Lions from Venice. Tapestries once owned by the Medici family. Ceilings inspired by Venetian palazzi. A Florentine altarpiece. This isn’t a list of things that you’d necessarily expect to find in Herefordshire, but they are all things you’ll find at Eastnor. Because Eastnor, despite being an English castle, doesn’t feel English at all. Instead, its décor reflects the tastes and travel habits of generations of aesthetes – and that means, thanks to the 3rd Earl, parts of Eastnor reflect the aesthetics of Renaissance Italy.
‘There are a lot of “classical” looks in country houses from people who went on their Grand Tours, but not many that have such a Renaissance Italian look,’ explains castle resident Imo Hervey-Bathurst. ‘Everywhere you look, there is a theme of Italy that really comes through.’
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the “Grand Tour” – an extended cultural trip across Europe, seen as a rite of passage for young aristocratic men – introduced to Georgian society a mania for all things classical. Think of the abundance of Grecian statues or huge columns you often see at other country houses: these would have been collected by young men on their “gap year”-style tours around the continent.
But Eastnor’s 3rd Earl, Charles Somers-Cocks, came a little later, taking possession of the castle in the 1850s – after the Grand Tour craze had largely passed. He was a great aesthete and, rather than chasing down ancient urns or marble statues in Rome or Pompeii, became obsessed with Renaissance Italy: Venice, Florence, Mantua, Siena.
He wasn’t alone in this. Along with his wife Virginia, he moved within the wider Pre-Raphaelite circle (artist GF Watts, one of the Pre-Raphaelites’ contemporaries, was a regular dinner guest – read more about that here), who were deeply inspired by early Renaissance Italy.
He was also close friends with the explorer Sir Austen Henry Layard, who was known for his excavations of Nineveh in the 19th century and shared the Earl’s fascination with art and architecture. The pair travelled to Italy together throughout the 1840s and ’50s, resulting in the Earl creating his own paintings of Italy, and, on a larger scale, commissioning a Renaissance feel in a few of Eastnor’s rooms. Some of the best examples of this are in the Long Library.
The library is largely unchanged since the Earl’s days, decked with 17th-century tapestries that once belonged to Marie de’ Medici. These formerly hung in a palazzo in Mantua and were then thought to first have found their way to Fontainebleau Palace in France, before being bought by a Russian princess and then, in the 1860s, arrived at Eastnor. The Earl was attracted by the richly embroidered scenes, which depict episodes from a poem celebrating Catherine de' Medici by comparing her to the ancient Queen Artemisia.
Their appeal hasn't faded. When Eastnor collaborated with Watts 1874 to create a wallpaper collection, motifs from these very same tapestries were transformed into wallpaper panels.
The benches in the library also have a Medici connection; look closely at the backs and you will see the Medici crest carved into the wood. The fireplace, meanwhile, is based on casts taken from the Doge’s Palace in Venice, which were wielded by a Verona sculptor, commissioned by the Earl, creating the intricate marble designs you see today. The coiffured ceiling of the library is also highly detailed in a Venetian style; as Imo puts it, ‘without looking out of the windows, you could be in a Venetian palazzo’.
The State Bedroom also borrows Venetian symbols, most notably St Mark’s Lion, the symbol of Venice, which reclines over the door. The room also contains an altarpiece sourced from a church in Florence, as well as an intricately carved Genoese cupboard. The 3rd Earl himself used these rooms, which is probably why they feel so Italianate – and grand, with the rich Eastnor reds and elaborate carvings.
There is the Italian Bedroom too, of course, which is hung with depictions of Italy painted by the Earl while travelling around the country. And then there are the grounds, which he planted with trees from warmer climates – and would have seemed very exotic to the Victorians. In fact, when viewed from the Octagon Room, the grounds would have had an Italianate feel – which is exactly what the Earl was after.
‘The thing I love most about Eastnor is that it doesn’t feel very English,’ summarises Imo. ‘It feels alive.’
Perhaps that's the real legacy of the 3rd Earl’s Italian obsession. He didn't simply recreate the Renaissance Italy he loved; he captured how it felt. Nearly two centuries later, Eastnor still carries that “un-English” feeling remarkably well.