Royal Connections

Royal Connections walking tour

Welcome to Marlborough College. As part of Marlborough’s celebrations to mark the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, we are delighted to offer this walking tour of the royal connections of our campus. These connections, some factual and some perhaps not, include to the Court of King Arthur, bad King John and the favourite wife of Henry VIII. The buildings and monuments you will see span the Neolithic to the modern and the College has buildings designed by an extraordinary range of architects including Sir Edward Blore, the architect of Buckingham Palace.

The map inside the back cover of this booklet shows you the route to follow and provides the interesting royal stories of the buildings we suggest you stop at. The walking tour takes about 30 minutes and you will exit the campus back on to the High Street at the pedestrian lights near the Pewsey Road roundabout.

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COURT

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ourt has always been the heart of the campus and C House is the oldest house in the College having been built as an aristocratic mansion house in the eighteen century. When Jane Seymour married Henry VIII and produced the long-sought male heir – the future Boy King Edward VI – the Seymours (a local family living at Wolf Hall just south of Savernake Forest) were in favour and Henry made Jane’s brother the 1st Duke of Somerset and the old Marlborough Castle Estate.

Lady Hertford

The mansion house you see today, which was known as Castle House, was built in 1718 by the 6th Duke of Somerset as a wedding gift for his son, Lord Hertford. Lord and Lady Hertford lived here as their family home for most of the next 30 years. Lady Hertford raised her two children here and took a great interest in developing the garden.

Lord Hertford eventually became the 7th Duke of Somerset but enjoyed the title for only a year before he died ca 1750.

At this point the estates were split up and Castle House was left to the Duke of Rutland, who decided to let it out as a coaching inn. From 1752, until the opening of the Great Western Railway put it out of business in 1842, the Castle Inn was THE place to stay on the way to or from taking the waters in Bath. William Pitt the Elder even ran the country for a while from here when suffering from gout.

Looking round the Court, you can see a wide range of architectural styles: including the “Jacobethan” North Block (the building attached to the Porter’s Lodge where you came in), with its roof abundantly adorned with an array of heraldic coats of arms that tell the story of great families associated throughout history with this area; to the adjacent Museum building, a fine example of the Queen Anne revival, and the more modern Norwood Hall designed by David Wyn Roberts in 1959.

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CHAPEL

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n 1846, a chapel was commissioned from the fashionable architect, Edward Blore (1787– 1879), one of the pioneers of the Gothic Revival, who restored Westminster Abbey and worked for the King at Windsor, Buckingham Palace and Hampton Court. His chapel at Marlborough cost just under £7,000. Its design was far too wide for its length, its details were clumsy and it was built very badly. Despite ongoing extensive refurbishments by eminent church architects, Bodley and

Edward Blore

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Garner, it was decided in 1884 that a completely new chapel had to be built; and that the old one, which was only 36 years old, should be demolished.

The new chapel was built between 1884 and 1886 at the cost of £31,000 with an external length of 178 feet and an internal height of 60 feet. All of the decorative themes and motifs were conceived to celebrate the name of the chapel: St Michael and All Angels. The exterior of the apse is adorned with statues of St. Michael, St. Gabriel and St. Raphael, and beneath these figures are St. George, St. Andrew, St. Patrick and St. David: these lower figures were given to the college by local tradesmen.

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MEMORIAL HALL

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pened in 1925 by HRH The Duke of Connaught as a memorial to the 749 Marlburians who died in the First World War, the Memorial Hall was designed by Old Marlburian architect, William G Newton. The names of the fallen are inscribed on the wall around the back of the ambulatory. In the West Lobby, there is also a locked cabinet containing the Rolls of Honour: a large book for each boarding house with a photo and a citation for each man killed in action. Outside, in the centre of the Hall’s imposing York stone-paved forecourt, there is a hexagonal flower bed surrounded on each side by a large flower pot. The six flower pots represent the six years (1914–1919) during which men died.

Alongside its original dedication as a war memorial, the Memorial Hall is also a world-class orchestral hall with an adjustable acoustic. A major fundraising campaign enabled the Hall to be refurbished in 2018 creating the first-class performance venue it is today, serving both the school and the local community and attracting performers of international renown to the Marlborough College Concert Series. The building was officially re-opened by HRH Princess Eugenie, who attended the College as a pupil in 2003–8.

HRH The Duke of Connaught

Marlborough College Concert Series

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MOUND AND GROTTO

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he Wiltshire landscape around Stonehenge, Avebury and Silbury Hill is at the heart of prehistoric Britain, and has World Heritage designation.

The Marlborough Mound has recently been confirmed by archaeological exploration to be the Neolithic contemporary of all these important sites.

Recent coring of the Mound produced four samples of charcoal, allowing radiocarbon dating for the first time. The samples were taken from two bore holes through the height of the 19m monument, showing that it was built in the years around 2400 BC. The Mound has been interwoven with local folklore for hundreds of years.

