Sudeley Castle

Sudeley sits below Winchcombe with a thousand years behind it, a castle that has been a royal residence, a Civil War stronghold, a ruin, and a private family home, and is the last of these now. It is still lived in, which is rare for a castle of its age, and the family that holds it opens the gardens and part of the house to visitors through the season.

It keeps a distinction no other private house in England can claim. Katherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII's six wives, lived here after the King's death and is buried in the chapel in the grounds, the only queen of England to lie on private land. The ten gardens around the castle are built around her.

The estate runs to some twelve hundred acres of the Cotswolds at their lushest, the country around Winchcombe where the hills fold in close. The castle has been besieged, slighted, and left to the weather, and has outlived all of it.

Old houses in this country tend to survive by being useful to the age they find themselves in. Sudeley has been a fortress and a farm and is now, gracefully, a thing to be shown. The walls do not mind. They have been most things by now.