TRAVELS WITH THE WNP
 

In Search of Heroes, Part III: A Tale of Two Castles
By Delle Jacobs

We had spent half the day dawdling through marvelously tourist-infested Stratford-Upon-Avon and really wanted to stay. But I had promised a friend I would take pictures of Kenilworth Castle, and this was the only day we could do it. And there really didn't seem much point in going to Kenilworth without also going to Warwick Castle, which is only about six miles farther. So we made a dash for it, hoping against hope we could do both.

Warwick (pronounce it Warrick) is about as touristy as you can get. But it is also one of the oldest and best-preserved castles in England. And even as a tourist trap, it provides one of the best quick educations on the culture and times of castle life you can find.

We pass through the gatehouse into the courtyard and see ahead a high mound, on which rests the original stone castle built by the Normans in 1088.  My son took this photo, (and yes, I altered the picture, giving it the misty fog look). It's a tiny thing, overwhelmed by the massive hall to our left or the giant towers on either side and behind us. But I immediately headed for the mound to climb up to this ancient shell keep. I thought it would be much larger, but I doubt if it could have held a hundred soldiers with any comfort. Its wall on the outer slope is now gone (I wondered if the steep slope of the hill had crumbled and taken the wall with it), leaving only the inward wall you see in the picture. But the view of the surrounding grounds and garden, river and rolling hills is superb, as is the rest of the castle with its tall towers, hall and surrounding curtain wall.

All the grounds of the current castle fall within the original outer bailey (castle grounds) and a chapel and hall that were probably wooden in construction, like the original curtain wall, which was replaced with stone around 1260. The Earls of Warwick were not always on good terms with their near neighbors at Kenilworth, and the castle was successfully attacked by Queen Isabella's lover, Simon de Montfort, in 1264. Check out this man if you want to meet a really colorful hero/villain. You'll have a hard time deciding which he is if you read about his adversaries, King Edward II and his lover, Piers Gaveston. Isabella, by the way, was known as The She-Wolf of France. Edward did her dirty first, but she certainly got her revenge. This is just one of many sagas that relate Warwick to Kenilworth.

From the mound, we see the huge and magnificent hall, begun around 1260 along with the curtain wall and chapel, and rebuilt and renovated many times since. Throughout the centuries, Warwick and its residents have figured prominently in England's history, and this highly Victorianized hall is now used as a superb museum with wax figures (it's now owned by the Tussauds Group) in highly authentic settings covering all periods of the castle's history. There is a dungeon, and it is as dark, grotesque and full of torture devices as you would imagine it to be. Elsewhere, exhibits of armourers, wheelwrights, carpenters and so on depict an army preparing for war as they did in the fifteenth century days of Richard Neville, called Warwick the Kingmaker. Some rooms have massive Elizabethan furnishings. Others depict the Civil Wars, when the castle withstood a siege by Royalists. And still others reflect its lavish Victorian era. On the grounds outside the castle walls, colorful Victorian gardens with a lovely arched window conservatory still enchant visitors.

As we leave the castle, an archer demonstrates his medieval skills with a bow, his rapid-fire technique more than double the speed of fire of a musketman of the nineteenth century.

We had to leave much sooner than we wished. I turned back for one last look and spotted the towers through the trees. "Yeah!" I said, and snapped this photo, which I love so much I used it for my portal page on my Web site.

We barely reached Kenilworth before it closed, but we spread out, snapping pictures and rushing to grab every little scrap before we lost it forever. I'm not showing you the usual photos because you can find them on at least one fine Web site about Kenilworth: http://www.cv81pl.freeserve.co.uk/kenilworth.htm. There are other great sites, too. (I wish I could say the same about Warwick, but you'll find little else but promotional information on its site.) So I'm showing you photos of Kenilworth you won't find on those sites.

Kenilworth's darkly rich, red sandstone stands in blatant contrast to Warwick's reserved and cool, gray limestone. And Kenilworth is as ruined as Warwick is preserved. Leicester's Building, in this photo, was built in the sixteenth century to accommodate guests such as Queen Elizabeth. As you can see, not too much of it is left.

Like Warwick, Kenilworth originated in the early Norman period as a simple motte-and-bailey, a wooden keep on a mound, surrounded by wooden palisades. It was soon rebuilt in stone. And like Warwick, it was enlarged and modified over the centuries, becoming the magnificent fortress of an enormously powerful family. If you saw Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes, you remember Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the man Elizabeth loved. Kenilworth was his home.

But the Earls of Leicester supported the Royalists in the Civil War, and the Royalists lost. Kenilworth was "slighted," that is deliberately ruined, so it could never stand against its enemies again. After that, it was subject to the usual "demolition by construction," in which builders see the appeal in already cut stone blocks and use them in new buildings.

This is the entrance to the old Norman Keep, looking through its typical Norman arch to other passages that rise up stairs to a far window overlooking a modern reconstruction of a medieval knot garden. There's a garderobe chute within the keep that goes all the way to the ground (in case you wonder what substituted for toilets way back in the twelfth century), and I spotted pigeons blissfully perching in little niches where the stone was worn away. Nearby is John of Gaunt's medieval hall. This and the Norman Keep provided the setting for Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. You can see more on the above Web site.

As I snapped this last photo of the Tudor Garden, I was imagining Elizabeth and Dudley strolling here, not talking about their impossible love, wishing perhaps that they had both been less important people. But they were not. Dudley was married (although the movie slid over that fact rather neatly), and his wife died in a most peculiar accident, for which Elizabeth never forgave Dudley. He would have made himself king if she married him, and she was not powerful enough to stop him. She knew, more than anyone else, just how lustful he was for power and what he might do to get it.

If you can only see one castle when you go to England, make it Warwick. Sure, it's a tourist trap, and yes, it is expensive. But I can't think of a better place to learn so much about castles and their culture in so short a time. It's a giant museum and well worth every penny. If you can see a second, then surely Kenilworth should be next, for between the two, the panorama that is England's history is beautifully exposed. As a guide told us, "If the Royalists had won and Parliament lost, you'd be looking at Warwick as a ruin, and Kenilworth would still bloom in all its glory."

Mind you, this advice comes from a person who had about twenty castles on her list, but only made it to four. Yet I'm afraid I would not follow my own advice. Perhaps it is Ivanhoe who draws me, or perhaps I am captivated by the dark side of Dudley's nature, or that of Simon de Montfort. But if I had to choose between the two castles, I would go back to wander a day or two in Kenilworth's ruins and seek my heroes there.

Coming to this site in October: IN SEARCH OF HEROES, Part IV: Secrets of the Ancient Stones

To read last month's Travel article, click here

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