Qualla: Mereworth Castle

Mereworth Castle: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It is not a castle. The name is a fossil from the 14th century, when the original fortified manor on this site had a licence to crenellate - to add battlements - granted by the Crown in 1332. The building that stands at Mereworth today is something else entirely: a domed villa designed in 1723 by the Scottish architect Colen Campbell, modelled almost exactly on Andrea Palladio's Villa Rotonda outside Vicenza. Drop it into the Veneto and it would look at home. Drop it into the Kent Weald, surrounded by oast houses and hop fields, and it looks like a postcard from somewhere else entirely.

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Mereworth Castle: Inheriting the Manor

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The manor of Mereworth came to Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland, in the early 17th century. Fane inherited it through his mother Mary Neville - who held the title of Baroness le Despenser in her own right - the sole daughter and heiress of Henry Nevill, 6th Baron Bergavenny....

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Mereworth Castle: The Italians in Kent

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The interior fitted out with talent imported from Italy. Giovanni Bagutti, a Swiss-Italian stuccoist who had worked on St Paul's Cathedral and Castle Howard, did the plasterwork. Francesco Sleter - a Venetian painter who became one of the most sought-after fresco artists in early...

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Mereworth Castle: Through the Hands of the Aristocracy

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The house passed through descent to the Barons Oranmore and Browne - an Anglo-Irish peerage whose third holder also became Baron Mereworth in 1926, so that since then the two titles have been united. The Oranmore family sold Mereworth in 1930. During the Second World War, the bui...

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Mereworth Castle: The Gulf Owner

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Since 1976, Mereworth Castle has belonged to Mahdi Al-Tajir, who paid $1.2 million for it. Al-Tajir was for a time the United Arab Emirates' ambassador to the United Kingdom; he also owns the Highland Spring bottled water company - the brand pulled from the Ochil Hills of Scotlan...

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Mereworth Castle: Palladio in the Weald

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Why does a near-copy of an Italian Renaissance villa exist in rural Kent? The short answer is the British 18th-century obsession with classical architecture - an obsession driven by the Grand Tour, by the Whig political class's wish to associate itself with the Roman Republic, an...

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