Feudal splendours

In the second of two articles on this outstanding castle, John Martin Robinson describes the transformative representation of the Victorian interiors over the past three decades

- John Martin Robinson

IN January 1923, Chips Channon, a young American socialite—later a Conservative MP—stayed at Arundel Castle. ‘An enormous party of over fifty here, mostly young, in celebration of Lady Rachel Howard’s “coming out”,’ he noted in his diary. ‘Arundel is so feudal and medieval (although much restored) that one expects beefeaters to bring in one’s tea. There are moats, battlements and portcullis… Somehow it has more atmosphere than Windsor, if less comfortable… A ball this evening in the great barons’ hall to which all the county came… we were over seventy at dinner and assembled in the… Gothic library-gallery and processed in state into the dining room. The castle itself is quite bare of interesting furniture and tapestry and only a few mediocre pictures.’

His account offers a fascinating vignette of how the large public rooms of the castle with their Georgian plan and Victorian archi- tecture worked when en fête for special parties. What he says about the paucity of the contents, however, is surprising. The Barons’ Hall (Fig 2) would, of course, have been cleared for the dance and Channon presumably did not attend the Catholic services in the chapel, so he would have missed the rare quattrocento paintings and carvings there. His comment, however, underlines the degree to which the castle as it is decorated and arranged today in common with other great houses such as Chatsworth in Derbyshire, Houghton in Norfolk, Wilton in Wiltshire or Grimsthorpe in Lincolnshire-owes its modern interiors to 20th-century revival and is much more magnificent and splendid than before the Second World War.