Vanbrugh Castle

Vanbrugh Castle is a house designed and built by John Vanbrugh for his own family, located on Maze Hill on the eastern edge of Greenwich Park in London, to the north of Blackheath, with views to the west past the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich down to the Thames reaching as far as the Houses of Parliament.

The castle was designed and built after Vanbrugh had been the architect of the baroque houses at Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, and shortly after Vanbrugh succeeded his architectural mentor Christopher Wren as Surveyor to the Royal Naval Hospital in 1716. Vanbrugh took a lease of a 12-acre triangular site of the Westcombe estate from Sir Michael Biddulph, 2nd Baronet in 1718, now known as Vanbrugh Fields.

In contrast to the baroque style used for his professional commissions, he chose a more medieval, almost gothic, style for his own house. Built on the southwestern corner of the triangular site, it predates the first clearly Gothic Revival house at Strawberry Hill by 30 years. The main structure was finished in 1719, a three-storey square keep with basement built in brick with tall narrow windows, augmented on the south side square by three four-storey towers: two square flanking towers with battlements and a central projecting circular tower enclosing stairs capped by a conical copper roof. An arched corbel table below the moulded parapet is a feature unique to Vanbrugh at this date, also found at Kings Weston House (1710–1725). The building's narrow sash windows echo medieval arrowslits or lancets. A garden on the building's lead roof makes the most of the views over the Thames and London.

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