildings here are the lodgings, and that's where Edward Stafford's army would have lived.

So these would have been men who would have been very useful with a longbow. So not only would there be cannons greeting any invading army, there would be arrows as well. If they managed to breach the walls, the men who were here would obviously be useful with swords as well. So everything about this side is a fortress. Now, as I said, the country The castle itself wasn't completed, and this is our interpretation of what it would look like if it had been finished.

So you can see we've got turrets and towers this side, but on the other side, we've only got the ground floor. So there would have been very thick walls here, again to repel invaders. Those there, you can see the crosses. the crosses, those are loopholes for firing crossbows as opposed to a long bow. So this would have been quite difficult to breach one way and another. Did anyone ever try and take the castle? No. Oh, that's good.

No. No. One other thing that I will come back to later on is in the introduction, I mentioned that Edward Stafford was very keen on his family, and if you look round the windows, he never missed an opportunity to remind everybody that he came from a long line of important noble people. Very cool. Over the gate, yet again we have more of the Edward Stafford symbols of his heritage. In the corner of each side there is what is known as the Stafford knot.

not. Americans, I think, refer to it as a pretzel. And then there are other emblems of his family heritage. And then there is some wonderful writing there. And it says, Edward Stafford, Third Duke of Buckingham, Earl of Hereford, Stafford and Northampton built this gate in 1511. It's a lot of titles. I don't know. I don't know. whether you'll want this in or not, but normally when I'm talking to Americans, I say, I only know one person now who puts their name on all their buildings.

We'll leave it at that. It depends on the reaction, I can, as to whether we talk. So we've moved now from the fortress side of things into the palace side of things. I'd first of all like to bring your attention to the steps. over there where all the pumpkins are. Again, you can see a Stafford knot there. That was a mounting block for mounting your horse. Henry VIII would almost certainly have stood on that. And we've got 500 years of transport, only a few yards apart, because here we have the charger for electric cars.

That's what I mean. So the really stunning feature here is the chimney. Again, it's got Edward Stafford's, some of Edward Stafford's heritage in it with his family symbols. We've never missed an opportunity to show those off. And this is Edward Stafford really going to town and saying, I want the very latest of things. This was imported from what we would call the low countries, Belgium and Holland, in Holland in terms of style. Brick was very much a new material at the time, so he's bang up to date with his fashions, and he is going over the top and saying, go on then, see if you can beat my chimney.

Down below the three little faces, we have a date of 1514. Now, Hampton Court is well known to lots of American visitors who go to London and Hampton Court is noted for its chimneys. Hampton Court was built in 1515 and the date we've got there is 1514. So we're in a situation where this predates at Hampton Court and is certainly one of the oldest, if not the oldest, chimney in the country. So this is Edward Stafford taking a lead in terms of fashion.

terms of fashion. That's interesting because the brick is completely different than any of the other stonework. Yes. Yes. We've got a couple of other chimneys at the back. Yeah. You can see up there. But the stonework itself, we think, came from one of Edward Stafford's quarries, which would have been in the Cotswold. This is limestone. Interesting. Is it bathstone or is it limestone? it limestone? Limestone. The geologists call it oolite, so, which is a form of limestone.

Oh, okay. Interesting. The other fascinating feature here is this window frame, which has not got any glass in it. The castle became a ruin. After Queen Mary the first gave the castle back to the Stafford's, they could not afford the upkeep of it, and it fell into disrepair. Most of it was repaired in the 1850s by a man named Anthony Salvin. He was the go-to man. If you had a castle and you had lots of money, Anthony Salvin was the man you employed to modernise or Victorianise your castle.

But Salvin was also a member of the picturesque movement. And the picturesque movement. movement was all about ruined castles in English landscapes. So this was a nod to the picturesque movement, and it was deliberately left like that as a, as I say, a nod toward that that particular movement. And as Anglotopia followers know, I love a good ruin, so I'm in my element here. So this is where the manor house stood. The manor house was built.

was built in about 1300. Edward Stafford was lord of the manor of Thornbury and the manor house stood here. Edward Stafford at the age of six had to go into hiding. His father had been beheaded by King Richard III and he went to a safe house and when he was in that safe house King Richard III's men visited that house on three occasions. and the only reason they didn't discover Edward Stafford was because he was dressed as a girl.

