Kenilworth Castle
Kenilworth Castle is located in the town of the same name in Warwickshire , England. The castle, which was built between the beginning of the Norman rule of England and the Tudor period , has been described by architectural historian Anthony Emery as “the best preserved example of a semi-royal palace of the late Middle Ages, significant for its size, shape and size craftsmanship quality of its execution ”. Kenilworth also played an important role in the story. During the Second Barons' War , the castle was besieged for six months in 1266. In the Wars of the Roses , it formed a base for the Lancaster campaigns . Kenilworth Castle was also the site of the fall of Edward II from the throne of England, the French insult to Henry V in 1414 (which, according to John Strecche, contributed to the Azincourt campaign ) and the lavish reception for Elizabeth given by the Earl of Leicester I. in 1575.
The castle was built over several centuries. Founded in the 1120s, starting from a mighty Norman keep , the castle was significantly expanded by King John at the beginning of the 13th century. Large bodies of water were created for defense by the damming of local rivers and streams, and the resulting fortifications were found to withstand attacks on land and water in 1266. John of Gaunt spent large sums in the late 14th century to transform the medieval castle into a palace fortress in the then modern Perpendicular style . The Earl of Leicester then expanded the castle further by building new Tudor-style buildings using the existing medieval structures of Kenilworth Castle, creating a fashionable Renaissance palace.
Kenilworth Castle was partially destroyed by parliamentary forces in 1649 to prevent it from being used as a military fortress. After this destruction, only two of its buildings are still habitable today. The castle became a tourist destination from the 18th century and became particularly famous in the Victorian era following the publication of the novel Kenilworth by Sir Walter Scott in 1826. The English conservation authority English Heritage manages the castle since 1984. The castle is a building of Class I and as a Scheduled Monument listed building and open to the public.
Kenilworth Castle is the setting for the opera series Il castello di Kenilworth by Gaetano Donizetti, first performed in 1826 .
Architecture and system design
Although the castle is now as a result of the razing, i. H. Deliberate partial destruction after the English Civil War is in ruins, Kenilworth Castle is a vivid example of five centuries of military and civil architecture in England. The castle is built almost entirely from the local red sandstone .
Entrance and wall of the outer bailey
To the southeast of the main castle lie the Brays, a corruption of the French word braie , which denotes an outer palisade fortification . Of this great 13th century barbican , which with its stone wall and outer gatehouse secured the most important access to the inner castle, only the earth walls and a few wall fragments have been preserved. The area is now part of the castle parking lot. Behind the Brays are the ruins of the Gallery Tower, a second gate tower rebuilt in the 15th century. The gallery tower originally protected the 152-meter-long, narrow and walled dam that still connects the Brays with the inner castle. This dam was called Tiltyard because it was used in the Middle Ages for tilting , which was used to describe tournament stitching . The Tiltyard -Damm served both as a dam and as part of the fortifications of the outer bailey . On the east side of the Tiltyard is a lower area of swampy terrain that was originally flooded and called the Lower Pool . To the west of the dam is an area that was once called the Grand Mere (Great Sea). The Great Mere has now been drained, and there is a meadow where there was previously a large lake of around 100 hectares that was dammed by the Tiltyard Dam.
The outer bailey of Kenilworth Castle is usually entered through Mortimer Tower, which is now a simple ruin but was originally a Norman gate tower expanded in the late 13th and 16th centuries . The outer bailey wall, long and relatively low, was built primarily by King John; it had numerous buttresses, but only a few towers, as it should be protected mainly by the waters of the Great Mere and the Lower Pool . The north side of the wall of the outer outer bailey was almost completely destroyed when it was razed. The fortifications of the outer outer bailey include, clockwise, starting at Mortimer Tower, a water gate opening to the west that would originally have led to the Great Mere , the King's Gate, an agricultural addition from the 17th century, the Swan Tower, a tower from the late 13th century with additions from the 16th century named after the swans who used to live on the Great Mere , the Lunn Tower from the early 13th century and the 14th century water tower so called because it was on the water of the Lower Pool .