The town’s motto, Ubi nunc sapientis ossa Merlini (‘Where now are the bones of wise Merlin?’), echoes the myth which convinced generations that Merlin’s bones were buried under the Mound. These were the seductive Arthurian legends that may have drawn the interest of Tennyson and William Morris back to their connections with Marlborough and its Mound – or ‘Merlin’s Barrow’, as the burghers of the town called it.

The Grotto

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Duke of Somerset

Etching made by Stukeley

In the 1620s or 1630s, the resident Duke of Somerset built a summerhouse on top of the Mound. He had a spiral walk-way cut to enable ladies to promenade for half a mile from the garden below up to the summerhouse without having to walk up steep gradients. Such ‘snail mounds’ were the height of fashion in gardens of that day.

The area you are standing in is known as The Wilderness and was once the ‘artfully wild’ part of the formal gardens of the main house in the early 1700s.

A detailed etching made by Stukeley and dated 1724 clearly shows it as such when Lady Hertford conceived her plans for the garden. She created a focal point to this garden by erecting a flint building at the very bottom of the Mound’s spiral path, which became a decorated Grotto. She could view her garden from the shelter of this Grotto and, by a system of pipes, water from a tank on top of the Mound could be made to flow through bowls and around the Grotto. The whole ‘cascade’ effect was emphasised by a profusion of periwinkles surrounding the ensemble. Lady Hertford would often summon poets residing with her to declaim their verses to her while sitting in the Grotto. Amongst the most famous was James Thomson. At the time, his work was in just about every household and his words to Rule Britannia made him quite a controversial figure.

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NORMAN CASTLE

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hen the Normans arrived here the Mound was already 3,500 years old and, finding it larger than the mottes which they usually made for their castles and close to the River, they decided to make it the nucleus of their Marlborough Castle. They built a Keep on top of it which must have contained a dungeon because there are records of it containing a chapel dedicated to St Leonard, the patron saint of prisoners, and the early castle would have had a moat going all round it with a separate mini drawbridge and gatehouse controlling access to the Mound.

The Castle was originally built in 1068 mainly in wood and later, as its importance increased, it was re-built in stone. All of the Kings from William I to Henry III were at Marlborough regularly and Savernake Forest became a favourite royal hunting ground. The Castle became one of King John’s favourite residences and he spent 135 nights at Marlborough. He married Isabella of Gloucester here in 1189 and his son Henry III was baptised in the Castle’s Chapel of St Nicholas. It reached its Savernake Forest peak of importance in Henry III’s time (roughly 1220 to 1270) and he went on to spend £2,000 on buildings at the Castle. This was an enormous sum of money in the thirteenth century. After ca 1300, the Castle lost its military importance and was gradually allowed to fall into disuse. In 1460, most of the stone was recycled to build St Peter’s Church. Even when no castle existed the old Castle Estate remained as Royal property until late in the reign of Henry VIII as the Castle Farm continued to be a welcome source of Royal revenue.

You can see the results of archaeological investigations which are being carried out by pupils under the experienced eye of Tony Roberts of Archeoscan.

These have already uncovered a significant section of the curtain wall of the Norman royal castle.

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MASTER’S LODGE

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he Master’s Lodge is another College building that was designed by Edward Blore, the designer of Royal Palaces. It was constructed in 1845–8, with a porch added by William White in the 1860s. The beautiful garden that stretches down to the River Kennet is probably the most remarkable feature. The very large copper beech trees at the far end are known as the Tennyson beeches because Alfred, Lord Tennyson, regularly stayed at the Lodge and mused in the gardens whilst his son, Hallam, was a pupil at the College in the 1860s.

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Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Tennyson beeches

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WALKING TOUR ROUTE Please take the route marked below and stop at each of the numbered buildings to read the royal stories which are told in this leaflet.

1. Court 2. Chapel 3. Memorial Hall 4. Mound and Grotto 5. Norman Castle 6. Master’s Lodge

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Thank you for taking our walking tour and reading the tales from across the centuries of Marlborough College’s royal history. We hope you enjoy the rest of this special Queen’s Platinum Jubilee weekend at Marlborough.

SATURDAY 4 JUNE Royal Connections walking tour 9.30 – 12.30pm Classic Car parade and show on the High Street Family Festival in The Parade Celebratory quarter peal of bells at St Mary’s and St George’s 12 noon

SUNDAY 5 JUNE The Great Marlborough Bake Off 2 – 4pm Manton Street party 2 – 5pm Royal Picnic on The Common 2 – 10pm St Peter’s Church open all weekend for Festival of Flags & Flowers, Tower tours, pop-up dining and picnics

MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE, MARLBOROUGH, WILTSHIRE SN8 1PA WWW.MARLBOROUGHCOLLEGE.ORG @MARLBOROUGHCOL

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