He was six years of age at the time and they decided eventually that they got to move into another house and so he then disappeared until 1485 when Henry the 7th killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth and Henry the 7th restored Edward Stafford to all his titles. all his titles, but he was only eight then, so he became a ward of the crown. And for most of his childhood he was looked after by Henry VIII, sorry, Henry the Seventh's mother, Margaret Beaufort.

And then at the age of 21 he came to live in the manor house which stood here. The manor house had been fortified in the 1330s. 1330s because there had been peasant unrest during that period. So he came here and decided he would make Thornbury his main residence. And in 1507 he started building his new building. We get some idea of how big the manor house was because in that same year of 1507, he had several Christmas beasts here.

He was known by Shakespeare as Bounteous Buckingham. And on one occasion in the manor house here, in the great hall of the manor house, they were 450 people sat down for... Wow, that's a lot of people. Edward Stafford would have had his own private room for just a few private guests. private guests, but the majority of people sat here. The cooking was done over there. This was the kitchen range here. And you kept fire away from the manor house for obvious reasons.

The food would be brought over here and then there was a character called the surveyor of dressers and he would look at the food and he'd say, ah, that's the delicacies. So that goes that end. That goes that end. Ah, that's the stale bread. That goes down that end. As much as they liked that, that end. And portion controlled that end. So it was all very controlled. So when Edward Stafford was here, the manor house hadn't been removed.

It was an integral part of the whole complex. I have no doubt that he would have pulled it down and built a stone building. stone building to square everything off eventually. But Henry V8 got in the way of that, so it never happened. So obviously there's nothing here now. Have there been excavations here and have they found archaeology? There certainly has. In the 1980s there was a tree over there which rotted and the gardener decided he would dig it out.

And here's the tree. Here's the tree and this is what it revealed. It revealed the tiled floor of the manor house. My guess is that it was probably laid round about 1500. If you're going to build a new building over there in 1507, you're not going to spend much money here after about 1,500. And this is typical of Edward's Stafford because what we have here is the symbol of the Knights of the Garter. Knights of the Garter is our oldest chivalry order.

It goes back to King Edward III in 1348 and it is limited to the monarch and 25 others. And that is still the case today. It is still in the gift of our monarch, King Charles III. And he can only appoint something. appoint somebody to that chivalry order if he hasn't already got 25 others. So in Edward Stafford's Day, it would have been awarded for military service. But not only does he put the symbol of the Knights of the Garter, he can't resist reminding everybody round the corners about his family heritage.

Now you can see that this was in pristine condition, almost as good as it probably been around about 1500 when he put it in there. So what happened was the gardener told the boss, the boss got in touch with the county archaeologists. They did a full survey of it. So the archaeologist recorded it all and when they had finished, they covered it up again. Now, most people find it very strange that it isn't either in the museum or it's not on display.

The owner of the castle at the time, Kenneth Bell, asked if he could put a glass roof over some of it. And they said, no, because frost, sunlight, etc. would damage it. And so they said, well, look, it's been like this for five hundred years. like this for 500 years, it's a wonderful condition. How do we make sure it's like that in another 500 years' time? Well, we've covered it up again. That's a shame now we can't see it.

Well, unfortunately, it's one of those things. I've spoken to the new owners and said, go back to the powers that be, to see whether there is any movement on that now, because it would be wonderful to be able to... to display this. To show it off, yeah. So Edward Stafford loved to flaunt his wealth. On the other side of the building, he flaunted it with brick, and on this side, he flaunts it with glass. Glass was very expensive during the Tudor period, and very few people could have afforded to have a façade as full of glass as this.

as this. And Edward Stafford being Edward Stafford, he didn't just want to flaunt his wealth, he went well and truly over the top. If you look at the windows on the ground floor and compare them with the windows on the first floor, the windows on the ground floor are not as tall as the ones on the first floor. and the ones on the first floor are more ornate. And the reason for that was Edward Stafford had his quarters on the first floor.