Inner courtyard
The inner courtyard of Kenilworth Castle consists of several buildings that lean against a fore-bailey wall of Norman origin and use the location on a natural hill for their defense, which rises steeply from the surrounding area. The Great Tower from the 12th century is located on the hill itself and forms the northeast corner of the outer bailey. The towering corner towers of the Great Tower, which was destroyed during the demolition, are eye-catching and essentially resemble exaggerated Norman pilasters . The walls of the Great Tower are 5 meters thick and its corner towers are 30 meters high. Though the Great Tower of Kenilworth Castle is larger, it resembles that of Brandon Castle near Coventry . Both were built by the local Clinton family in the 20's of the 12th century. The Great Tower can be called a Hallendonjon because its length is greater than its width. The bottom floor is filled with earth that may have come from an earlier moth that could have stood on the site, and is additionally protected by a circumferential sloping stone plinth at the base. The tall Tudor windows at the top of the tower date from the 1570s.
The majority of the buildings in the northern part of the inner courtyard were built between 1372 and 1380 by the nobleman John of Gaunt. This part of the castle is described by historian Anthony Emery as "the best preserved example of a semi-royal palace from the late Middle Ages, significant for its size, shape and the quality of its workmanship". Gaunt's architectural style emphasized rectangular shapes, the separation of service areas on the ground floor from the upper floors and the contrast between simple exterior and lavish interior decoration, especially on the first floors of the buildings in the inner courtyard. The result is considered to be "an early example of the Perpendicular Style ".
The most important of Gaunt's buildings is his Great Knight's Hall . The Great Knight's Hall replaced an earlier series of halls in the same location and was heavily influenced by Edward III's design. influenced for Windsor Castle . The great knight's hall consisted of a "ceremonial sequence of rooms", to which a particularly large staircase led, which has now disappeared. From the great knight's hall, visitors could look out of the high windows and admire the Great Mere or the inner courtyard. The first floor of the Great Great Hall, used by the servants, was illuminated through slits in the window, similar to the design of contemporary Wingfield Manor . The roof was built by William Wintringham in 1376 and was the widest space in England at the time that was not supported by pillars. There is a debate among historians about whether this roof after the manner of a hammer-beam-arch or neck bar design ( collar and truss-brace design ) designed was, or a combination of both.
There was an early attempt to make the outer appearance of the Great Hall symmetrical - the Strong Tower and Saintlowe Tower architecturally function as nearly symmetrical wings of the Great Hall, while the base of the Great Hall is designed to be reflects the base of the opposite Great Tower. An unusual multi-sided tower, the Oriel bay window, provides a counterpoint to the main entrance of the Great Hall and was intended for the private entertainment of John of Gaunt, away from the main celebrations on important occasions. The Oriel Tower is based on Edwards III La Rose Tower at Windsor Castle, which served a similar function. Gaunt's Strong Tower is so named because it has stone vaults on all floors, an unusual and robust construction. The Great Great Hall influenced the design of Bolton Castle and Raby Castle , while the roof structure of the Great Great Hall became famous and copied at Arundel Castle and Westminster Hall .
Other parts of the castle built by Gaunt include the southern section of the State Apartments, the Gaunt Tower, and the main kitchen. Although these are now badly damaged, they are built in the same style as the Great Knight's Hall. This gave Gaunt's palace a uniform appearance in a clear departure from the more eclectic medieval building traditions. Gaunt's kitchen replaced the previous 12th century kitchens, which were arranged along the Great Tower as in Conisbrough Castle . Gaunt's new kitchen was twice the size of those in comparable castles and measured 19 by 8 meters.
The rest of the inner courtyard was built by Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, in the 1570s. He built a tower, now called Leicester building on the southern edge of the inner bailey as a guest wing, which consists of the wall of the inner bailey herauskragt to create additional space. Leicester's building was four stories high and constructed in a fashionable contemporary Tudor style with "brittle thin walls and lattice-like windows". The building should appear well proportioned to the old Great Tower next to it, which was one of the reasons for its considerable height. The style of Leicester's buildings later served as a model for Elizabethan country house designs , especially in the Midlands , of which Hardwick Hall is considered a classic example.
