Qualla: Castle Drogo https://qualla.com/castle-drogo en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:20 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/2/castle-drogo-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Castle Drogo https://qualla.com/castle-drogo Castle Drogo: Introduction https://qualla.com/castle-drogo/ Photo credit Trevor Harris, CC BY-SA 2.0. Edwin Lutyens did not want to build a castle. 'I do wish he didn't want a castle,' the architect wrote privately, 'but just a delicious loveable house with plenty of good large rooms in it.' His client, Julius Drewe, was unmoved. Drewe had made a fortune selling tea, changed the spelling of his surname, invented a medieval ancestor named Drogo de Teigne, and bought 450 acres on the edge of Dartmoor to house the lineage he had conjured from thin air. He wanted a castle, and he was willing to pay for one. What Lutyens built between 1911 and 1930 was the last castle constructed in England -- and, despite the architect's reluctance, one of his finest buildings.

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Image: Trevor Harris | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/2/castle-drogo-wp/gcj2-castle-drogo-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Castle Drogo: The Grocer's Dream https://qualla.com/castle-drogo/ Photo credit RobThinks, CC BY-SA 4.0. Julius Drewe was born plain Julius Drew, son of a grocer's family. At eighteen, he was sent to China as a tea buyer by his uncle Francis Peek, a partner in the Liverpool tea merchants Peek and Winch. In 1878, Drewe returned and opened the Willow Pattern Tea Store. Five years late...

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Image: RobThinks | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/2/castle-drogo-wp/gcj2-castle-drogo-the-grocers-dream.mp3 0:06 2 full Castle Drogo: Granite, Grief, and Two Devon Masons https://qualla.com/castle-drogo/ Photo credit Manfred Heyde, CC BY-SA 3.0. The first foundation stone was laid on 4 April 1911, Drewe's fifty-fifth birthday. Lutyens designed a building of uncompromising granite that would stretch the entire length of a ridge, forming three sides of a courtyard. The budget was fifty thousand pounds for the castle and te...

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Image: Manfred Heyde | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/2/castle-drogo-wp/gcj2-castle-drogo-granite-grief-and-two-devon-masons.mp3 0:06 3 full Castle Drogo: A Castle That Does Not Pretend https://qualla.com/castle-drogo/ Photo credit Traveler100, CC BY-SA 3.0. The architectural critic Christopher Hussey captured the paradox of Drogo in a single sentence: 'The ultimate justification of Drogo is that it does not pretend to be a castle. It is a castle, as a castle is built, of granite, on a mountain, in the twentieth century.' Lutyens bor...

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Image: Traveler100 | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/2/castle-drogo-wp/gcj2-castle-drogo-a-castle-that-does-not-pretend.mp3 0:06 4 full Castle Drogo: The Family and the Trust https://qualla.com/castle-drogo/ Photo credit kitmasterbloke, CC BY 2.0. After Julius's death, his wife Frances and son Basil stayed on at Drogo. During the Second World War, Frances and her daughter Mary ran the castle as a home for babies made homeless by the London Blitz. In 1974, Julius's grandson Anthony and great-grandson Christopher gave Castle...

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]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/j/2/castle-drogo-wp/gcj2-castle-drogo-the-family-and-the-trust.mp3 0:06 5 full