His wife, the Duchess, had hers on the ground floor. You wouldn't get away with that now. And to translate for Americans, the first floor is the second floor, and the ground floor is the first floor. And the ground floor is the first floor. They say that we are a common people divided by language. Very true. There's one example of it. Now, these windows themselves were called aureole windows. And again, the style of them is the very latest of Tudor styles.

It was known as perpendicular Gothic. And basically, that was where they were they flattened out the top of the windows. Gothic itself would have had a sort of an archway, whereas these have been flattened out. So this is Edward Stafford, again, flaunting his wealth. What we also have here is a knot garden. That was K-N-O-T. Now a knot garden was a not garden was a garden divided up into geometric patterns. And originally it was divided up by different coloured paths.

Later on, we adopted the style of having low box hedges as that sort of pattern. And I'm not sure whether it was coloured paths or the low box hedges. But we do know that he had a knot garden because we know in his account know in his accounts, it said that he employed a specialist not garden. When we looked at the other side of the building, that was a fortification. There is no way this is a fortification.

This is obviously very different. You don't have glass to this extent and expect to defend it. And the other interesting issue is we've got the boundary walls here and round those boundary walls are not. are lots of windows. So again, not defendable. Why have we got those windows? Well, it's because, again, one of the very latest of fashions that Edward Stafford had had was a timbered gallery. I'm out of his quarters on the first floor, what Americans would say is the second floor, and he could say to people, come a look at my garden, don't worry about the weather.

weather, you can enjoy the garden without getting wet. This was called the privy garden or private garden. Edward Stafford would have been a very busy man. He was running the biggest business in the country. So if he wanted some peace and quiet, he would come to his privy garden. Also, that was a garden which was exclusive to him and his friends. friends. Nobody else would have had access to it. So he could come out here for a bit of peace and quiet.

The other interesting thing about this is where we've got the triangle there, that's because the timber gallery extended into the church. And he could walk out of his quarters of the second floor, round to the church and take his pew on the second floor of the church and he could look down on the rest of the congregation below. He was a very religious man, so there would have been services here very regularly. But I think that the way he took his pew on the first floor and looked down on everybody else was very much a metaphor metaphor for how Edward Stafford saw his whole life.

He saw himself as superior to everybody else. The last private owners of the castle were Mr and Mrs. Clifford. Mrs Clifford had inherited a very large estate in the Midlands called Stavely Hall and then Mr Clifford got a job down here. a job down here and as a result, Mrs. Clifford said to the estate agent, I need a house that will hold a dining table with 12 chairs with the family crest. It's got to hold 300 years of accumulated furniture and 20 life-size portraits of all my ancestors.

And as a result, they bought Thornbury Castle. About 18 months after they bought the castle, Mrs. Clifford died. And this tree was planted in memory of Mrs. Clifford. It's a tulip tree and just a few weeks ago the lovely sort of tulips were all around the branches. Now it's going into autumn. So this garden was the Goodley Garden and it would have been full of flowers and I was told by a lady gardener that this is where the ladies came to gossip.

A few weeks ago it looked fantastic. Still does. The main feature we've got here is along these walls. The recesses themselves are called. B-B-B-B-O-L-E. B-O-L-E. And the straw baskets inside them are called Skeps, S-K-E-P. And, of course, they were beehives. I think round the walls now, there are about 19 of them. Oh, wow. Extremely important, obviously, pollination at the time. Honey. Honey was a sweetener at the time. before sugar came along. We have a drink called Mead, which was an alcoholic drink made out of honey.

And of course, we still use honey and lemon sweets for medicinal purposes. But the other important thing was beeswax. Beeswax for polish and for candles. Most people would have had candles that were made out of animal fat, and they would be able to very smelly and very smoky. Not the Duke. The Duke would have had the pure light that came from a beeswax candle. So it was an important feature for the Duke. The Skeps themselves, the new owners got the baskets made so that people would understand what it looked like in the Tudor period.

