Clearwell Castle

Clearwell Castle stands in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, a Gothic Revival house built from 1727. Thomas Wyndham commissioned Roger Morris to design it, making it England’s earliest Georgian Gothic Revival castle. The house replaced an earlier building on the same site and was originally called Clearwell Court. Over its long history it passed through several generations of the Wyndham family. A serious fire in 1930 and wartime neglect left the castle near ruin before gradual restoration began in 1954. The castle’s past includes a recording studio used by major rock bands in the 1970s. Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Queen all worked there. Black Sabbath wrote parts of their album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath at Clearwell, and band members reported ghostly encounters. Led Zeppelin returned in 1978 to rehearse what became In Through the Out Door. After changing hands several times, the castle now serves as a wedding venue. Visitors approach through a pair of three-storey towers flanking a recessed central block. The building is made of local Forest of Dean stone, though much of the interior was lost to fire and later remodelling. Outside, statues of a man and a child with a sphinx stand on the lawn. The main gateway, lodges and gateposts carry their own heritage listings. Inside, the surviving spaces show the plain lines of early Georgian Gothic style.