In addition to the large keep , Leicester also built a loggia that led to the new ornamental gardens. The loggia was intended to elegantly frame the gaze of the beholder who was slowly admiring the gardens and was a new design element recently adopted from Italy in the 16th century.
Unterer Hof, Linker Hof and Rechter Hof
The rest of the interior of Kenilworth Castle is divided into three areas: the Lower Courtyard, which extends between Mortimer Tower and Leicester's Gatehouse, the Left Courtyard, which joins the Inner Castle Courtyard to the southwest, and the Right Courtyard, which is northwest of the Inner courtyard lies. The avenue that now cuts through the Lower Courtyard is a relatively modern addition from the mid-19th century. Originally this courtyard was more open, with the exception of the canons' chapel, which used to stand in front of the stables. The chapel was destroyed in 1524, and only the foundations remain today. The courtyards served different purposes: the lower courtyard was a relatively public area, while the left courtyard and the right courtyard were more private.
Leicester's gatehouse was built on the north side of the Lower Court, replacing an older gatehouse to provide a fashionable entrance from Coventry. The exterior design, with its symbolic towers and original battlements, echoes a style popular more than a century ago and is very similar to Kirby Muxloe Castle and the Beauchamp gatehouse of Warwick Castle . In contrast, the interior, with its contemporary wood paneling, is designed in the same very contemporary Elizabethan fashion as Leicester's building in the inner courtyard. Leicester's gatehouse is one of the few parts of the castle that have been preserved. The stables built by John Dudley in the 1550s have also been preserved and lie along the east side of the Lower Court. The stable building is a large building made mostly of stone, with the exception of a decorative paneled half-timbered construction on the first floor, which is modeled on an anachronistic, folk style. Both buildings could easily be seen from Leicester's building and were therefore always intended for visitors to view. Leicester's intention may have been to create a deliberately anachronistic view of the Lower Court that echoes the older ideals of chivalry and romanticism, and that would add to the more modern aspects of the palace's redesign.
Garden and castle grounds
Much of the Right Court of Kenilworth Castle is taken up by the castle gardens. For most of Kenilworth Castle's history, the role of the castle garden, which was primarily used for entertainment, was very different from that of the surrounding hunting area, which was primarily used for hunting. From the 16th century on, there were lavish knot gardens in the lower courtyard . Today's gardens are designed to come as close as possible to their original appearance from 1575, primarily recorded in historical records, with a steep terrace on the south side of the garden and stairs that lead down to eight square node gardens. In Elizabethan gardens, "the plants were almost irrelevant," and instead of them the emphasis was on sculpture , including four wooden obelisks painted to resemble porphyry and a marble fountain with a statue of two Greek mythological figures. A wooden aviary contains a number of birds. The original garden was heavily influenced by the Italian Renaissance garden of Villa d'Este .
To the northwest are the earthworks which mark the site where the Pleasance (summer palace) was that in 1414 by Henry V. was built. The Pleasance was a miniature castle-style banquet house. Surrounded by two diamond-shaped trenches with its own pier, the Pleasance was built on the other side of the Great Mere and could only be reached by boat. It resembled Richard II's retreat at Sheen from the 1380s and was later copied by his younger brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester , in Greenwich in the 1430s, as was his son John of Lancaster at Fulbrook. The Pleasance was finally dismantled by Henry VIII and part of it was moved to the left courtyard in the castle itself, possibly to enhance the anachronistic appearance. These components were finally destroyed for good in the 1650s.
history
12th Century
Kenilworth Castle was in the early 1120s by Geoffrey de Clinton, Grand Chamberlain of I. Heinrich founded. The original shape of the castle is uncertain. It was thought to be a moth, a mound of earth topped with wooden houses. However, the stone Great Tower may already have been part of the original design. Clinton was a local rival to Roger de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Warwick , who owned neighboring Warwick Castle, and the King made Clinton Sheriff of Warwickshire as a counterbalance to Beaumont's power . However, Clinton began to lose the king's favor after 1130, and when he died in 1133 his son, also named Geoffrey, was still a minor. Geoffrey and his uncle William de Clinton were forced to come to terms with Beaumont. This setback and the difficult years of anarchy (1135–1154) temporarily delayed any further development of the castle.
