Thornbury Castle The Thornbury Castle continues to be referred to because the last genuine castle, in other words private house with defensive features, ever elevated in England. This really is most likely true when we ignore Scottish border territory. It's testimony towards the ambition of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who started building within 1511. 10 years later, Henry VIII had him performed on the control of treason. It had been alleged the duke had elevated a personal military within the Welsh Marches, in defiance from the Tudor laws and regulations against such practices, and Thornbury Castle might have been another factor weighing against him. The castle follows the conventional quadrangular layout of later medieval occasions, and will get an outer courtyard big enough to accommodate a significant body of retainers. Here, as elsewhere, the hired levies were stored from the duke and the personal household, though whether this arrangement reflects mistrust or even the social hierarchy is really a moot point. Two lengthy ranges of retainers' accommodations back to the outer curtain. This curtain has three square flanking towers, the position tower is placed diagonally, several intermediate turrets along with a liberal way to obtain gun ports and arrow slits. The primary entrance, between semi-octagonal in shape turrets to front and back, was furnished having a portcullis in traditional fashion. The south wall from the outer courtyard never was built as well as on the east lies the interior quadrangle. Clearly, free airline fa?ade from the inner curtain was meant to look uncompromisingly defensive, with massive octagonal in shape towers each and every finish along with a twin-towered gatehouse among. However, this front seems woefully squat since it remained in 1521 at under half its intended height. Its northern border range, with square flanking towers, is similarly cut down and also the east range, which may have contained the hall, never was even begun.