Kenilworth Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Rising on a gentle elevation in the heart of Warwickshire, the red sandstone ruins of Kenilworth rank among the most extensive castle complexes in England. The site layers four centuries of ambition: a massive twelfth-century Romanesque keep, a royal curtain wall of the early thirteenth century, a late medieval aristocratic palace and the lavish additions of an Elizabethan favourite. Kenilworth's originality also lies in its waterscape. A dam some 150 metres long held back an artificial lake of around forty hectares that wrapped around the fortress to the south and west, turning it into a defensive island and a setting for festivities. In the sixteenth century the causeway served as a tiltyard, and Henry V had a moated pleasure pavilion, the Pleasance, laid out at the far end of the lake. Today visitors explore Geoffrey de Clinton's keep, John of Gaunt's great hall, whose tall windows recall Westminster Hall, the apartments Robert Dudley built for Elizabeth I, the gatehouse converted into a residence in 1650 and an Elizabethan garden recreated from excavations and early descriptions. Walter Scott's novel Kenilworth (1821) did much to establish the romantic fame of these ruins.