Henry II ascended the throne at the end of the anarchy, but during the uprising from 1173 to 1174 he faced a significant resistance faction led by his son Henry, who was supported by the French crown. The conflict spread to England and Kenilworth Castle was occupied by Henry II's troops. Geoffrey II. De Clinton died during this time, after which the castle became completely royal property, which was a sign of its military importance. The Clintons themselves moved on to Buckinghamshire . At this point in time, Kenilworth Castle consisted of the Great Tower, the inner courtyard wall, a simple dam over the smaller lake that preceded the Great Mere damming , and the local hunting ground for hunting.
13th Century
Henry's successor, Richard I , paid relatively little attention to Kenilworth Castle, but significant construction was again carried out on the castle under King John. When John was excommunicated in 1208 , he began a program to renovate and improve several large royal castles. These included Corfe Castle , Odiham Castle , Dover Castle , Scarborough Castle and Kenilworth Castle. John spent £ 1,115 on Kenilworth Castle between 1210 and 1216, building the stone outer bailey wall and improving the rest of the fortifications, including the Mortimer Tower and Lunn Tower. He also significantly improved the castle's water hazards by damming the Finham Brook and Inchford Brook creeks, creating the Great Mere . This made Kenilworth Castle one of the largest English castles at the time, with one of the largest man-made lakes as an obstacle to approach. As part of the guarantee for the Magna Carta , John was forced to cede the castle to his opponents under the barons before it opened at the beginning of his son Henry III's reign . came under royal control again.
Henry III. transferred Kenilworth Castle in 1244 to Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester , who later became a leader in the Second Revolt of the Barons (1263-1267) against the King, using Kenilworth Castle as his central base of operations. At first, the conflict went very badly for King Henry III, and after the Battle of Lewes in 1264 he was forced to sign the Mise of Lewes, after which he had to hand over his son Prince Edward as a hostage to the rebels. Edward was taken to Kenilworth Castle where, according to the chroniclers, he was imprisoned in inappropriately harsh conditions. After he was released in early 1264, Eduard defeated Montford at the Battle of Evesham . The surviving rebels, led by Henry of Hastings, Montford's lord of the castle at Kenilworth Castle, rallied at the castle the following spring. Edward's forces then proceeded to the siege.
The siege of Kenilworth Castle in 1266 was "probably the longest in English history," according to historian Norman Pounds , and at the time the siege was also the largest in England in terms of the number of soldiers involved that had ever taken place. Simon de Monfort's son, Simon VI. de Montfort, promised in January 1266 to hand over the castle to the king. When this had still not happened five months later, Henry III began. on June 21, 1266 with the siege. Protected by the extensive water hazards, the castle withstood the attacks, although Edward stormed the less protected north wall using siege towers and even attempted to take the castle with boats from Chester in a night attack. The distance between the royal trebuchets and the castle walls reduced the effect of the catapults considerably, which is why larger trebuchets had to be brought from London. A papal intervention by the legate Ottobuono finally led to a compromise in the form of Kenilworth's dictum, according to which the rebels were allowed to buy back their confiscated lands on condition that the castle was surrendered. This ended the siege on December 14, 1266. The water hazards at Kenilworth Castle influenced the building of later castles in Wales , especially those of Caerphilly Castle .
Henry transferred Kenilworth Castle to his son Edmund Crouchback, 1st Earl of Lancaster, in 1267 . Edmund held many tournaments at Kenilworth Castle in the late 13th century, including a major event in 1279, presided over by royal favorite Roger de Mortimer , which saw one hundred knights compete in the Tiltyard tournament for three days at an in Based on the popular Arthurian legend called Round Table event.
14th Century
Edmund Crouchback bequeathed the castle to his eldest son, Thomas of Lancaster, 2nd Earl of Lancaster, in 1298 . Lancaster married Alice de Lacy , which made him the richest nobleman in England. Kenilworth Castle replaced Bolingbroke Castle and became the principal castle of the Lancaster estates, serving as both a social and financial center for Thomas. Between 1314 and 1317, Thomas had the castle's first great knight's hall and the water tower built in the outer outer bailey wall and also enlarged the hunting ground. Lancaster, supported by many other English barons, found itself in increasing opposition to King Edward II. War broke out in 1322 and Lancaster was captured and subsequently executed at the Battle of Boroughbridge. His estates, including Kenilworth Castle, were confiscated by the Crown. King Edward and his wife Isabella of France spent Christmas 1323 at Kenilworth Castle amid great festivities.
