Early years The first written records about the estate are dated 749, when an Anglo-Saxon king granted the estate to the
Bishops of Winchester. The original site was also recorded in the
Domesday Book of 1086. In the late 14th century
William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, built a medieval palace (bishop's residence) and gardens in the park. An itinerary of King
Edward II lists him as spending 2 September 1320 with
Rigaud of Assier, the Bishop of Winchester, at Bishop's Clere, alias Highclere. The same tour has him on 31 August 1320 at
Sandleford Priory, where he apparently stayed for the night, and on 29 and 30 August he was at
Crookham, Berkshire. In 1551 during the
English Reformation King
Edward VI confiscated the property from the
Church of England. In 1692, Sawyer bequeathed the mansion at Highclere to his only daughter, Margaret Sawyer, the first wife of the
8th Earl of Pembroke, Thomas Herbert. Their second son,
Robert Sawyer Herbert, inherited Highclere, began its portrait collection and created the garden temples. His nephew and heir
Henry Herbert was created
Baron Porchester and later Earl of Carnarvon by
George III.
Milles and Pococke families In 1680, Sir Robert Sawyer presented the living of Highclere to the Rev
Isaac Milles (1638–1720) the elder, who remained there till his death. White Oak was the parsonage where Milles took pupils, including the many children of
Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke, who was by marriage the new proprietor of Highclere. The Rev Isaac Milles the younger (fl. 1701–1727) carried on his father's school at Highclere. Elizabeth, the daughter of Milles the younger, married Reverend Richard Pococke LL.B. (1660–1710) and had the Rt Rev
Richard Pococke (1704–1765), who, having been educated by his grandfather Milles at his school at Highclere rectory, went on to become domestic chaplain to
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, and then Bishop of Ossory and Meath, as well as a renowned travel writer and
orientalist. Bishop Pococke was one of the first to collect seeds of the
Cedar of Lebanon, which he did during his tour of Lebanon in 1738. Some of these seeds germinated and grew at Highclere and
Wilton House, but probably also at nearby
Sandleford and his family's own
Newtown House, Hampshire. Coincidentally, the apparently unrelated (and earlier) Rev
Edward Pococke (1604–1691), another orientalist, was sometime vicar of
Chieveley and then rector of
Childrey (both nearby in Berkshire), and was an even earlier importer of the cedar. And of his six sons, the eldest, Edward Pococke (1648–1727) was chaplain to the
Earl of Pembroke, and rector of Minall or
Mildenhall, Wiltshire (1692), and canon of Salisbury (1675).
William Cobbett's description William Cobbett (1763–1835) in his journal of 2 November 1821, while at
Hurstbourne Tarrant wrote: I came from
Berghclere this morning, and through the park of Lord Caernarvon, at Highclere. It is a fine season to look at woods. The oaks are still covered, the beeches in their best dress, the elms yet pretty green, and the beautiful ashes only beginning to turn off. This is, according to my fancy, the prettiest park that I have ever seen. A great variety of hill and dell. A good deal of water, and this, in one part, only wants the colours of American trees to make it look like a creek; for the water runs along at the foot of a steepish hill, thickly covered with trees, and the branches of the lowermost trees hang down into the water and hide the bank completely. I like this place better than
Fonthill,
Blenheim,
Stowe, or any other gentleman's grounds that I have seen. The house I did not care about, though it appears to be large enough to hold half a village. The trees are very good, and the woods would be handsomer if the larches and firs were burnt, for which only they are fit. The great beauty of the place is, the lofty downs, as steep, in some places, as the roof of a house, which form a sort of boundary, in the form of a part of a crescent, to about a third part of the park, and then slope off and get more distant, for about half another third part. A part of these downs is covered with trees, chiefly beech, the colour of which, at this season, forms a most beautiful contrast with that of the down itself, which is so green and so smooth! From the vale in the park, along which we rode, we looked apparently almost perpendicularly up at the downs, where the trees have extended themselves by seed more in some places than others, and thereby formed numerous salient parts of various forms, and, of course, as many and as variously formed glades. These, which are always so beautiful in forests and parks, are peculiarly beautiful in this lofty situation and with verdure so smooth as that of these chalky downs. Our horses beat up a score or two of hares as we crossed the park; and, though we met with no gothic arches made of Scotch-fir, we saw something a great deal better; namely, about forty cows, the most beautiful that I ever saw, as to colour at least. They appear to be of the
Galway-breed. They are called, in this country, Lord Caernarvon's breed. They have no horns, and their colour is a ground of white with black or red spots, these spots being from the size of a plate to that of a crown-piece; and some of them have no small spots. These cattle were lying down together in the space of about an acre of ground: they were in excellent condition, and so fine a sight of the kind I never saw.
