Lancaster Castle: The Pendle Witch Trials, a Working Court and a Thousand Years Above the Lune In the summer of 1612, twenty people from the Pendle Forest area of Lancashire were brought to Lancaster Castle to stand trial for witchcraft. Nineteen were tried at the...
Dunster Castle: Six Hundred Years of the Luttrells, Above the Bristol Channel The Luttrell family acquired Dunster Castle in 1376 and donated it to the National Trust in 1976. Six hundred years of continuous ownership in a single family. In that time they turned a...
St Michael's Mount: The Tidal Island Rising from the Heart of Cornwall At low tide, a granite causeway stretches from the mainland town of Marazion across the shallow waters of Mount's Bay, and on the island at the far end a castle rises from the rock...
Lewes Castle: The Norman Keep Above the Town That Changed Parliament In May 1264, two armies met in the valley below this castle and the course of English constitutional history turned. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, defeated King Henry III at the Battle of...
Arundel Castle: 850 Years of the Dukes of Norfolk Above the River Arun In the 14th-century Fitzalan Chapel, among the tombs and effigies of the Howard family who have kept Arundel since the 16th century, were once kept the personal possessions of Mary, Queen of Scots...
Thornbury Castle: The Tudor Castle Hotel Where Henry VIII Slept, Above the Cotswolds In 1535, three years after the English Church had broken with Rome and two years after Henry VIII had crowned Anne Boleyn his queen, the royal couple arrived at Thornbury Castle for a...
Castle Howard: The Baroque Masterpiece Behind Brideshead, Above the Yorkshire Hills John Vanbrugh had never designed a building in his life. He was a playwright — the author of The Relapse and The Provoked Wife, two of the most celebrated comedies of the Restoration...
Castle Drogo: England's Last Castle, Built on a Dream Above Dartmoor Most castles were built for survival: to hold territory, repel invaders, control roads and rivers. Castle Drogo was built for a dream. In the early years of the 20th century, Julius Drewe — a...
Dover Castle: The Key to England, Above the White Cliffs, for Two Thousand Years In the summer of 1940, with the German army closing in on the beaches of Dunkirk and 338,000 Allied soldiers trapped against the sea, Admiral Bertram Ramsay stood in a tunnel carved into...