Warwick and its castle

I really do like the town of Warwick, because it has pretty much everything within a short walk of where Robby and myself occasionally stay. There are two nice pubs, perhaps the best Indian restaurant outside Birmingham, and a market in the town square on Saturdays. The weather was dry and bright most the time, so we got lucky with that.

The Castle Inn can get quite busy, with some event there every other night, and it always has a friendly atmosphere. The King’s Head, on the other side of the race course, would suit anyone who prefers to visit a quiet bar in the evening.

I came across a new brand of gin at the market. Everything about Black Lodge Potions is unique - the brand, the packaging and the gin itself. Though it’s as strong as the average gin, it tastes just like a cherry liqueur. Their Web site is pretty cool also.

Warwick Castle

We finally got round to visiting Warwick Castle on the Sunday. The shortest way there is down Back Lane, on the other side of the high street from the market.

The castle has a very simple layout. It’s essentially a main building, with three towers on one end, and a gateway leading to some beautiful grounds at the other.

Inside, the main building is very much like a stately home, as it would have been just before the castle was opened to the public. There is a large main hall and dining room on the ground floor. Upstairs are a series of chambers, as in one room leading to the next, furnished with things from the 18th and 19th centuries. The walls are adorned with portraits of the castle’s past occupants and various upper crust people.

There isn’t a whole lot to see within the towers themselves, but the view of Warwick from the top is definitely worth the climb up the narrow, winding stone steps.

At the base of the second tower, there is the entrance to what might have been a dungeon. Today it’s occupied by a sort of museum dedicated to the history of the castle when it was the home and fortress of Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick (1460-ish).

I’m guessing Warwick was very small for a town, in those days. Its walls used to run from the outer perimeter of the castle grounds, to where the Lord Leycester is. The latter section of it can be seen from the bus station, and there is another town gate at the lower end of the high street. The current town square would have been outside its boundaries. Most the original buildings between the two gates, up to the Lord Leycester Hospital, were destroyed in a fire that started, sometime around 1670, at a Quaker house.

But anyway, Richard Neville, it turned out, was a mentor to Edward IV before the two had a major disagreement over who Edward should marry, and Edward was incarcerated at Warwick Castle for a short period. There’s no way of knowing, for certain, which part of the castle, but I’d imagine he resided in the main building, and was free to roam the grounds under guard.

A year or so later, Edward was a free man, and he and Richard III ended up killing Neville in a battle that saw two Lancastrian armies mistaking each other for the enemy in dense mist.

Would Neville and Edward IV have been on such bad terms, if it was known Edward’s eldest child (though rarely a footnote in mainstream history books) was already seven years old at the time? Her name was Margaret Plantagenet. She married Thomas Lumley around 1480, her father in law, George Lumley, being the governor of a fortress in Scarborough and a trusted friend to both Edward and Richard III. She apparently died in 1503, at a manor a few miles south of Durham.

I came across something even more interesting at the castle, namely the hydro-electric plant to the rear of the main building. Several turbines were installed there sometime in the late-19th century. The turbines weren’t actually that big or powerful - one on them was rated at just 25bhp. They are admirably intricate, but their sole purpose was just to transfer the kinetic energy from the water wheel to a small dynamo, and it seemed the voltage was being regulated mechanically.

In the corner of the turbine room was a set of large, primitive lead acid batteries, with dialectric layers that appeared hand-made. Each battery probably weighed a quarter of a ton, and fifty of them powered the lighting system for the castle at some point.

Lord Leycester Hospital

We also visited the Lord Leycester Hospital, which is next to one of the town gates. It was more a place of retirement for military veterans than a conventional hospital. The main hall was intially an extension of the chapel, which iself was built in the 1100s. The chapel, as it exists today, though, is a 14th century reconstructon that was heavily renovated around 150 years ago.

The other buildings that make up the Lord Leycester site were added to the hall in the late-1400s, to accommodate some guild. The site only became a hospital after Henry VIII abolished religious communities.