Maxstoke Castle
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Maxstoke Castle is a privately owned moated castle dating from medieval times situated to the north of Maxstoke, Warwickshire. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade I listed building
It was built by Sir William de Clinton, 1st Earl of Huntingdon, in 1345 to a rectangular plan, with octagonal towers at each angle , a gatehouse on the east, and a residential range on the west, the whole surrounded by a broad moat. Additions were made by Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham who acquired it in 1437 by exchanging it for other manors in Northamptonshire. The castle is unusual in that it has survived largely intact.
Amongst the antiquities there is a 15th century chair upon which Henry VII was crowned after the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, a table owned by Sir Everard Digby (cousin to the Digbys of Coleshill) around which the Gunpowder Plot was planned in 1605, and a 'Whispering Door' (two doors with a common jamb) brought from Kenilworth Castle.
The present owners, the Fetherston-Dilkes, came into possession in the 17th century. During the Civil War Maxstoke was garrisoned for Parliament. The garrison musters reveal that between March 1644 to October 1645, the Captain of the garrison was Mr Henry Kendall Sen. lord of the manor of Austrey. His son Henry Kendall Jun. was his lieutenant. The garrison included several of their Austrey tenants: William Smart (a joiner's son), Henry Orton, Henry Spencer and John Crispe. Source: [P.R.O. Exchequer SP28/121A-122]
In the 18th century William Dilke of Maxstoke married Mary Fetherstone-Leigh of Packwood House near Knowle. Since then the two families and houses have been closely linked.
Maxstoke Castle is opened to the public on rare occasions, in aid of local charities.
The parkland of Maxstoke has been a golf course since 1948. At one time the land was listed as a deer park; deer can still be seen there.
[edit] The Fetherston-Dilkes
Captain Charles Fetherston-Dilke died aged 85 in 2007. He co-ordinated the Royal Navy's aid to the islanders of Tristan da Cunha when its volcano unexpectedly erupted in 1961; he devoted his later years to restoring his family house, Maxstoke Castle in Warwickshire.
As fleet operations officer at Cape Town, 1,650 miles away from the world's most remote inhabited island, he dispatched the frigate Leopard to rescue the islanders. When she arrived three days later the mound of hot lava had grown to a height of 250 ft and the population of 290 had been evacuated by a passing Dutch liner. Crew members entered the islanders' houses to bring out their valuables in the belief that the islanders would never return, and also shot the dogs that had been left behind. Using a slide rule, Fetherston-Dilke had correctly worked out that the ship could just get back to Cape Town, travelling at 25 mph, with little fuel left.
The son of a doctor in the Nigerian colonial service, and a kinsman of the Victorian MP Sir Charles Dilke, Charles Beaumont Fetherston-Dilke was born on April 4 1921. At 13 he went to Dartmouth, to which he was followed by his brother Tim, who became the Chief Coastguard; their sister Mary was Matron-in-Chief of Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service.
As a midshipman Fetherston-Dilke served in the battleship Rodney and was in Juno at the battle of Calabria in 1940. After sub-lieutenants' courses at Portsmouth that were interrupted by heavy air raids in which several brother officers were killed, he spent more than two years on Atlantic convoy duties in Malcolm and Hurricane. He served in the Captain class frigate Hotham off Normandy on D-Day, then qualified as a diver, and was an anti-submarine warfare officer in Cossack during the Korean War. Fetherston-Dilke became naval attaché at Copenhagen and naval deputy to the British military representative at Shape in Paris before retiring in 1968.
His father died that year, leaving him Maxstoke, which had been in the family since 1599, and a large death duties bill. The 14th-century castle had been used for storing aircraft engines while a prisoner-of-war camp was built in the park. With the aid of local craftsmen, Fetherston-Dilke embarked on restoring the fine collection of armour and dredging the moat, the first time this had been done in 150 years.
In addition to becoming chairman of Warwickshire County Council and serving as High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1774 and later as Vice-Lord Lieutenant, he was an accomplished member of the longbow society, Woodmen of Arden. He liked to make speeches in verse at weddings.
Charles Fetherston-Dilke, who died on April 2, is survived by his wife, Pauline, whom he married in 1943, and by a daughter and a son.
