Castles of Britain

Exploring Britain’s castles through sieges, secrets,
remarkable owners and the ruins they left behind.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

We Paid £60 for Highclere Castle — Then Walked Away

I genuinely thought a 12.30 timed slot meant the queue would at least move.

We’d paid £60 between us. Then we stood there for about 45 minutes while the line barely crept forward. From where we were, it looked as though the crowds already inside were inching through the house too.

At some point I realised I wasn’t excited anymore. I was just furious that our visit had turned into standing outside and watching the clock.

So we did the ridiculous thing: we left without even going in.

The disappointment carried on outside. The grounds felt shabby to us, and the tarmac paths only made the whole thing feel flatter than I’d imagined.

I can accept queues at a famous place. But paying £60 for a timed slot and giving up after three quarters of an hour without getting through the door? Absolutely maddening.

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I nearly passed Nunney Castle—then the moat stopped me

Nunney Castle, in Somerset near Frome, is a compact moated residence with four round corner towers packed tightly around its living spaces.

I was about to carry on when I turned back for one proper look across the water. From there, the empty windows suddenly made sense as rooms rather than just holes in a ruin: a kitchen below, a hall higher up and private chambers above.

That changed it for me. It felt less like a fortress and more like a home stacked inside extraordinarily thick walls.

I just had to share this wonderfully odd little castle.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

£250 for a castle stay with a cupboard-sized en-suite

I just stayed at Camelot Castle Hotel in Tintagel, Cornwall — a Grade II-listed Neo-Norman hotel built in 1899, rather than a medieval fortress — and the room completely killed the romance I’d expected.

The setting above the Cornish coast is glorious. Then we opened our room door.

The sofa and chair were stained, the bed looked distinctly past its best, and the tiny en-suite felt barely larger than the sort of cubicle you squeeze into on a train. At £250 for the night, I kept looking around wondering what exactly we had paid the premium for.

That was the maddening bit. I’m perfectly happy with old buildings being quirky (I usually prefer them that way), but cramped and tired is different from historic character.

The staff we met were polite and we had no problem with noise. I just came away wishing the room had matched the drama of the building outside.

Beautiful position, deeply disappointing stay. I hope anyone heading to Tintagel has a lovelier night than we did.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

£15 took me behind Stirling Castle’s locked doors

At Stirling Castle in central Scotland, I added the £15 Secret Stirling tour and suddenly a castle I thought I knew opened up completely differently.

Only eight of us were on a tour capped at 12. Two guides took us through rooms and passageways normally hidden behind “Private” signs, then up into parts of the castle most visitors simply walk underneath.

The lovely detail was realising why there were two guides. One led us while the other stayed at the back, making sure nobody from the normal visitor route wandered through the doors after us.

We went up, down and through narrow old spaces, and even reached roof-level areas. That changed the place for me. Instead of admiring Stirling as one enormous royal fortress, I kept noticing the little passages people actually had to squeeze through and the rooms tucked behind the grand ones.

Tom would normally have made straight for the highest view. I was completely distracted by the doors we were being allowed through (predictably).

Historic Environment Scotland says these tours still access normally closed areas, although the exact rooms can change with weather and availability. That unpredictability is rather wonderful.

If you love castles but especially the bits ordinary admission never quite reaches, I’d happily recommend this one. Have a brilliant wander.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

One dark stair changed the whole castle for me

I’ve just been wandering through Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, and I nearly walked straight past this narrow stone stair.

I turned back and climbed it instead. The worn steps, tight walls and sudden opening into the ruined rooms made the castle feel less like a grand fortress and more like somewhere people actually had to move through every day.

That small change of scale stayed with me far more than the biggest towers (Tom would absolutely disagree).

I just had to share this wonderfully ordinary corner of such a remarkable place. Hope you’re having a lovely day.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

I crossed one little bridge and understood Montgomery Castle
I’ve just been wandering around Montgomery Castle in Powys, and I stopped halfway across this wooden footbridge instead of hurrying into the ruins.
Looking down into the rock-cut ditch made the whole castle suddenly make sense. This narrow ridge was divided into successive defended areas, so reaching the heart of the castle meant getting through one obstacle after another.
It’s such a simple detail, but it turned scattered walls into a place I could actually picture working. I had to share this beautiful little approach — sometimes the ordinary route in tells you more than the grandest tower.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

Kirby Muxloe’s unfinished tower made the whole castle click
I’ve just come out of Kirby Muxloe Castle in Leicestershire, and the bit I wanted to share wasn’t the moat or grand gatehouse.
I stopped at two little brick doorways in the west tower. One leads into the ground-floor room; the other turns almost immediately into a tight spiral staircase. I followed it up (slowly!) and suddenly the castle felt far more human.
This was meant to be a much bigger fortified home, but most of it was never finished after its builder, Lord Hastings, was executed. That cramped completed staircase beside all that unrealised ambition stayed with me.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

Stirling Castle let eight of us past the ‘Private’ signs

Stirling Castle in central Scotland runs a Secret Stirling tour into parts of the fortress normally closed to ordinary visitors, and I’ve just discovered how different a castle feels once you leave the public route.