In 1326, however, Eduard was deposed through an alliance between Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer . Edward was eventually captured by Isabella's forces, and Henry, Earl of Lancaster, who had assisted Isabella's invasion, was entrusted with the detention of the king. Henry, who re-occupied almost all of Lancaster's estates, was appointed constable of Kenilworth Castle, and Edward was taken there in late 1326. Heinrich's ownership of the castle was finally confirmed the following year. Kenilworth Castle was probably chosen for the imprisonment of Edward by Isabella because it was a great fortress and also because of its symbolism of the ideals of freedom and good government of its former owners. Royal injunctions were made in Edward's name by Isabella at Kenilworth Castle until the next year. A delegation of the leading barons, led by Bishop Orleton, was then sent to Kenilworth Castle to try and persuade Edward to abdicate, should it fail, to inform him of his removal as king. Eduard officially abdicated on January 21, 1327 as king in the great hall of the castle. However, as the months went by, it became increasingly clear that Kenilworth Castle was not a very suitable place for Edward to be held. The castle was in a central location in the Midlands, in an area where several nobles remained loyal to Edward and were believed to have worked to free him. Heinrich's loyalty to Isabella was also increasingly being called into question. A short time later, Isabella and Mortimer had Eduard brought to Berkeley Castle at night , where he died shortly afterwards. Isabella continued to use Kenilworth Castle as a royal castle until her fall in 1330.
Henry of Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster , inherited the castle from his father in 1345 and had the Great Hall of Knights remodeled with more splendid interior and roof construction. On his death, Blanche of Lancaster inherited the castle. Blanche married John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward III. Their connection and combined resources made John the second richest man in England next to the king himself. After Blanche's death, John married Constance of Castile , who had a claim to the Kingdom of Castile , and John then called himself King of Castile and León . Kenilworth Castle was one of the more important of the more than thirty castles in England. John began construction on Kenilworth Castle between 1373 and 1380 in a style designed to emphasize his royal claims on the Iberian Peninsula. John built an even more grandiose Great Hall, the Strong Tower and the Saintlowe Tower, the State Apartments and the new kitchen complex. When not engaged in foreign campaigns, John spent much of his time at Kenilworth Castle and Leicester, and made even more use of Kenilworth Castle in the post-1395 period when his health deteriorated. In his final years, John had extensive repairs carried out on the entire castle complex.
15th century
Many castles, especially royal palaces, were left to decay in the 15th century. However, Kenilworth Castle continued to be a favorite place to stay because it was a late medieval palace fortress. John of Gaunt's son, Henry IV , restored Kenilworth Castle to royal ownership when he ascended the throne in 1399 and has stayed at the castle frequently since then. Henry V also made extensive use of Kenilworth Castle, but preferred to stay in the Pleasance , the miniature castle he had built on the other side of the Great Mere . According to contemporary chronicler John Strecche, who lived in neighboring Kenilworth Priory, the French made a fool of Henry V in 1414 by sending him tennis balls as a gift to Kenilworth Castle. The French intended to allude to an alleged lack of military ability of Henry V. According to Strecche, this gift spurred Heinrich in his decision to start the Agincourt campaign . This contemporary report was prepared by William Shakespeare as the basis for a scene in his play Henry V used.
