After Edinburgh, we headed back south for the last couple of days of our trip. Our first stop was Kenilworth Castle. Set on the outskirts of a small village like town, Kenilworth has been a royal castle for most of its history and many of the buildings have been unaltered since the time of Elizabeth I.
The castle is situated on top of a slight hill with a staircase leading to the Norman keep which dates from the 1120s when the first castle was established by Geoffrey de Clinton, the royal chamberlain. The castle was garrisoned for Henry II during the rebellion of his sons in 1173-74. About the same time, de Clinton died and the castle was determined to be of strategic importance – so the king took control of it.
In 1244, the custody of Kenilworth was given to Simon de Montfort. Over the next 300 years, the castle was the site of one of the few full-scale medieval sieges on English soil and the place where Edward II was forced to abdicate his throne. Through a restored arched doorway, is a loggia with a number of arches that was installed about 1569 and may have framed a small courtyard leading to the castle’s interior.
Initially, the great tower (with its 14 foot thick walls) was probably the main residence of the castle with a great hall on the upper floor. It is believed that the large arched windows were modifications made by Henry II, a fact significant due to the size of the windows which would be considered large for the time period. The Elizabethan grids would have been added later
The castle was later turned into a palace by John of Gaunt, son of Edward III, who built the great hall, a large kitchen and a number of apartments between 1373 and 1380. According to the guidebook, these surviving buildings are the finest survival of an English royal palace of the late Middle Ages.
The kitchen would have most likely been timber framed and so virtually nothing remains except for the hearths of three large fireplaces which were capable of providing food for several hundred people. It measured 66 feet by 28 feet and contained a fourth fireplace, a bread oven and the later addition of a furnace/built in cauldron for boiling meat. In the above picture, the Great Tower is in the background and the kitchen would have been in the foreground.
Directly behind the kitchen is the “Strong Tower”, possibly so named for a remarkable feature – all of the floors were vaulted in stone. The cellars were larders. What little remains of the tower is accessed by a couple of wooden staircases and contains a suite of lodgings, possibly for the steward.
The second floor of the tower provides beautiful panoramic views of the castle and the surrounding land. In 1563, Elizabeth I granted Kenilworth to her favorite courtier, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and one of it’s most well known associations is with the 19 day party he threw for his queen in 1575.
The Great Hall was the only part of the castle that Robert Dudley did not alter during his renovations 200 years after it was built. The large windows are notable for their height and delicacy and are the best surviving example of the early Perpendicular style in a domestic building. The hall was also exceptional for having six fireplaces, three along one wall which was at the cutting edge of architecture for the time. Also notable is the large bay window (on the right side of the picture). Although an earlier hall likely existed on the site, Gaunt replaced most of it and the roof remained the widest of any royal hall in medieval and Tudor England with the exception of one at Westminster.
The State Apartments were accessed by a central oriel, and were built for John of Gaunt as were a number of the chambers although Leicester made several renovations in 1570-71. The door of the central oriel is unusual for the time period as it provided a direct link from the courtyard to the heart of the private chambers. On the ground floor (which was below the living quarters) was a store room, a number of latrines, and a small kitchen.
A large four story tower added in 1571 by Robert Dudley is known as Leicester’s Building and was added specifically to provide private accommodations for Queen Elizabeth.
Following the civil war in the mid 1600s, the castle’s fortifications were dismantled and the castle came into the possession of Laurence Hyde (brother in law of James II) whose descendant, Thomas Villiers, became the first earl of Clarendon in 1776. Kenilworth continued to be owned by the earls of Clarendon for more than 150 years but fell into a romantic, ivy covered ruin.
In August 1817, 30 tons of stone crashed from the north west turret of the great tower, leading to effort to halt the buildings deterioration (and the removal of the ivy). When the Earl could no longer keep up with the costs of maintaining the property, it was bought by a local motor industry magnate, Sir John Siddeley (created as first Earl of Kenilworth) in 1937. His son gave the castle to the town of Kenilworth in 1958 and for the last 25 years, it has been managed by the English Heritage Trust.
Another of the additions made by Dudley was an elaborate garden intended for the queen’s use. Due to a written account of the garden made by a household official at the time, English Heritage was able to recreate the garden around 2005-2006– the first such recreation done on this scale.
*all information from the guidebook
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