There were only eight of us. Almost immediately we were passing through locked doors and heading into rooms and passageways I’d walked past before without knowing what was behind them.

Some routes twist through old stairways and narrow doorways. Then, wonderfully, we ended up on the roof.

That was the moment for me.

Tom would happily spend all day looking over the walls, but I kept thinking about the routes underneath us: servants carrying food towards royal banquets, private stairs used to move through the palace, generations of people squeezing through spaces never designed for thousands of modern visitors.

Even the slightly odd detail of having two guides suddenly made sense. One led us through; the other stayed behind so nobody from the main visitor route wandered through the doors after us.

Our guide knew the place inside out, but the best part was simply being allowed to see the castle from the wrong side of the barriers (exactly where I always want to look).

Stirling is impressive from the battlements. Behind the locked doors, it starts feeling inhabited.

If you love castles for the passages, kitchens and awkward little spaces as much as the grand views, I’d warmly recommend making time for this one. Have a brilliant day exploring.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

Dirleton Castle’s kitchen stopped me before the towers did
I’ve just been wandering through Dirleton Castle in East Lothian, and the part that stayed with me wasn’t the grand silhouette. It was the kitchen.
I turned in almost absent-mindedly and found those deep oven openings tucked into the stone. The kitchen and great hall are among the parts of the ruins visitors can still explore while conservation work continues elsewhere. Historic Environment Scotland
Standing there made the castle feel less like a fortress and more like a place where somebody had to keep everyone fed. I just had to share this wonderfully ordinary corner of it.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

We paid £60 and never made it inside Highclere Castle
At Highclere Castle near Newbury, Hampshire—the real-life Downton Abbey house—we paid £60 for a 12.30 slot, then stood in a queue that barely moved for 45 minutes.
Tom and I had been looking forward to getting inside. I wanted the rooms and the traces of ordinary life behind all that television grandeur; he was ready to enjoy the architecture and tell me I was spending too long staring at doorways.
Instead, we spent our visit watching the queue inch forward.
After three quarters of an hour, we gave up and left without entering the house. That was the part that really stung: we had paid for a timed visit, reached the castle, and still decided that standing there indefinitely simply wasn’t how we wanted to spend the day.
The grounds didn’t rescue it for us either. After all that anticipation, walking away having never crossed the front door felt absurdly disappointing.
Highclere itself is magnificent to look at, but £60 and 45 minutes of queuing for a visit we eventually abandoned is a castle day I would not repeat.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

This chaplain turned his own name into prison graffiti.
At the Tower of London in central London during the English Reformation, Thomas Abel was imprisoned in the 1530s after publicly opposing Henry VIII’s attempt to end his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. A tiny carving attributed to Abel still survives in the Beauchamp Tower. Historic Royal Palaces
I kept coming back to the odd little picture: “Thomas” cut above a bell marked with an A.
Read together, it becomes his name — Thomas A-bell.
It looks almost playful until you know who made it. Abel had been Katherine’s chaplain, and he published an argument that Henry could not lawfully divorce her. The dispute became part of a much larger struggle over royal and papal authority. Historic Royal Palaces
That makes this small piece of stone feel very different to me. A prisoner with almost everything controlled around him could still decide what mark he left on the wall.
Abel remained opposed to the king’s religious supremacy. In 1540 he was condemned and executed. His elaborate little joke on his own name outlasted both his imprisonment and the government that punished him. Project Gutenberg
The Tower is full of enormous walls, but sometimes it is one prisoner’s hand-sized mark that makes the place feel inhabited.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

One little staircase changed how I saw Dolforwyn Castle
I’ve just reached Dolforwyn Castle near Newtown, Powys, after the steep walk up the ridge, and I thought the wide Severn Valley views would be what stayed with me.
Then I turned into the ruins and found these worn stone steps tucked against the surviving walls.
That small detail did it for me. Suddenly this stopped feeling like a plan of old foundations and became somewhere people actually moved through, one awkward step at a time.
I had to share this lovely corner because it gives the whole ruin such character. Hope you’re having a lovely day.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

Stirling Castle’s royal palace suddenly felt alive again

I expected grand rooms and old stone. I didn’t expect to feel as if Scotland’s royal court had switched itself back on.

