Kenilworth Castle & Gardens
This site had to be the best finale to a long road trip ever. Yes it is mostly ruins, but it is HUGE, has a menagerie of sorts, and Tudor connections. What else could it possibly need?
Plans for Kenilworth Castle actually dates back to 1066 as it was thought to be founded after said Norman Conquest, even though it hit its peak during its expansion in the Tudor period. But first, let us look at life pre-Tudor.
The actual physical castle was founded in the early 12th century by Geoffrey de Clinton who was Lord Chamberlain and treasurer to King Henry I. Unfortunately, this original castle no longer stands and we have no idea what it would have looked like or if indeed it was a motte and bailey as was thought. They do think that the Great Tower may have been from the original design and was just rebuilt in stone rather than the wooden building they would have had originally.
Now Geoffrey de Clinton was Roger de Beaumont's rival, and Beaumont was the Earl of Warwick and owned Warwick Castle. These two butted heads as Beaumont saw Clinton as a rival landowner, but he had more power and so was more assertive. However, due to Clinton's position and favour with the king he was made sheriff in Warwickshire which balanced the riff in power between the rivals. This favour didn't last though as Geoffrey was tried in 1130 for treason, he was acquitted and died three years later, passing his estates to his young son, Geoffrey.
The rivalry between the Clintons and Beaumont was also passed to young Geoffrey. Beaumont continued to plague both Geoffrey II and his uncle William de Clinton but the younger Geoffrey engaged in quite a violent quarrel with him. This continued until Goeffrey resolved the matter by marrying Beaumont's daughter Agnes, uniting the two houses. The young man also built St Michael and All Angels Church in Stewkley where his father also held land in 1150 which is recognised as one of the finest Norman churches in England, but due to the feud, projects elsewhere, and the Anarchy which spanned between 1135 and 1154, Kenilworth and its expansion took a backseat.
Kenilworth was taken by the Crown during the Revolt of 1173/74 as Geoffrey II died. Of course during this time Henry II had taken over from Stephen after he died in Dover, but his son Henry had got backing by the French and was trying to lead an uprising against the new king. Kenilworth even then was seen as grand and able to be used during military issues and so that was exactly the plan, although it seems as though it didn't quite come to that as Henry II managed to reign for a while until Richard I took over.
Richard pretty much ignored Kenilworth, but when his brother John took the throne the castle went under significant renovation. The newest king was excommunicated in 1208 so decided to enhance and rebuild several major castles, funnily enough these were also the castles which held the most strength when it came to defending England. The included Corfe, Dover, Kenilworth, Odiham, and Scarborough. Through rebuilding and enhancing these castles, John actually made Kenilworth the largest English castle within this period. The site was his most strategic point and John had poured resources into it to the point he employed several knights as castellans. The castle was so important to John that it ended up being used as a sort of leverage, John was forced to cede the castle to the baronial opposition during the guarantee of the Magna Carta but when Henry III took over it returned to the Crown.
Henry III gave Kenilworth to Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester in 1244. We're not sure if he quite realised the magnitude of this, especially as his father had put so much into Kenilworth, but at any rate this backfired on the king as Montfort became a leader in the Second Barons' War 20 years later against the king and used Kenilworth as his well fortified base of operations. Unsurprisingly, this particular didn't favour the king and he was forced to sign the Mise of Lewes after the Battle of Lewes in 1264. The rebels took Prince Edward as a hostage as part of this and kept him at Kenilworth where he didn't receive the best of treatment. He was released a year later and went up against Montfort at the Battle of Evesham where he was the victor. The survivors regrouped under Henry de Hastings at Kenilworth (we wonder if he is related to the Hastings buried in Ashby de la Zouch) and Edward continued to lay siege.
The site was then the victim during the six month long siege of Kenilworth in 1266. This of course is what is thought to be the longest siege in Medieval England and was spawned after Montfort's son, Simon Montfort the Younger, promised Kenilworth to the King but then didn't deliver so Henry III laid siege to Kenilworth after five months of waiting. Obviously the castle had been strengthened by Henry's father and so it took a long time and a lot of force to knock down their defences but they finally managed to force a surrender on the 14th of December 1266. Thanks to the sturdiness of Kenilworths defences, especially the water ones, it became a blueprint for other castles, most notably Caerphilly in Wales.