They're not occupied, or if they are, it's by accident, because they have got some beehives the other side of the castle that they use. I was going to ask if they were occupied. So we're now on the other side of the building, and this is where the whole kitchen range was. At the far end, they had what they called a wet larder, which was where fresh meat would be kept. They had a dry larder where cheeses and dried fruit and the like would be kept.

They then had the dry larder where cheeses and dried fruit and the like would be kept. They then had the... ovens and they would also have been spit roasting as well and this end they had the buttery. Now in the 1970s when the owner of the castle at the time Kenneth Bell was here he decided he would make his own wine and he grew the grates out in the outer courtyard and and then they came in here for fermentation and for making into wine.

So there's a situation where you had the wine butts here in round about 1510, and then in the 1970s you had them making wine here, so there was almost some symmetry in that situation. The wine wasn't fantastic and it required a great deal of upkeep. They employed a viticulturist at one time, but then the vines themselves started to need replacing and as a result they decided it really wasn't worth it. In the 1990s, an MP introduced a bill in Parliament which changed the way people could get married.

Up until that time, they could only get married. time they could only get married in churches or registry offices. But other venues became available as a result of that act of 1994. And the castle at the time could only have very small weddings because this place was a wreck at the time. So the owner at the time, a chat named Morris Taylor, asked if he could convert this into a decent meeting room where they could hold larger weddings.

And the answer came back, yes you can, providing you match the stone that is already here. Huh. Well, of course, they got no idea where that stone came from. It had been acquired 500 years before. So eventually they went back to the powers that being said, look, this is the best we can do. And they agreed that obviously this place needs an income, and so they allowed them to use stone that was a close match. So those windows at the end, for example, are not the same stone as the rest of the building.

There is a date over the top of 1997. It is obviously a lovely venue now for large, celebrations. I had my golden wedding anniversary. Congratulations. One of the interesting things about it is because it became a ruin, what happened was castles went out of fashion. Right. And when it became a ruin, it just got left like that for a couple hundred years. And then about 1800, castles were coming back into fashion. And so as a result, the owners at the time said, oh, I want to do this.

I want to do this place up. If the Staffords had owned it all the way through, they would have probably said in about 1700, this building is dated. Let's pull it down and let's feel a Georgian mansion. So perhaps we're lucky that it was a ruin for a while. Well, here we have a doorframe from around about 15,000. 1512, something of that order. Do you want me to stand over there? No. Okay. And here we have, yet again, Edward Stafford saying to everybody, have I told you what a known of noble family I come from?

So this one here, for example, is the Bohun Antelope. The de Bohuns were a very powerful Norman family who were over here for two or three hundred 100 years and he was descended from them and that was part of his heritage. That's where he got all his wealth from. This is the fiery axle of Woodstock. Thomas of Woodstock was the fifth surviving son of King Edward III and that is where he got his royal heritage from. Over here we have the Manton of Breck, what most of us would call a cloak, but a mantle being another term for a cloak.

And the reason for that was that he was born at Brecknock Castle. Brecknock Castle, we would now, English people, would say Brecken. What the Welsh call it, I don't know, and probably couldn't pronounce it if I did know. did know. So again, this is just Edward Stafford making it absolutely clear to everybody that he's from a whole load of different noble families. So here we have a fireplace from about 15, 12, 15, 14. Again, this is Edward Stafford making it absolutely clear to anybody and everybody that he is not from just one noble family, but he is not from just one noble family, but he is.

from a whole line of them. The only other Tudor feature in here really is the architecture of that little alco. That was a very typical Tudor construction. At the time of Edward Stafford, there would have been tapestries all around the walls here. They made the place look more attractive, they stopped the echoing of the stone walls. and they could be rolled up and taken to other premises when Edward Stafford went to one of those premises. Tapestries themselves were very expensive.