The costumed interpreters were brilliant. They spoke with visitors so naturally and knew the history so well that the restored palace stopped feeling like a museum display.

Then I reached the dazzling Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. They’re modern recreations, woven to restore the atmosphere of James V’s court, yet the colour and detail floored me.

Mary, Queen of Scots, was crowned at Stirling in 1543. Standing inside those rooms, with the characters, tapestries and vast Great Hall around me, that fact suddenly felt human rather than distant.

I walked out to the view completely overwhelmed. I’ve visited plenty of historic places, but this was different.

Stirling didn’t merely show me a castle. For a few glorious hours, it made the whole place breathe again.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

My Downton Abbey day fell apart at Highclere Castle

At Highclere Castle in Hampshire, near Newbury — the real home behind Downton Abbey — the souvenir I wanted most was one simple entrance photo. I left without it after a visit that had already become one frustration after another.

I’d watched groups ahead pause for their pictures. When I asked for ours, we were told we were holding up the queue. That mattered because Highclere allows personal photography outside but bans it inside the Castle, so this was the obvious place to get the photograph I’d been looking forward to.

My husband had bought the visit for me because I’ve loved Downton Abbey for years. I thought the rooms would be what I remembered.

Instead, I was still thinking about the start. Our tour guide had said my small backpack was acceptable, but when we arrived we were told it wasn’t. Highclere’s current guidance says large bags and backpacks cannot be taken into the grounds, but we’d turned up with different advice about this particular bag.

We’d also left our packed lunch behind because we wanted to eat there. At the tearoom there was only one baguette and two sandwiches left. Two drinks and the baguette cost us £18.

None of those things alone would have wrecked a castle visit. Together, they did.

This was meant to be a special gift built around something I genuinely love. Yet I came away remembering the bag, the £18 baguette-and-drinks stop and the photograph I never got far more clearly than the famous rooms.

I wouldn’t pay to repeat that day.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

I walked beneath Carmarthenshire’s Carreg Cennen Castle into a natural cave

I came to Carreg Cennen Castle in Carmarthenshire expecting the clifftop ruin to be the whole experience. Then I turned into the south-east corner and found steep stone steps dropping below the inner ward into a narrow passage and a natural limestone cave beneath the castle.

I followed the rail as the window light faded, and that one detour changed the place for me. The castle stopped feeling like something simply built on a hill; it felt shaped around the rock itself.

I had to share this strange little descent because it is the detail I would remember long after the views. Hope you’re having a lovely day.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

Rain grounded our broomsticks — then history had us in tears

At Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, we expected the children’s Harry Potter broomstick session to be the big moment. Bad weather turned it into a photo opportunity instead, but this huge inhabited castle somehow became more fun from there.

We were three adults with two children, aged five and two. Rather than let the rain spoil it, we carried on exploring. The children dressed up as a princess and a knight and marched into the courtyard completely absorbed in their new characters.

Inside, the youngest became hooked on the little “Hunt the Rats” activity. It was exactly the sort of detail that stopped the castle feeling like somewhere children simply had to trail behind adults.

Then the Silly History Boys performed. They were appearing at Alnwick as part of its summer programme, turning history into comedy, and the adults ended up laughing hard enough to have tears in our eyes. The children found it just as funny.

That was what surprised me most. The broomstick lesson is genuinely tied to Alnwick’s Harry Potter filming history, but the thing I remember most wasn’t pretending to fly. It was watching two little children throw themselves into castle life while the adults were reduced to tears of laughter nearby.

We could easily have written the day off when the weather spoiled the activity we were most expecting. Instead, it became one of those rare family outings where nobody felt they were waiting for someone else to finish having fun.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

Eleanor de Montfort faced a siege outside Dover — and inside its tower.

At Dover Castle in Kent, Eleanor de Montfort held a strategically vital Channel fortress during the Second Barons’ War after her husband and eldest son were killed at Evesham.

Only months earlier, her husband Simon had been the most powerful rebel in England. Prince Edward, the future Edward I, escaped captivity in May 1265 and the war swung violently back towards the king.

Eleanor moved to Dover. Its position above the Channel gave her a route to the continent and influence over the Cinque Ports. Her surviving household accounts show that this was not a passive refuge. She brought in a siege engine, employed an engineer and paid a garrison that included 29 archers.

