On the way north from Oxford we stopped at Kenilworth
Castle, another of our free sites, ie English Heritage. The castle is a huge complex with the first
buildings erected in the 1120’s and expanded by King John. It was the site of the longest siege in
British history in 1266, the Lancastrian base for the War of the Roses and Robert
Dudley’s, the Earl of Leicester, lavish reception for Queen Elizabeth I in
1575. Robert Dudley was the ‘Virgin’
Queen’s favourite. Unlike most of the
other castles we visited, Kenilworth had Medieval furnishings and really came
alive for us.
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| Kenilworth Castle |
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| The stables now exhibition center |
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| Ornately carved sideboard |
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| The gardens Dudley made for Elizabeth |
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| The old and the new |
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| I love these arched windows |
We drove on through the Peak District of beautiful windswept
dales and moors. Our goal was the great
house of Lyme Park, aka Pemberley from Pride
and Prejudice. This was the only
great house we visited. I have some issues
with great houses. Although very
beautiful, they were almost exclusively built on profits of war, slave trade
and/or industrial exploitation. Lyme
Park was in the Legh family for over 600 years from when Edward III gifted it
the 1300’s for services to his son, the Black Prince, during the Battle of Crecy
in the Hundred Years War. In the 19th
and 20th Centuries, the Legh family made their money from coal
mining. After WWII, the house was given
to the National Trust. Despite my misgivings, I
thoroughly enjoyed seeing the site where Colin Firth emerged from the lake to
meet Elizabeth Bennet.
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| Pemberley and the Lake |
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| The courtyard where Mr Darcy hurried to meet Elizabeth and her Aunt and Uncle |
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| Beautiful garden |
More beautiful country side awaited us in the Lake
District. We had a brief visit to Windermere
and I could well imagine the Swallows and Amazons racing around the islands in
the Lake.
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| Lake Windermere |
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| Beautiful hotel in Windermere |
We checked out Hadrian's wall and some old Roman ruins of a fort along the wall. I felt we had come a bit of a full circle as one of my favourite statues in the Fethiye museum is of Emperor Hadrian.
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| Hadrian's Wall stretching across Northern England |
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| A house was built right over the Roman ruins |
As we were driving along we came across a private castle. The owners live on the premises but you can hire it out for weddings and parties. Amazing!
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| Private castle |
Next stop Scotland.
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