They were difficult to make and they would have gold and silver thread going through them. So you could be in a situation where you spent 1,500 pounds on a tapestry. A Holbein portrait would cost you £5. Wow. You could build a warship for £1,500. So they were highly prized and very valued at that time. What we have here now is from the Victorian era from the 1850s. So for those people who are familiar with Downton Abbey, This was a bell-pull.

He pulled it out and it would ring in the butler's parlour and the butler would come in and see what you wanted. And the frieze round the top again is from the Victorian era. Stafford's that side. Howard's this side. The Howards owned the castle from the 1640s. And this panel here this panel here. commemorates the marriage of Mary Stafford. She was the last of the Stafford and she married William Howard in 1640. And the rest of the panels there are again are from various family members, either Stafford's or Howard's.

The Grace Tribe in the top left-hand corner of the flag, of the flag commemorates the year 1513. In 1513, Henry VIII went to France and he said to Edward Stafford, bring your army with you and Edward Stafford took 550 soldiers with him. And while they were there, Henry the 8th's nephew thought that that would be a good time to visit England. Henry the 8th's nephew, Henry VIII's nephew being King James IV of Scotland. So he came down from Scotland with his army and Catherine of Aragon was in charge of England at that stage and she sent an army in the opposite direction.

And they met at a place called Flodden Fields and the Scots were totally slaughtered, including King James IV of Scots. fourth of Scotland and he was the last British king killed in battle. The Howards were one of the mainstays of the English army. So in effect that grey strike with the rampant red lion of Scotland in there is effectively a battle honour from that period. The windows we've got here, again date from the Victorian era. On this side, they are mainly ones from the heritage of Edward Stafford.

So, for example, you can see that on the very left-hand side, it says Bohun. They were the de Bohuns. And then it says Woodstock, Thomas of Woodstock, which I mentioned earlier. So most of these are connected with Edward Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham. This side, we have got some of the Lords of the Manor of Thornbury. So where it says Clare, they were the de Clares, and the last of the de Clares, the de Clares were Lords of the Manor from about 1250 until the Battle of Bannockburn, which I think was 1317, if my memory serves you right.

And then the last... of the de Clares, Gilbert de Clare, was killed in that battle when Edmund II was fighting the French. It then says, Audley, Audley became Lord of the Banner after the de Clares and then Staffords and then followed by the Howard. So that commemorates the Lord to the manor from about 1250 up until the modern era. This room is now a bedroom. Originally, 500 years ago, it was a lot longer than this because this was Edward Stafford's great chamber.

This is the room where he would meet all the important people. So if local barons came to see him, he would see them here. If it was dignitaries from the people, Dignitaries from the church, such as the local abbot, again he would see them here. And all of his important employees, his accountants, his lawyers, everybody would see him here. And typical of Edward Stafford, he wants to make an impression upon them. So he does it with these windows, these glorious windows which are are the star attraction of all the glass that he has got.

But then there is another interesting feature to these windows because you can see all the way around he has got a reminder of all the families that he is descended from. If we think about the Tudors, the Tudors, the Tudors had one symbol, I guess in this day and age we would call it a logo, but they had the Tudor Rose. Not Edward Stafford, he has got to make it clear to all and sundry that he is descended from a whole line of important noble families.

When Henry VIII visited in 1535, he would have used him. used this room as his main meeting room. He was due to stay here for two days, but he actually stayed for 10 because there was plague in Bristol. So the mayor of Bristol and all the great and the good came out here. They presented Anne Boleyn with a silver cup and that obviously wasn't of much use to her for very long. But anyway, they... paid homage to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn in this area.

Well, thank you, Tony, for showing us around and Anglotopia followers around beautiful Thornbury Castle. What an incredible treat to be able to see the castle like this. Now, this is a hotel, and you can stay here yourself. There is a link to everything in our show notes, and we will also be reviewing our stay after our trip is done, so keep a look out for that on Anglotopia. If you enjoy the Anglotopia podcast, please podcast, please don't, please don't forget to subscribe, leave a comment or hit that like button.

Thank you for listening and watching and thank you Tony so much for your time and showing us around and sharing your knowledge with us. It's been a real pleasure. The pleasure was all my. Thank you.