Hordle Castle: THE DEATHLY HALLOWS

My castle will have two staircases, one Jacobean oak (in honour of Shakespeare), and the other a cardboard/pencil copy of Hogwarts' stone staircase from the Harry Potter films. The latter I have named the Deathly Hallows after the last book, and because I wanted to decorate the staircase with ghostly portraits of 'ancestors' who met a grizzly end.

The railings and newel posts are being made from cereal packet card, pencils, corrugated card, and bolsa wood. I have tried to copy Harry Potter's stairs (below).

Should I paint mine too to get an older feel? I decided I would, so here are before and after shots...

The paintings in the room have been chosen because I like the look of them really, but I've also tried to find portraits that fit these themes: people who are famous for their hideous deaths or for mourning the dead; and portraits that are unidentified (all those paintings in galleries that say "portrait of an unknown lady" next to them). I also wanted the room to feel a bit gothic, so I've tried to find some of the past's more querky looking folk, and mixed them up with a few that look like heroes/heroines from gothic novels.

I was particularly intrigued with the Spanish queen Joanna the Mad when I saw pictures of her mourning her husband Philip the Fair in the Prado Museum in Madrid. She could not accept his death and would not let anyone touch his body for a long time. People say his death drive her mad. It turns out that she and Philip are also connected to the Trenchard family. They were shipwrecked off the Dorset coast and my ancestor Sir Thomas Trenchard took them in for a while until they moved on to the English court to meet Joanna's sister Catherine of Aragon. Wolfeton House outside Dorchester, where Sir Thomas entertained them, has statues of the pair carved into one of the wooden door cases. So I had to include this couple and paintings of Joanna mourning her husband (above the arched doorway).