John Wingfield Digby smoked many a cigarette while perched on Sir Walter Raleigh’s favourite stone seat at Sherborne castle. As keen on his tobacco as the great nobleman, he would explain to friends and visitors that this was “the home of smoking” and that no modern-day health warnings would curtail his own enjoyment.
Raleigh had built the “new” Sherborne castle in 1594, next to the ruins of the 12th-century original built by Roger, Bishop of Salisbury. When Raleigh was imprisoned for suspected treason in 1603, he was forced to surrender his estates to the Crown. Sir John Digby, a favoured diplomat of King James I, bought the castle from the king in 1617 and Raleigh was executed the following year. It has been the Digby family’s stately home ever since. A pipe, which Raleigh is thought to have brought back from America, is proudly displayed in the hall.
Wingfield Digby inherited the castle and the estates from his father in 1998. These comprise farms, some tenanted, woodland and more than 500 agricultural, commercial and residential properties, including three pubs, an optician and a fish and chip shop in Sherborne (although he personally did not eat there). He strove to ensure more than 30,000 people visited the castle and the 42 acres of gardens each year. He replanted the Capability Brown parkland and staged an annual country fair in the grounds, which since its inauguration in 1996 has raised nearly £1 million for local charitable causes.
In 2002, Wingfield Digby and the head gardener Tim Stiles began to create a computer database that maintains a record of the 5,000 trees on the estates. This ensured that each tree could be identified with its Latin name and size, the date when it was last inspected and any treatment it had received.
He was born John Kenelm Wingfield Digby in 1937 — his great-grandfather, the founder of Sherborne School for Girls, was John Kenelm. While a pupil at Harrow he was a contemporary of the future King Hussein of Jordan and of Faisal II of Iraq; he fagged for Bobby Neame, who became a prominent brewer. He lacked confidence at school and was given a difficult time by his father, who felt he did not match up to his expectations. Yet Wingfield Digby went on to Cambridge university, where he read history, and to Cirencester Agricultural College.
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He then spent two years in France, and developed an interest in wine — one that was nurtured by a visit to the Gore-Brown vineyard at Beaulieu in Hampshire. Derided by his father for trying to pioneer viniculture in England, Wingfield Digby nonetheless created a vineyard at Sturminster Marshall in Dorset in the 1970s, and then a larger vineyard at Sherborne castle estates in 1981, which now extends to eight acres.
He spent hours pruning in the dead of winter, bud rubbing in the spring and harvesting in the autumn. (Wine- making had been initiated on the land by the Bishop of Salisbury, who planted a vineyard on the southern slopes in 1164.) Six varieties of grapes are now grown on the 13,000-acre estate: bacchus, seyval blanc, reichsteiner, pinot noir, pinot blanc and schönburger. Some 17,000 bottles of wine are produced annually. These include a sparkling brut, sparkling rosé, special reserve — a blend of four grape varieties — and wine brandy. They are sold in the shop at Sherborne castle and throughout Dorset.
Fishing on the Frome, where he once caught six salmon, and shooting were among his other enthusiasms. He only went shopping to buy more cigarettes. His wife, Josephine, whom he married in the early 1960s, survives him. His elder son, Edward, inherits the castle; his second son, William, works in the film industry; and his daughter, Victoria, runs Sherborne Cider.
Wingfield Digby died two years before his family could celebrate 400 years of ownership of Sherborne castle. He had Alzheimer’s disease and was unable to travel to Leicester cathedral for the burial service of Richard III earlier this year. His family were Lancastrians who had sought to obtain a confession of treason from Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the throne.
He was a descendant of Simon Digby, who brought a company of men to fight (for Henry Tudor) at the battle of Bosworth in 1485. Being on the winning side resulted in him being given the Coleshill estate in Warwickshire — centuries later, this was also inherited by Wingfield Digby.
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He was too reserved a man to be accorded the nickname of “Wingers Diggers” — as his cousin Rev Andrew, the former chaplain to the England cricket team, is known. To his grandchildren he was simply “Grandpa Wine”.
John Wingfield Digby, owner of Sherborne castle, was born on February 16, 1937. He died after a long period of ill health on July 30, 2015, aged 78