Castle Goring - History

History

Castle Goring was designed by John Rebecca for Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet. The building proved to be the first of several buildings that Rebecca would design in the Georgian era around the fashionable resort town of Worthing. Sir Bysshe Shelley's son, Sir Timothy Shelley, preferred to live at Field Place near Horsham. It was intended that his son, Percy Bysshe Shelley, would live at Castle Goring; however, the poet drowned in Italy aged just 29, so he never took possession of Castle Goring.

In 1825, Sir Timothy Shelley let the building to Captain (later Vice Admiral) Sir George Brooke-Pechel, 4th Baronet of Paglesham, lord of the manor of Angmering, who was Liberal MP for Brighton from 1835-1860. In 1845, Mary Shelley, who inherited the building as widow of the poet, sold it to Brooke-Pechel. Brooke-Pechel's daughter, Adelaide, married Sir Alfred FC Somerset, who was Deputy Lieutenant for Middlesex and Justice of the Peace for Middlesex. Their daughter Gwendoline married her cousin, Arthur W Fitzroy Somerset, who held the same offices for Sussex. Aside from a period in the 1870s and 1880s when the property was let to the Burrell family, the property has remained with the Somerset family to this day.