Places with connections to kings, queens or other significant members of the British Royal Family.
This is Leeds Castle, nowhere near the city of Leeds in Yorkshire, but located some 240 miles to the south, in Kent. It was once described as “the loveliest castle in the world” by historian Lord Conway and understandably, but slightly tediously, Leeds Castle ensures his words have not been forgotten – even if most …
Althorp (sometimes pronounced ‘Awltrup’) is the Spencer family pile in Northamptonshire. Who amongst us lesser mortals had heard of either the estate or the family before Lady Diana Spencer shot into public awareness like a blazing comet? Perhaps, some may have vaguely thought, the family was something to do with that other lot, the Marks. …
There used to be a Royal Hunting Lodge by the ancient church of St Mary Magdalene, in the little Northamptonshire village of Geddington. There, on the night of 6th December 1290, the sombre party escorting the body of Queen Eleanor of Castile, beloved wife of King Edward I, rested on its journey to Westminster. Geddington …
The above is not a statement about Eleanor’s mood, addressed to someone called Hardingstone (which I’m thinking is a good name for a butler); it is a memorial to a dead queen beside a busy road in a suburb of Northampton. And it is part of an old love story. When you think of King …
What might be called ‘the Royal Oak Incident’ took place when the future King Charles II hid in an oak tree after the Battle of Worcester in 1651. This was a real event, which might have had a very different outcome, and is a fascinating story. You can visit the spot where it happened, Boscobel …
The Tower of London has been sitting on the north bank of the Thames, watching the tides of a great city ebb and flow, for around a thousand years. The city has grown up around it and it is part of it; it is impossible to imagine London without the Tower. Think of all that …
Good question. You can see for yourself that there’s very little of it left. True, there’s a fine motte, traces of a few fireplaces, site of a kitchen, with an attractive gap-toothed inner curtain wall built mainly of local flint – and a well. But that’s about it – and the massive moats, which would …
The Battle of Bosworth is one of those events that changed the course of history. Fought on the 22 August 1485, Bosworth was the last significant armed encounter of the so-called Wars of the Roses, the medieval dynastic struggle between the houses of York and Lancaster and their allies, which had rumbled on for three …
Every action has a reaction, but there are some events that so obviously and profoundly shape the future. One of these was the Battle of Hastings on 14th October 1066*, when heroic Harold, King of England, got beat by wicked William, Duke of Normandy. Of course, nothing’s that simple – but one thing is for …
Great events fall upon people and places, sometimes without warning. But time takes everything out of focus until there’s nothing obvious to show that anything ever happened there, and no trace of the people who took part. For example, take the peaceful, and fairly nondescript, farmland south of the little Yorkshire village of Towton: here, …