19th century The house was then a square, classical mansion, but, after an abortive exterior remodelling by
Thomas Hopper in
Greek Revival style for the second Earl, it was remodelled and largely rebuilt for the third Earl following a design by
Sir Charles Barry in 1842–1849 during his construction of the
Houses of Parliament. It is in the
Jacobethan style and faced in
Bath stone, Barry had been inspired to become an architect by the Renaissance architecture of Italy and was very proficient at working in the Renaissance-based style that became known in the 19th century as
Italianate architecture. At Highclere, however, he worked in the Jacobethan style, but added to it some of the motifs of the Italianate style. This is particularly noticeable in the towers, which are slimmer and more refined than those of
Mentmore Towers, the other great Jacobethan house built in the same era. Barry produced an alternative design in a more purely
Italian Renaissance style, which was rejected by Lord Carnarvon. The external walls are decorated with
strapwork designs typical of
Northern European Renaissance architecture. The Italian Renaissance theme is more evident in the interiors. In the saloon, in an attempt to resemble a medieval English
great hall, Barry's assistant
Thomas Allom introduced a Gothic influence evident in the points rather than curves of the arches, and the mock-
hammerbeam roof. Although the exterior of the north, east and south sides were completed before the 3rd Earl died in 1849 and Sir Charles Barry died in 1860, the interior and the west wing (designated as servants' quarters) were far from complete. The 4th Earl turned to the architect
Thomas Allom, who had worked with Barry, to supervise work on the interior of the castle, which was completed in 1878. The 1st Earl had his park laid out according to a design by
Capability Brown in 1774–1777, moving the village in the process—the remains of the church of 1689 are at the north-west corner of the castle. The
Lebanon Cedars are believed to be descended from seeds brought to England from
Lebanon by the 17th-century seed collector
Edward Pococke.
The founding of Canada In the 1860s, the
4th Earl drafted the
British North America Act 1867 at the castle alongside the first
Prime Minister of Canada John A. Macdonald,
George-Étienne Cartier and
Alexander Tilloch Galt, who signed the visitor book in 1866. The 4th Earl presented the act to Parliament in February 1867. The passage of the act later that year represented the legal expression of
Canadian Confederation and the establishment of
Canada in its present institutional form; the act forms the framework of the
Constitution of Canada to this day. After the discovery of documents between him and
John A. Macdonald, showing eight weeks of nearly daily correspondence,
Janice Charette, the
Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, recognised the central role of the 4th Earl in the creation of Canada by planting a maple tree on the lawn on 11 January 2018.
20th century George Herbert, the 5th Earl married the rich heiress
Almina Wombwell, the daughter of the bank heir
Alfred de Rothschild (1842–1918), a son of
Lionel de Rothschild. Thus Lord Carnarvon received a very large dowry. Rothschild
père also made her the heiress to his vast fortune. At the beginning of
World War I, a hospital for war wounded was opened at Highclere Castle, with
Lady Carnarvon helping with the organisation and assisting as a nurse. The castle became home to
Egyptian artefacts after the 5th Earl, an enthusiastic amateur
Egyptologist, sponsored the excavation of nobles' tombs in Deir el-Bahari (
Thebes) in 1907, and employed archaeologist
Howard Carter in the search for the
tomb of Tutankhamun. During
World War II the castle housed evacuee children. Some Allied aircraft crashed onto the estate; sections of a downed
B-17 Flying Fortress are held at the castle.
21st century In September 2001, upon the death of his father,
George Reginald Oliver Molyneux Herbert (born 10 November 1956) became the 8th Earl of Carnarvon. In the 21st century Lord and Lady Carnarvon undertook significant repairs and restoration work at Highclere. This included major repairs to the roof. In 2007, they created the Egyptian Exhibition, which lies in the cellars of the castle and tells the story of the discovery of
Tutankhamun's tomb by the 5th Earl. The castle was used as the main filming location for the
ITV/
PBS drama series
Downton Abbey, which brought the castle international fame. The increased numbers of visitors to the castle have allowed for repairs on Highclere's turrets and its interior. The family now live in Highclere Castle at various times throughout the year, but return to their cottage when the castle is open to the public. In 2024, a medieval barn (c. 1438) on the estate was being restored. ==Highclere Park==