Belvoir Castle

The first castle went up immediately after the Norman Conquest, on high ground within the wapentake of Framland that looked across into the wapentake of Winnibriggs in Lincolnshire and dominated both. The land was Robert de Todeni's, recorded as such in the Domesday Book of 1086, and passed from him to William d'Aubigny and in time to William's granddaughter Isabel, who married Robert de Ros around 1234. Belvoir was a royal manor until it was granted to Robert de Ros in 1257, and he was licensed to crenellate ten years later. The antiquary John Leland, who died in 1552, put the siting plainly: "the Castle stands on the very nape of a high hill, steep up each way, partly by nature, partly by the working of men's hands".

The name is Norman French for a beautiful view, carried over — as the present Duchess of Rutland tells it — by French speakers in the 11th century. English tongues could not manage it and settled instead on "Beaver Castle", which is how it is still said.

By 1464 the Norman castle was recorded as ruins. When the male de Ros line failed in 1508 the manor and castle went to George Manners, 11th Baron de Ros, nephew of the last baron, who inherited castle and barony through his mother; his son was created Earl of Rutland in 1525. In 1528 Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland, began a large Tudor manor house on the site, finished in 1555 and built substantially of stone carted from Croxton Abbey and Belvoir Priory after their dissolution.

The Tudor house drew royal company, and more of it than it could hold. Tents were pitched at Belvoir in April 1603 to lodge the retinue of James VI and I, and new ovens were built for the visit; Prince Henry and the Venetian ambassador Antonio Foscarini stayed in August 1612. It was also the setting of the Flower witch trial: in the early 17th century three servants, Joan, Margaret and Phillipa Flower, were accused of murdering the 6th Earl's two young sons by witchcraft. Joan died in prison, and Margaret and Phillipa were hanged.

In the Civil War Belvoir was garrisoned for the king, and Charles I spent a night there on his way into Lincolnshire. The family paid for that allegiance: in 1649 Parliamentarian forces razed the Tudor building. Rebuilding began in 1654 to designs by the architect John Webb, and the new family house was finished by 1668 at a cost of £11,730. The 9th Earl was created Duke of Rutland in 1703.

In 1799 the 5th Duke of Rutland married Lady Elizabeth Howard, and the new duchess chose James Wyatt to rebuild the house as a romantic Gothic Revival castle. The duke, one of the wealthiest landholders in the kingdom, sold seven villages and the land around them to pay for it. The duchess laid out the gardens in the same year, working with the natural amphitheatre that glacial moraines had left facing the estate and its freshwater springs. Later, under the head gardener William Divers, Belvoir became known for mass spring bedding.

The work was close to done when fire almost destroyed it on 26 October 1816. Pictures by Titian, Rubens, van Dyck and Reynolds burned, and the loss was reckoned at £120,000. It was rebuilt to largely the same designs for a further £82,000 and was substantially complete by 1832, the second campaign directed chiefly by Sir James Thornton, the duke's friend and chaplain and Vicar of nearby Bottesford. Afternoon tea is traced to the house. Dinner at Belvoir in the 1840s came between 7.00 and 8.30, and Anna, Duchess of Bedford, found the afternoon too long to bridge on a light luncheon. She took to tea and sandwiches in her rooms, then to inviting friends to join her, and the habit spread.

The Manners family had always been buried at St Mary the Virgin in Bottesford, three miles north, which houses the monuments of all eight Earls of Rutland. That changed when Elizabeth Howard died in 1825: the 5th Duke built a mausoleum beside the castle in that year, had most of the 18th-century monuments moved out of Bottesford church into it, and made it the family's main place of burial. The first five dukes lie there, along with Violet Manners, Duchess of Rutland, the 10th Duke, and Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich, son-in-law of the 8th Duke, with his wife Diana.

The estate around it runs to almost 15,000 acres and is the headquarters of the Belvoir Hunt, the Duke of Rutland's Hounds, established in 1750 and now kennelled half a mile south-east of the castle. Belvoir remains the private property of the Duke of Rutland, and has been the home of the Manners family for five hundred years.