Historic Places in Wiltshire,Hampshire,Berkshire

Carisbrooke Castle is located in the village of Carisbrooke, near Newport on the Isle of Wight. The castle enclosure has a number of buildings, some of them in ruins. The rooms used as the official residence of Princess Beatrice when she was the Governor of the Isle of Wight are in good repair. You can climb the steps to the top of the keep. The Great Hall, Great Chamber, and several smaller rooms are open to the public. Most rooms are partly furnished and feature original fireplaces. There is a chapel next to the main gate. In 1904 the chapel of St Nicholas in the castle was reopened and re-consecrated, having been rebuilt as a national memorial of Charles I. There is a 200 foot deep well within the walls, and another well in the centre of the keep that is said to have been even deeper. One of the attractions is the 16th century well-house with a working donkey wheel that is still operated by donkeys. The Constable's Chamber was the bedroom of Charles I when he was imprisoned in the castle, and it was used by Princess Beatrice as a dining room. It is now the education center. The castle is surrounded by earthworks completed in the 1590s, and the outer gate is dated 1598. There is a holiday apartment inside of the castle, in converted staff quarters. The site was an Anglo-Saxon stronghold as early as the 8th century. A wall was built around the structure around 1000 to defend it against Viking raids. After the Norman invasion, William Fitz Osbern built a motte-and-bailey castle within the existing defences. In 1100 Carisbrooke was granted to Richard de Redvers. The keep was added to the castle in the 13th century. The castle was sold by the Richard de Redvers family to Edward I in 1293. The castle held out against an unsuccessful attack by the French in 1377. The castle defences were further reinforced in the 16th century by the addition of a pentagonal fortification. Charles I was imprisoned at Carisbrooke Castle for fourteen months before his execution in 1649. Princess Beatrice, daughter of Queen Victoria, lived in the castle between 1896-1944 as the governor of the Isle of Wight. It is now under control of English Heritage. The Arts The well in Carisbrooke Castle is the hiding place of the Mohune diamond, in the 1898 adventure novel Moonfleet, by J. Meade Falkner.

The striking twin-towered gatehouse of 14th century Donnington Castle, near Newbury, survives within impressive earthworks. It shows the luxury enjoyed by Sir Richard Abberbury, Donnington's builder, whose private quarters lay within it. Both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I are thought to have stayed here. The large defences built to protect the castle during the English Civil War still survive.

Odiham Castle near Greywell in Hampshire is a ruined royal castle of the early thirteenth century, built by King John between 1207 and 1212 and notable as the base from which John set out for Runnymede to sign Magna Carta in 1215. The castle was later the prison of King David II of Scotland following his capture at the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346. The unusual octagonal keep, of which the lower courses survive, is one of only a handful of examples of this plan type in England. The castle is managed by Hampshire County Council and is accessible from a pleasant walk along the Basingstoke Canal towpath through the attractive Hampshire countryside. The canal setting, with narrowboats passing the medieval ruins, creates one of the more distinctive heritage experiences in southern England.

Old Sarum is a dramatic hilltop site near Salisbury in Wiltshire combining an Iron Age hillfort, a Norman castle, a Norman cathedral and the ghost of a medieval city within a single extraordinary monument. The site was occupied continuously from the Iron Age through the Norman period and into the medieval town that eventually decamped to New Sarum, the present city of Salisbury, leaving Old Sarum as a deserted hilltop of extraordinary archaeological and historical interest. The Norman castle on the central motte and the foundations of the first Salisbury Cathedral, replaced by the present cathedral in the valley below, can be explored within the large earthwork enclosure. Old Sarum was also the most notorious of England's rotten boroughs, returning two MPs to Parliament despite having virtually no inhabitants, until the Reform Act of 1832. Managed by English Heritage, the site provides exceptional views over the Wiltshire downs.

