When is a Ruin Not a Ruin?

History can sometime be deceptive with things not looking like they seem. For example this looks like the ruins of a medieval castle, ravaged by time and weather, leaving only two walls and three towers standing. Unfortunately this couldn't be any further from the truth.

You see Dunstall Castle was built in 1766 and designed by Robert Adams. It was never meant to be a complete castle, just its ruins. Its purpose was to be one of three "Eye-Catchers" for Croome Court (which lies approximately 1 mile away across the road). These buildings, as the name suggests, were meant to catch the viewers eye as they looked out a window or while the walked around the landscape designed by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown.

Of course over time the "so called" ruins started to become more and more real. While the care of Croome Court was already in hand it wasn't until 2010 that the National Trust were able to acquire the castle thanks to substantial funding from Natural England. Once acquired it was restored to what you see today and in doing so returned another piece of Croome Court back to how it was originally envisaged.

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Europe / UK-England

Lat: 52° 5' 3.46" N
Long: 3° 11' 5.93" W

Elevation: 59 ft

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Taken with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 10.5mm f/2.8G fisheye lens. Mounted on a Nodal Ninja 5 panorama head and R-D16 rotator atop a Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod. Shots taken at 6 positions 60° apart, tilted 15° down and another shot taken looking straight up. Raw files then processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.5 before being stitched together using PTGui Pro 10.0.7 and converted using Pano2VR 4.5.1.