Museums, Детальна інформація

Henry II was a great builder at all his residences. He began to replace the old timber outer walls of the Upper Ward with a hard heath stone found ten miles south of Windsor. The basic curtain wall round the

Upper Ward, much modified by later alterations and improvements, dates from

Henry II’s time, as does the old part of the stone keep, known as the Round

Tower , on top of William’s the Conqueror’s mote. The reconstruction of the curtain wall round the Lower Ward was completed over the next sixty years.

The well-preserved section visible from the High street with its three half- round towers was built by Henry III in the 1220s.He took a keen personal interest in all his projects and carried out extensive works at Windsor.

In his time it became one of the three principal royal palaces alongside those at Westminster and Winchester. He rebuilt Henry II’s apartments in the Lower Ward and added there a large new chapel, all forming a coherently planned layout round a courtyard with a cloister; parts survive embedded in later structures in the Lower Ward. He also further improved the royal private apartments in the Upper Ward.

The outstanding medieval expansion of Windsor, however, took place in the reign of Edward III. His huge building project at the Castle was probably the most ambitious single architectural scheme in the whole history of the English royal residences, and cost the astonishing total of 50,772 pounds. Rebuilt with the proceeds of the King’s military triumphs, the Castle was converted by Edward III into a fortified palace redolent of chivalry The stone base was and military glory, as the centre of his court and the seat of his newly founded Order of the Garter

.Even today, the massive Gothic architecture of Windsor reflects Edward

III’s medieval ideal of Christian, chivalric monarchy as clearly as Louis

XIY’s Versailles represents baroque absolutism.

The Lower Ward was reconstructed, the old royal lodgings being transformed into the College of St George, and a new cloister, which still survives, built with traceeried windows. In addition there were to be twenty-six Poor Knights. Henry III’s chapel was made over for their use, rebuilt and renamed St George’s Chapel.

The reconstruction of the Upper Ward was begun in 1357 with new royal lodgings built of stone under the direction of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester. An inner gatehouse with cylindrical towers was built at the entrance to the Upper Ward.Stone-vaulted undercrofts supported extensive royal apartments on the first floor with separate sets of rooms for the

King and the Queen ( as was the tradition of the English royal palaces),arranged round two inner courtyards later known as Brick Court and Horn Court .Along the south side, facing the quadrangle, were the Great

Hall and Royal Chapel end to end. Edward IY built the present larger St

George’s Chapel to the west of Henry III’s.Henry YII remodelled the old chapel ( now the Albert Memorial Chapel) at its east end; he also added a new range to the west of the State Apartments which Elizabeth I extended by a long gallery .

During the English Civil War in the mid-seventeenth century, the

Castle was seized by Parliamentary forces who ill-treated the buildings and used part of them as a prison for Royalists.

At the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 Charles II was determined to reinstate the old glories of the Crown after the interval of the

Commonwealth. Windsor was his favourite non-metropolitan palace and it was the only one which could be effectively garrisoned.

The architect Hugh May was appointed in 1673 to supervise the work and over the next eleven years the Upper Ward and State Apartments were reconstructed. The result was both ingenious and magnificent, making the

Upper Ward the most unusual palace in baroque Europe.

The interior was a rich contrast to the austerity of the exterior and formed the first and grandest sequence of baroque State Apartments in

England.The ceilings were painted by Antonio Verrio, an Italian artist brought from Paris by the Duke of Montagu, Charles II’s ambassador to

Louis XIY. The walls were wainscoted in oak and festooned with brilliant virtuoso carvings by Grinling Gibbons and Henry Phillips of fruit, flowers, fish and birds The climax of Charles II’s reconstruction was

St George’s Hall and the King’s Chapel with murals by Verrio. In the former there were historical scenes of Edward III and the Black Prince, as well as Charles II in Grater robes enthroned in glory, and in the latter

Christ’s miracles and the Last Supper. All were destroyed by Wyatville inn

1829. The source of inspiration for the new rooms at Windsor was the

France of Louis XIY, but the use of wood rather than coloured marbles gave Windsor a different character and established a fashion which was copied in many English country houses.

William III and the early Hanoverian kings spent more time at Hampton

Court than at Windsor. Windsor, however, came back into its own in the reign of George III, who disliked Hampton Court, which had unhappy memories for him