The Deanery, Windsor Castle

Abstract

For almost six and a half centuries, the wardens (and later the Deans) of St George's Chapel have been lodged in the extreme north-east corner of the Lower Ward at Windsor Castle. From fairly modest beginnings, the house developed into a much grander building, after the construction of a huge new chapel in the late fifteenth century. After the Elizabethan settlement it developed further and was a childhood home of Sir Christopher Wren, before being vandalized in the Commonwealth period. Following the Reformation, it was reconstructed and then given a grand new front in 1710 for the first of a series of aristocratic Deans. The final major rebuilding was carried out in 1831 immediately after the demise of George IV, and the house was used by Queen Victoria as a sort of ‘confessional’ and very private access to the royal pew after her widowhood. Today it is still a fine house after being reduced in size for twentieth-century Deans who do not have large families and many servants. Its rendered south front can still be seen immediately behind the buttressed east end of the Albert Memorial Chapel (fig. 1).