Midford Castle

Midford Castle stands in Midford, Bath, England, and was built by English patrons in the late 18th century.

The house was erected in 1775 for Henry Disney Roebuck to designs by the architect John Carter. Its unusual plan was laid out to form the clubs symbol and appears to follow a design published in Builder’s Magazine in 1774. A magazine article of 1899 claimed Roebuck paid for the work with gambling winnings; that story is recorded in later accounts but the gambling explanation is regarded as unlikely, and the porch that produces the vertical ‘stem’ of the clubs form was added after the original build.

In 1810 ownership passed to a member of the Conolly family of Castletown House in County Kildare. The Conollys added the porch and erected nearby service buildings including stables and a chapel that became known as the priory. Soon after 1810 Kingham Field, part of the estate, was worked as a stone quarry. William Smith proposed moving stone by a small railway to a sawmill at Tucking Mill for onward transport by canal. In April 1814 Smith mortgaged the remainder of his estate to Charles Conolly, who then controlled the railway and probably extended it to Vinegar Down Quarry. The scheme collapsed, and in 1819 Charles Conolly had William Smith committed to King’s Bench Prison for debt and took possession of the sawmill and Smith’s house at Tucking Mill. The last Conolly disposed of the Castletown property in 1901, after which the priory fell into disrepair.

Michael Fenwick Briggs and his wife Isabel (Isabel Colegate) bought the castle in 1961 and carried out extensive renovation, adapting the chapel as a deliberately romantic ruin within the garden. In July 2007 the property was sold to the actor Nicolas Cage for £5 million. It changed hands again in 2009 to Scott Adams, founder of Nutrisport, and was subsequently restored and converted for use as the Adams family home and a boutique hotel. The principal house is protected as a Grade I listed building on the National Heritage List for England.