Travel – UK – Leicester – Kirby Muxloe

This is an excerpt from my book Travels through History : Leicester, Lichfield, Lincoln, and Loughborough currently available at a discount.

William, Lord Hastings, chamberlain of the royal household and a favourite of Edward IV, built Kirby Muxloe Castle. Hastings gained extensive estates across the Midlands during the Wars of the Roses, much of it confiscated from his enemies. Work began in October 1480. The castle was rectangular in design, 245 by 175 feet across, and would have comprised four corner towers, three side towers and a large gatehouse, all protected by a water-filled moat; the centre of the castle would have formed a courtyard. Of these buildings, only the gatehouse and the west tower survive today, partly intact. 

William Hastings was the son of Sir Leonard of Kirby Muxloe, who became a retainer of Richard, Duke of York. By the time of Sir Leonard’s death in 1455 the rivalry between Yorkists and Lancastrians, the two branches of the royal house of Plantagenet, had escalated into war.

William had assumed his father’s allegiance, and was knighted on the battlefield of Towton in 1461 by Richard’s son and heir, crowned Edward IV two days later.

In the 1460s Hastings formed a strong bond with the king and became Baron Hastings in July 1461. He became chamberlain of the royal household the following month. Between 1462 and 1464, he acquired much land in his native Midlands and beyond.

When Edward IV was briefly deposed in 1470–71 by the Earl of Warwick, ‘the Kingmaker’, Hastings stuck by him, fleeing with Edward to the Low Countries, and plotting his return to power. When Edward returned to England in March 1471, landing on the Humber estuary, it was Hastings who provided the first complement of men for his army.

With Edward back on the throne, Hastings became a hugely powerful figure. Admirers courted him for his influence: as a servant of the Paston family remarked in 1472, he had more sway over the king ‘than any man alive’. Yet perhaps remarkably for such a successful courtier, he was liked and respected, even by his rivals.

So when Hastings began to rebuild the family seat at Kirby Muxloe in sumptuous fashion in October 1480, he was at the height of his powers. His massive wealth became plain in the amount of building work he undertook on at least four of his manors, including nearby Ashby-de-la-Zouch Castle.

At Kirby Muxloe, he planned a modern courtyard residence surrounded by a broad moat, built from the local red brick, with stone used for details such as windows and doors, a combination that was the height of fashion.