Visit to Kennilworth

We went to Kennilworth over the weekend to see the new Elizabeth gardens that English Heritage have painstakingly researched and recreated.
The castle itself is huge and mostly in ruins, only the gatehouse and stable block are in use and there is a very good exhibition of the life of the castle and who lived there. The gate house has been restored to the setting of the people who lived in there in the 1930's together with an exhibition of Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester. This is very good and holds your interest well throughout.
The real centrepiece of the visit was the knot gardens. The privy gardens that Dudley created to impress Elizabeth in the summer progress of 1575. They are superb, and the sort of place that you can go back to at different times of the year and see something different. next year the plants will be a little bit more mature and will be a splendid site in the springtime.

We also went to see Kimbolton Castle and Buckden Towers, two places that are important in the later life of Catherine of Aragon. Buckden is a tranquil place that is now owned by the Claretian Missionaries and Kimbolton has been a school for a number of years and is not generally open to the public. In the nearby parish church there is the only Tiffany stained glass window in a parish church in England and worth a little look.

www.tudorhistorytours.com