Then Evesham destroyed the Montfort cause.

Simon and their eldest son Henry were killed on 4 August. Eleanor did not immediately give up the castle. She used Dover to get surviving family members out of danger, sending her younger son Richard towards the continent and moving 11,000 marks to France.

By autumn, even food was becoming harder to obtain. The household accounts record supplies being taken as booty rather than simply bought.

Then the danger came from inside the walls.

Fourteen royalist prisoners held in Dover’s Great Tower persuaded their guards to release them. They seized and fortified the tower itself, splitting the fortress from within. Eleanor’s supporters were suddenly facing enemies in the castle while Prince Edward’s forces closed in from outside.

There was no clean military escape from that position.

Eleanor negotiated.

She agreed to leave England and surrender the goods in the castle, apart from personal clothing and arms. In return, her supporters were pardoned. The settlement mattered: men who might otherwise have been treated as rebels survived the collapse of the cause they had backed.

Eleanor left England on 28 October and went into exile in France, eventually becoming a nun at Montargis.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

This Welsh castle stay promised history but delivered a heartbreaking letdown

Ruthin Castle in Denbighshire, North Wales is a medieval castle turned hotel, where visitors come expecting to sleep inside a place shaped by centuries of history. I arrived imagining old stone walls, character and a special family memory.

Instead, the room felt like the castle had been forgotten. The worn furniture, tired fittings and disappointing condition were impossible to ignore (especially when you have children expecting a magical castle night).

What stayed with me was the contrast: a beautiful historic building outside, but a stay that left us feeling the past was not being cared for inside. I wanted my family to remember the history of the place, not the disappointment of the room.

Some castles show their age with pride. Others make you wonder what could have been saved with more care.

I hope your next castle visit gives you the history and wonder you came looking for.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

Allerton Castle’s forgotten rooms felt alive again

Allerton Castle near Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, is a historic castle restored after a devastating fire, and I expected a beautiful building — but I did not expect to feel like I was walking through someone’s home.

I went with Tom, who immediately headed for the grand views and towers. I got distracted by the rooms themselves: the spaces where people once ate, worked and lived.

The guided tour was what made it special. Instead of rushing through a list of dates, we were shown around open rooms and given the little details that made the castle feel human (the kind of things you miss when you only look at the walls).

By the time we left, I understood why this place stays with visitors. It was not just a restored castle — it felt like a story carefully brought back to life.

Hope you get the chance to wander somewhere like this soon — those quiet castle corners are often the ones you remember most.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

This ruined castle made me forget the view — the tiny details won me over

I just spent the afternoon exploring Goodrich Castle near Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, a medieval ruin with surviving towers, rooms and views across the River Wye landscape.

My friend Tom immediately headed for the highest tower, but I found myself stopping in the quieter corners — imagining the kitchens, storage spaces and everyday routines that once filled these stones.

What surprised me most was how much life still seemed to cling to the ruins. Walking through the towers and courtyard felt less like looking at an old building and more like tracing the choices of the people who lived and worked there.

A brilliant reminder that castles are not just about battles and walls — they are about ordinary lives inside extraordinary places.

Hope you get the chance to wander somewhere like this soon.

[Castles of Britain @CastlesBritain]

The betrayal that brought down Corfe Castle’s final defence

I kept coming back to the broken gate at Corfe Castle in Dorset and wondering how a fortress could survive an attack from outside, only to fall because of a decision made within its own walls.

During the English Civil War (1642–1651), Corfe Castle became one of the last Royalist strongholds in Dorset. In 1643, Lady Mary Bankes and the garrison held off a Parliamentary siege for six weeks. When the castle was attacked again in 1645–46, the defenders faced a different problem: not just force, but trust.

The choices narrowed one by one.

First, the defenders chose resistance, keeping Corfe in Royalist hands while much of the surrounding area changed sides.

Then the attackers changed their approach. Instead of relying only on a direct assault, Parliament’s forces exploited an internal betrayal: Lieutenant-Colonel Pitman helped soldiers enter the castle disguised as Royalist reinforcements.

After the surrender in 1646, Parliament ordered the castle to be deliberately damaged so it could no longer serve as a stronghold. The walls that still stand today are partly a record of that decision — not just of medieval ambition, but of a later conflict that decided what the castle would become.

What fascinates me is that Corfe’s story is not only about commanders and battles. It is about the soldiers waiting behind the walls, the household caught in a political war, and the moment when one person’s choice changed the fate of an entire fortress.