Situated 15 miles from the city of Salisbury, Old Wardour Castle is set in a countryside location beside a lake. The ruins of the virtually destroyed castle are now integrated into the surrounding parkland of the 'New Wardour House' but consist solely of part of the main building with its beautiful arched windows. The new castle was built as a Neoclassical house rather than a castle, with a symmetrical main block, central staircase hall and two wings. Facilities The castle and shop are open daily from 10am from April until October and at weekends between November and March. Included in the price of the entrance ticket is an audio tour telling of the castles eventful past, visitors will also be able to climb to the top of the turrets and re-enact scenes from one of the recent films that have been made there. The New Wardour House is not open to the public. The castle was built by the St Martin family in 1392 using local Tisbury greensand; a green sandstone rock. It was built by master mason William Wynford in an unusual design with six sides, similar to those in continental Europe. In 1461 the castle was confiscated and after passing through many hands was bought by the Arundell's, an ancient Cornish family. The castle was once again confiscated when Sir Thomas Arundell was executed in 1552 for treason, but his son Matthew was able to buy back the castle some time later. During the Civil War the lady of the house, Lady Blanche aged 61, was alone with her husband was away on the King's business, when the parliamentarians came looking for Royalists. The castle was subjected to a five day siege after which she was forced to surrender before the castle was totally destroyed. In 1644 Henry, 3rd Lord Arundell retaliated by blowing up what remained of the castle and causing the parliamentarian garrison to surrender. Henry then went about borrowing money to have the castle rebuilt, but instead employed James Paine to build 'New Wardour Castle' in a Palladian style, leaving the old castle as a feature within the grounds. The Arts Both Old Wardour and the New Wardour House have been used as film sets, Old Wardour in 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves', staring Kevin Costner in 1991, and New Wardour as the Community Hall in the film Billy Elliot with Julie Walters in 2000.

Six miles north west of the city of Portsmouth and the harbor's northern shore, Portchester Castle sits overlooking the English Channel. The castle buildings include a 12th century tower keep, gatehouse, palace, inner and outer bailey with gates and a moat, and the church of St. Mary's. The extremely well preserved ten acre site not only house the Norman castle but the six meter high walls and towers of the previous building on the site, a Roman Fort. Facilities The castle is open from 10am until 6pm daily from April to September and between 10am and 4pm October to March. Included in the admission to the castle is an audio tour outlining what life was like at the castle though the eyes of those that worked and were imprisoned there over the centuries. The keep also houses an exhibition with archeological finds from the site as well as detailed history information. The first fortification on the site was a Roman Fort dating back to 285 AD. A small single storey Norman keep was added in 1090 along with wooden defenses on two sides with the Roman Walls becoming the outer bailey. In the 1100's a priory and other domestic buildings were added and the wooden defenses were replaced by stone walls. The keep; the only building never to have been significantly rebuilt, was also constructed across the Roman walls. The 14th century saw major rebuilding work carried out prior to it being used by Edward III to assemble his army of 15,000 soldiers before leaving for France. Portchester Castle was then transformed into a magnificent palace for Richard II and was host to Henry VII before he too set off in battle against the French in the Battle of Agincourt. On his return the castle lost much of its importance when he founded a Royal Dockyard at Portsmouth. The castle was used during the Napoleonic Wars to house French prisoners and from the mid 1600's it was owned by the Thistlethwaite family who only ever lost control over it for a short time when it was seized by the army for use as a prison. The family owned the castle until 1984 when it was handed over to English Heritage.

Southsea Castle is a sixteenth-century coastal fortification in Portsmouth, built by Henry VIII in 1544 as part of his programme of coastal defence against French and Spanish invasion and serving continuously as a military fortification until the twentieth century. The castle is built on the classic low artillery fort plan developed in Henry's reign, with a central tower surrounded by a low bastioned enclosure designed to mount heavy cannon at sea level. It was from the beach near Southsea Castle that Henry VIII watched his flagship Mary Rose sink in the Solway Firth in 1545. The castle is now a museum interpreting the long military history of the site and the broader coastal defence heritage of Portsmouth Harbour. The adjacent seafront at Southsea provides extensive beach, promenade and leisure facilities, and the nearby Royal Navy's National Museum and the Mary Rose Museum make Portsmouth one of the finest maritime heritage destinations in the world.

Windsor Castle in Berkshire is the largest and oldest occupied castle in the world, a royal residence that has been continuously inhabited since William the Conqueror built the original fortification in the 1070s, and the weekend home of the British royal family throughout its history. The castle complex covers approximately 13 acres and contains the magnificent State Apartments with their exceptional collections of paintings, furniture and decorative arts, St George's Chapel which is one of the finest examples of Perpendicular Gothic architecture in England and the burial place of ten monarchs, and the historical exhibition spaces that interpret the castle's thousand-year history. The castle is open to visitors when not in use by the royal family and is one of the most visited heritage sites in Britain. The surrounding Windsor Great Park provides extensive parkland walking, and the historic town of Windsor with its shops, restaurants and the Eton College connection provides a comprehensive visitor destination.