Kenilworth Castle
Gardens fit for a queen
Family-friendly with events and activities in school holidays, Kenilworth Castle may be a romantic ruin today but it was once a medieval stronghold founded in the 1120s. In 1575, Robert Dudley, Lord Leicester, took over to create a Renaissance Palace fit for a Queen, his sovereign, Elizabeth the First.
Dudley spared no expense in making this a modern palace with a knot garden in four intricate quarters with obelisks, a fountain, an aviary and colourful plantings. The Queen didn’t marry Dudley and the castle was all but destroyed in the 1600s to prevent it from becoming a royalist stronghold.
Someone in Dudley’s time cared enough to have the garden documented in detail by writer Robert Langham and now, more than 400 years later, it has been recreated by English Heritage following Langham’s descriptions.