page_title: William Burges
section_title: Cardiff Castle
hierarchical_section_title: William Burges / Partnership with the Marquess of Bute / Cardiff Castle
caption_attribution_description: Design for the Summer Smoking Room at Cardiff Castle. Watercolour by Axel Herman Haig from drawings by William Burges.
context_page_description: William Burges ARA was an English architect and designer. Among the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, he sought in his work to escape from both nineteenth-century industrialisation and the Neoclassical architectural style and re-establish the architectural and social values of a utopian medieval England. Burges stands within the tradition of the Gothic Revival, his works echoing those of the Pre-Raphaelites and heralding those of the Arts and Crafts movement.
  Burges's career was short but illustrious; he won his first major commission for Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral in Cork in 1863, when he was 35, and he died, in 1881, at his Kensington home, The Tower House, aged only 53. His architectural output was small but varied. Working with a long-standing team of craftsmen, he built churches, a cathedral, a warehouse, a university, a school, houses and castles.
  Burges's most notable works are Cardiff Castle, constructed between 1866 and 1928, and Castell Coch, both of which were built for John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute.
context_section_description: In the early nineteenth century, the original Norman castle had been enlarged and refashioned by Henry Holland for the 1st Marquess, the 3rd Marquess's great-grandfather. The 2nd Marquess occupied the castle on visits to his extensive Glamorgan estates, during which he developed modern Cardiff and created Cardiff Docks as the outlet for coal and steel from the South Wales Valleys, but did little to the castle itself, beyond completing the 1st Marquess's work. 
  The 3rd Marquess despised Holland's efforts, describing the castle as having been "the victim of every barbarism since the Renaissance", and, on his coming of age, engaged Burges to undertake rebuilding on a Wagnerian scale. Almost all of Burges's usual team were involved, including Chapple, Frame and Lonsdale, creating a building which John Newman describes in Glamorgan: The Buildings of Wales as the "most successful of all the fantasy castles of the nineteenth century."
  Work began in 1868 with the 150 feet high Clock Tower, in Forest of Dean ashlar. The tower forms a suite of bachelor's rooms, the Marquess not marrying until 1872. They comprise a bedroom, a servant's room and the Summer and Winter Smoking Rooms. Externally, the tower is a re-working of a design Burges used for the unsuccessful Law Courts competition. Internally, the rooms are sumptuously decorated with gilding, carvings and cartoons, many allegorical in style, depicting the seasons, myths and fables. In his A History Of The Gothic Revival, written as the tower was being built, Charles Locke Eastlake wrote of Burges's "peculiar talents (and) luxuriant fancy." The Summer Smoking Room is the tower's literal and metaphorical culmination. It rises two storeys high and has an internal balcony that, through an unbroken band of windows, gives views to Cardiff docks, one source of Bute's wealth, the Bristol Channel, and the Welsh hills and valleys. The floor has a map of the world in mosaic and the sculpture is by Thomas Nicholls.
  As the castle was developed, work continued with alterations to Holland's Georgian range, including his Bute Tower, and to the medieval Herbert and Beauchamp Towers, and the construction of the Guest Tower and the Octagonal Tower. In plan, the castle broadly follows the arrangement of a standard Victorian stately home. The Bute Tower includes Lord Bute's bedroom and ends in another highlight, the Roof Garden, with a sculpture of the Madonna by Fucigna and painted tiles by Lonsdale. Bute's bedroom has much religious iconography and a mirrored ceiling. The Marquess's name, John, is repeated in Greek, ΙΩΑИΣ, along the ceiling beams. The Octagon Tower followed, including the oratory, built on the spot where Bute's father died, and the Chaucer Room, the roof of which Mark Girouard cites as "a superb ... example of Burges's genius in the construction of roofs." The Guest Tower contains the site of the original kitchen at its base and above, the Nursery, decorated with painted tiles depicting Aesop's Fables and characters from nursery rhymes.
  The central block of the castle comprises the two storey banqueting hall, with the library below. Both are enormous, the former to act as a suitable reception hall where the Marquess could fulfil his civic duties, the latter to hold part of his vast library. Both include elaborate carvings and fireplaces, those in the banqueting hall depicting the castle itself in the time of Robert, Duke of Normandy, who was imprisoned there in 1126–1134. The fireplace in the library contains five figures, four representing the Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew and Assyrian alphabets, while the fifth is said to represent Bute as a Celtic monk. The figures refer to the purpose of the room and to the Marquess, a noted linguist. The decoration of these large rooms is less successful than in the smaller chambers; much was completed after Burges's death and Girouard considers that the muralist, Lonsdale, "was required to cover areas rather greater than his talents deserved." 
  The central portion of the castle also included the Grand Staircase. Illustrated in a watercolour persp
caption: Burges's design for the Summer Smoking Room at Cardiff Castle
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