Henry gave Kenilworth to his other son, Edmund Crouchback in 1267, and the younger brother of Edward held many a tournament at the site including the event 'The Round Table' which was a three day event where a hundred knights competed in the tiltyard as an imitation of the Arthurian Legends. Edmund, in turn, passed the castle onto his eldest son, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster in 1298 and he used it as the primary castle of the Lancaster Estates. He built the first great hall and the Water Tower. Kenilworth then became very lucrative, but this wasn't to last after Thomas led many other English Barons into war against Edward II in 1322. He was captured by his cousins forces at the Battle of Boroughbridge and executed and his estates were confiscated by the crown. To add insult to injury to the Lancasters, the king spent the following Christmas at Kenilworth amongst rather lavish and major celebrations.
Three years later trouble came. Isabella, the kings own wife, removed him from the throne with help from her lover, Roger Mortimer. Edward was captured by her forces and the throne was assigned to Henry, Earl of Lancaster, younger brother of Thomas and obviously cousin to Edward. He had backed Isabella's invasion and she was grateful. He took back the majority of the Lancaster estates, was made constable of Kenilworth and watched over his cousin who became prisoner there in 1326, then legally took back the title a year later.
Edward didn't formally resign as king until 1327, he'd held out despite several persuasion tactics and being told that he had been deposed. Unfortunately for the queen and her co-conspirators, Kenilworth wasn't the best place to hold the former king as he still had many noble friends within the area who attempted to rescue him. On top of that, the paranoia had started to take over and Isabella started to question Henry's loyalty to her over his cousin. She and Mortimer moved Edward to Berkeley Castle for peace of mind and he died there shortly after. She then continued to use Kenilworth as her royal residence until she fell from power in 1330.
Kenilworth then passed to Henry of Grosmont, The Duke of Lancaster and the Earl's son, in 1345. He remodelled the great hall and when he died the castle passed to his sister, Blanche. When she married Edward III's son John, their combined wealth made then the richest couple in England aside from the king. When Blanche died, he kept the castle and married Constance who had claim to the Kingdom of Castile, so John then styled himself as the king of Castile and Leon. With his wealth and newfound claim, he then ordered more building work at Kenilworth as he viewed it as his most important of all his castles, and he had a lot. He had Kenilworth styled to reinforce his royal claims in Iberia and he constructed a much grander great hall, the Strong Tower, the Saintlowe Tower, the state apartments, and even a new kitchen complex. He retired there when his health failed and in his final few years made extensive repairs to the entire complex to make it comfortable.
Kenilworth then passed to John's eldest son who was also Henry IV. Many royal castles had been abandoned during the 15th century and left to rot, but Kenilworth was a mighty fortress fit for a royal and so became a palace fortress as the king used it often. In turn, his son Henry V also used Kenilworth a lot, but he preferred his residence in the Pleasance which was a mock castle he had built on the other side of the Great Mere. It was Kenilworth's involvement in Henry V's decision to fight the Agincourt Campaign which spurred Shakespeare to use the account as a scene in his Henry V, as the French sent tennis balls as a gift to make a mockery of him here in 1414.
Kenilworth then switched to a new role, this time as military support for Queen Margaret during the War of the Roses. She used Kenilworth as well as a few other Lancaster castles in the Midlands as her key bases and sent her husband to divide his time between both here, Tutbury, and Leicester castle until 1461 for his own protection when he suffered his mental collapse.
We then skip a few kings due to the war and other treacherous reasons until we hit Henry Tudor who took the throne as Henry VII and from this point Kenilworth then once again became front and centre as a royal castle. Henry often visited and even had a tennis court constructed at Kenilworth for his own use. His son, the Big Bully King, Henry VIII also thought that Kenilworth was something special and maintained it as a royal castle. He abandoned the mock castle, the Pleasance, and had part of the timber construction moved into the base court of Kenilworth.
Kenilworth was then given to John Dudley in 1553 although we aren't sure if this was by Edward VI before his death the same year or by Lady Jane Grey who he had tried to place on the throne over Queen Mary. He was executed by Mary I the same year but not before he had started modernising the castle. In the short time he had it he had built a new stable block and widened the tiltyard to what we see today.
When Mary's younger sister Elizabeth took the throne in 1558 she started undoing the things her sister had done and was ruling in the way her father and brother had. This included returning Kenilworth to the Dudleys 4 years later. She restored the castle to Robert, Earl of Leicester who was Dudley's son and also the favourite of the queen, so he knew he had to remain this way to keep his lands.