English castles, including Kenilworth Castle, did not play a crucial role during the Wars of the Roses (1455–1485), which were primarily fought in open field battles between rival factions of the Houses of Lancaster and York . After the nervous breakdown of King Henry VI. Queen Margaret used the lands of the Duchy of Lancaster, including Kenilworth Castle, as the main base for her military support. Margaret took Henry away from London for his own safety in 1456 , whereupon Henry's court stayed at Kenilworth Castle, Leicester Castle and Tutbury Castle for protection for almost the entire time until 1461 . Kenilworth Castle remained an important fortress of the House of Lancaster until the end of the Wars of the Roses, often providing a military counterbalance to the nearby Warwick Castle. After Henry VII's victory in the Battle of Bosworth , Kenilworth Castle once again received royal attention, as Henry visited frequently and had a tennis court built for himself at the castle. His son Henry VIII decided that Kenilworth Castle should continue to be maintained as a royal castle. He had the Pleasance torn down, rebuilding part of the wooden structure in the lower courtyard of the castle.
16th Century
The castle remained royal until it was donated to John Dudley in 1553 . Dudley rose under Henry VIII and was under Edward VI. to the leading political figure. Dudley was a patron of John Shute , an early exponent of classical architecture in England, and began the process of re-modernizing Kenilworth Castles. Before Queen Mary had him executed in 1553 for attempting to put Lady Jane Gray on the throne, Dudley had built the new stable building and widened the tournament area to its present form.
Kenilworth Castle was returned to Dudley's son Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester in 1563, four years after Elizabeth I acceded to the throne , Leicester's goods in Warwickshire were worth between £ 500 and £ 700, but Leicester's power and wealth, including his privileges, were newer Land acquisitions, ultimately contingent on remaining the Queen's favorite .
Leicester continued his father's modernization of Kenilworth Castle to encourage Queen Elizabeth to stop at Kenilworth Castle on her regular tours of the country. Elizabeth came to visit in 1566 and 1568, when Leicester had already commissioned royal architect Henry Hawthorne to draw up plans for a dramatic neo-classical extension to the south side of the inner courtyard. When this turned out to be impossible, Leicester instead hired William Spicer to renovate and expand the castle, thereby creating modern accommodations for the royal court and at the same time symbolically underlining its own claim to noble origins. After negotiations with its tenants, Leicester was able to expand the size of the hunting ground again. The result of his efforts was given the name English " Renaissance Palace".
Elizabeth toured the partially completed result at Kenilworth Castle in 1572, but the full effect of Leicester's efforts was not seen until the Queen's last visit in 1575. Leicester was anxious to impress Elizabeth in a final attempt to convince her to marry him and spared no expense in doing so. Elizabeth brought a retinue of thirty-one barons and four hundred servants with her on her royal visit, which lasted an exceptional 19 days. Twenty mounted messengers appeared at the castle every day carrying royal messages. Leicester entertained the Queen and much of the surrounding area with parades, fireworks, bear fights, mystery games, hunts and banquets. The cost was said to be many thousands of pounds, which nearly bankrupted Leicester when in reality it was arguably no more than £ 1,700 in total. The event was considered a great success and was the longest sojourn on a comparable estate of any of Elizabeth's royal tours, but the Queen did not choose to marry Leicester.
The value of Kenilworth Castle was estimated at £ 10,401 in 1588 when Leicester died deeply in debt and with no rightful heir. In accordance with his will, the castle was first transferred to his brother Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, and finally to his illegitimate son, Sir Robert Dudley, after his death in 1590.
17th century
After Sir Robert Dudley had tried in vain to prove his legitimacy before the court of the Star Chamber , he went to Italy in 1605. In the same year Sir Thomas Chaloner, the tutor (and from 1610 chamberlain) of the eldest son of Jacob I , Prince Heinrich , was commissioned with repairs to the castle and its grounds, including the planting of the gardens, the restoration of the fish ponds and oversee the improvement of the wildlife park. During the years 1611-1612 Dudley arranged the sale of Kenilworth Castle to Henry, who was Prince of Wales at the time . Heinrich died before finalizing the purchase, which was then completed by his brother Karl . When Karl became king, he lent the castle to his wife Henrietta Maria . The office of Truchsess of the castle he bestowed on Robert Carey, 1st Earl of Monmouth , and after his death he passed it on to Carey's sons Heinrich and Thomas. Kenilworth Castle remained a popular place to stay for both James I and Charles and was accordingly well maintained. The most famous royal visit was in 1624 when Ben Jonson's play The Masque of Owls was staged for Charles at Kenilworth Castle.
