Lord and Lady Carnarvon outside Highclere Castle, Newbury, Berkshire, England, UK. Highclere Castle is a country house in high Elizabethan style, with park designed by Capability Brown. The 6, 000 acre (c. 2, 400 hectare) estate in Hampshire is south of Newbury, Berkshire, England. It is the country seat of the Herbert family, the Earls of Carnarvon, and the largest mansion in Hampshire. The present castle stands on the site of an earlier house, in turn built on the foundations of the medieval palace of the Bishops of Winchester, who owned this estate from the 8th century. In 1692, Robert Sawyer, a lawyer and college friend of Samuel Pepys, bequeathed a mansion at Highclere to his only daughter, Margaret. Her second son, Robert Herbert, inherited Highclere, began its picture collection, and created the garden temples. His nephew Henry Herbert was made Baron Porchester and 1st Earl of Carnarvon by King George III. In those years, the house was a square, classical mansion, but it was remodelled and all but rebuilt for the third earl by Sir Charles Barry in 1839 to 1842 after he had finished building the Houses of Parliament. It is in the "High Elizabethan" style and faced in Bath stone. The term "High Elizabethan" with which the house is often tagged refers to the English architecture of the late 16th century and early 17th century when traditional Tudor architecture was being challenged by the newly arrived Italian Renaissance influences. During the 19th century there was a huge Renaissance revival movement of which Sir Charles Barry was a great exponent. Barry had been inspired to become an architect by the Renaissance architecture of Italy and was very proficient at working in the Renaissance based style which in the 19th century became known as Italianate architecture. His work at Cliveden is considered amongst his finest. At Highclere, however he worked in the English renaissance revival style, but added to it many of the motifs of the Italianate style.