He continued the work of his father and modernised Kenilworth, but his main goal was to ensure that the castle would attract Elizabeth when she was touring the country. She visited in 1566 and then again 2 years later which prompted Dudley to commission Henry Hawthorne, the royal architect, to draw up plans for a dramatic extension to the south side of the inner court. This failed as was unachievable within his means, and so he brought in William Spicer to extend and rebuild the castle instead. The goal was to provide modern accommodation for the royal court when they stayed, so they'd stay more often and he could boost his claims to noble heritage. Elizabeth viewed the castle during construction in 1572 but his intended work in its completion was only known to her during her final visit in 1575. It was his final attempt to convince her to marry him and he pulled out all the stops. She'd brought an entourage of at least 431 people which included barons and staff, but on top of that had 20 horsemen visiting per day, so he juggled entertaining the queen and her entourage with fireworks, pageants, banquets and god knows what else. The ploy nearly bankrupted him but it was a huge success as Elizabeth stayed at Kenilworth for a record breaking 19 days which was the longest she'd ever stayed at a property during her tours. It may have been a raging success entertainment wise, but Elizabeth opted not to marry him.
When Dudley died he was massively in debt but the castle passed to his brother Ambrose, Earl of Warwick and when he died in 1590 it went to Dudley's illegitimate son with Lady Douglas Sheffield, Sir Robert Dudley. The illegitimate Dudley attempted to establish legitimacy in front of the Court of the Star Chamber but this failed. So he went to Italy in 1605 and the same year works were commissioned at Kenilworth and Sir Thomas Chaloner, governor to Prince Henry was tasked to oversee. Dudley arranged to sell Kenilworth to the prince but he died before the purchase was completed. Charles, Henry's brother, completed instead and also bought out Alice Dudley's interest in the site too. When he became king he gifted the castle of his wife, Henrietta Maria, and made Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth the steward. This then fell onto Carey's sons Henry and Thomas upon his death.
Kenilworth Castle remained a favourite destination for the royals all the way through to the First English Civil War. When it broke in 1642 Kenilworth once again formed a base that counteracted the heavy Parliamentary forces in Warwick. Charles even used the castle in his advance to Edgehill in October 1642 as a base. When the battle ended the royalist garrison was withdrawn and the castle was then taken and garrisoned by Parliamentary forces and this remained the case even when the governor, Hastings Ingram was arrested as a suspected Royalist double agent. So Kenilworth was behind enemy lines, a loyal aid to the royals for so many years but they just couldn't claim it back. In 1645 the enemy strengthened their hold on the castle and it seemed their seizing of the site was absolute. It was so strong that even when the war ended a year later concerns were still held over the security of the castle should there be another uprising. Parliament ordered the slighting of the castle three years later, they destroyed a wall of the great tower, various points of the outer bailey, and the battlements. It was this point that truly marked the fall of Kenilworth Castle after so many decades of being the jewel of the English crown.
Colonel Joseph Hawkesworth who made the slighting happen then took the estate for himself and made Dudley's gatehouse into a house for him to reside. He then converted the base court into a farm and stripped other buildings of their worth. However, in 1660 Kenilworth finally found its way back to the royals. Hawkesworth was evicted from Kenilworth when Charles II was restored to the throne and his mother, Henrietta Maria took back her gift from her late husband. The Earls of Monmouth resumed their stewardship and this remained the way until her death. When the Queen Mother died, Charles gave the castle to Sir Edward Hyde who ended up as Baron Hyde of Hindon and Earl of Clarendon. He continued to use it as a farm with the gatehouse as a residence and added the King's Gate to the outer bailey wall.
As the 18th and 19th centuries rolled round the castle became a tourist attraction in its ruined state, although at the time it was also still a working farm. It became more so a romantic Elizabethan destination after Sir Walter Scott published Kenilworth in 1821 and caused a Victorian frenzy over such a twisted and steely romantic location with royal connections. Queen Victoria herself visited as well as Charles Dickens, so the novel really had spawned some famous admirers!
Kenilworth remained in the Clarendon family until Lord Clarendon sold it to Sir John Siddeley in 1937 as he found the upkeep of the decaying castle too expensive. Siddeley became Baron Kenilworth as the title was created and gave the running of the castle to the Commissioner of Works. 20 years later his son gave the castle to the town of Kenilworth and English Heritage then took on management in 1984.
English Heritage are actually the ones responsible for attempting to recreate the Elizabethan garden which would have stood here during the Queen's visit based on letters they had from the time. We must say it is a beautiful garden and a beautiful site. When you're here you get sucked in and can see something from every era, the royal connection and the sites history with Dudley and Elizabeth is heavily shown though, this became very much the romantic ruin even after the Victorian era and the forbidden love between the queen and her favourite suitor is felt and will be for a long while.
We really loved Kenilworth and hopefully will visit again! Dog friendly so always a plus and it is such a massive site that we are sure we missed bits!
In terms of hauntings we didn't see or feel anything untoward but there is always next time! So we can't lay credit to any of the spirits like the man in black, the little girl, or the ghostly chickens!
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