The English Civil War broke out in 1642. During the early campaigns, Kenilworth Castle provided a useful counterbalance to the parliamentary stronghold of Warwick Castle. Kenilworth Castle was used by Charles as a base for raids on parliamentary fortifications in the Midlands during his advance on Edgehill in October 1642. After the battle, however, the royalist garrison was withdrawn as Lord Brooke approached and the castle was then occupied by parliamentary troops. The new captain of Hastings Castle, Ingram, was arrested in April 1643 as an alleged royalist double agent. By January 1645, Parliamentary forces at Coventry had increased their control of the castle, and attempts by royalist forces to oust it from Warwickshire had failed. Even after the end of the First English Civil War in 1646 were safety concerns, which is why the Parliament in 1649 ordered to Kenilworth Castle grind . A wall of the Great Tower, various parts of the outer bailey and the battlements were destroyed, but not before the buildings were documented by antiquarian William Dugdale , who published his findings in 1656.
Colonel Joseph Hawkesworth, who was in charge of implementing the demolition, bought the property for himself and made Leicester's gatehouse his own home. Part of the lower courtyard was converted into a farm and many of the remaining buildings were stripped of their building materials. Charles II returned to the throne in 1660 and Hawkesworth was expelled from Kenilworth Castle. The Queen Mother Henrietta Maria briefly acquired the castle again, with the Earls of Monmouth once again serving as stewards, but after her death Charles II loaned the castle to Sir Edward Hyde , whom he made Baron Hyde , of Hindon, and Earl of Clarendon . The castle ruins were still used as a farm, with the gatehouse as the main house. The King's Gate was added to the outer outer bailey wall for use by farm workers during this period.
18th and 19th centuries
Kenilworth Castle remained a ruin during the 18th and 19th centuries, still used as a farm, but has also become a popular destination. The first guidebook to the castle, entitled A Concise history and description of Kenilworth Castle , was printed in 1777 and had many more editions in the decades to come. The castle's cultural fame continued to grow after Sir Walter Scott wrote the novel Kenilworth in 1821 , in which he described Queen Elizabeth's royal visit. Based very loosely on the events of 1575, Scott's story reinvented aspects of the castle and its history to tell the story of "the tragic, beautiful, undisciplined heroine Amy Robsart and the steely Elizabeth I". Although considered a less than successful novel today compared to some of Scott's other historical works, it made Kenilworth Castle a place that romanticized the Elizabethan era in the minds of the Victorian era . Kenilworth subsequently inspired "numerous stage adaptations and poser dramas, at least eleven operas, popular revisions and even a scene in a series of dioramas for exhibition at home". Among them was Sir Arthur Sullivan's cantata from 1865 entitled "The Mask of Kenilworth" ( The Masque at Kenilworth ).
The number of visitors, including Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens , increased. Work was carried out during the 19th century to keep the stone carving from further deterioration, with particular efforts being made in the 1860s to remove the ivy on the castle.
today
The castle remained in the possession of the Clarendons until Lord Clarendon became too expensive to maintain and he sold it to industrialist Sir John Siddeley in 1937 . Siddeley, whose tax returns in the 1930s had been at least questionable, was keen to polish up his public image, which is why he handed over the management of castle affairs along with a charitable donation to the building minister. In 1958, his son signed the castle to the town of Kenilworth himself, and English Heritage has been managing the property since 1984. The castle is a Grade I and Listed Monument and is open to the public.
In the years 2005 to 2009, English Heritage attempted to restore some of the ornamental gardens of Kenilworth Castle to their Elizabethan appearance, based on the description in the Langham letter and details from the most recent archaeological investigations. The restoration cost more than £ 2 million and has been criticized by some archaeologists as "a matter of simulation as much as reconstruction" due to the very limited amount of actual information available about the nature of the original gardens. In 2008 plans were announced to restore the Great Mere and flood the area around the castle. This is not only intended to restore the castle to its original appearance, but it was hoped to make this measure part of the current flood protection plan in the area and then to use the lake for boating and other water sports.
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Coordinates: 52 ° 20 '53.1 " N , 1 ° 35' 35.9" W.