Ear away from the Castle the park is entirely
natural and unconfined, but around the house--for an actual "castle"
is non-existent--magnificent avenues of rhododendrons make a perfect
blaze of colour in the early summer. The "Jacobean" pile high on the
hillside is so only in name, for it was built by the architect of Big
Ben. Once a favourite residence of the Bishops of Winchester, the
Castle passed to the Crown in the sixteenth century and then, after
purchase by Sir Robert Sawyer, to the Herberts by intermarriage with
the last-named knight's family. Highclere Church is a new building
designed by Sir Gilbert Scott and stands just outside the park. It
replaces an erection of the late seventeenth century which used to
stand within a stone's throw of the castle upon the site of another
building of great antiquity.
It is possible to make a way past the woods of Sidown and by the Three
Legged Cross Inn to Ashmansworth, where a few years ago a number of
wall paintings, one an unique depictment of Pentecost, were discovered
on the walls of the little old church that are supposed to have Roman
materials built into them.
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