Feudal or fake? Uncover the castle imposters
Trickery is certainly nothing new. Dixe Wills looks back at some of the countryside’s greatest hoaxes and masquerades
Oh, what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive.” Sir Walter Scott was right. Fake news, outlandish conspiracy theories, ‘alternative facts’, exaggeration and fabrication – they are all rife in today’s snarled-up and twisted world, where being economical with the truth is no bar to high office.
The one consolation is that at least you don’t find that sort of nonsense in the countryside, where people are salt-of-theearth types who are as honest as the day is long. Except, of course, that isn’t always the case. It turns out that rural folk can be just as devious, roguish and rascally as their urban counterparts. And if you think that’s fake news, read on…
THE ROUND TABLE, HAMPSHIRE
For years, the massive decorated table-top that hangs on a wall in Winchester Castle was believed to have been the very one around which King Arthur consulted his knights. Only when dendrologists tested the oak table was it found to date from the late 13th century – and probably made to celebrate the wedding of Edward I’s daughter. As fakes go, though, this is still impressive. hants.gov.uk/greathall
OPERATION FORTITUDE, KENT
Creating a fake building is one thing. Creating a whole fake army is quite another. And yet, in 1944, that’s just what happened. In order to make it look as though the imminent invasion of France was going to happen at Pas-de-Calais, south-east Kent was plastered with dummy airfields, inflatable tanks, mock-up aircraft, fake landing craft and imitation oil-storage depots. And Hitler swallowed it.
BEDDGELERT, GWYNEDD
The story goes that the medieval Welsh hero Prince Llewelyn slew his blood-stained hound Gelert in the mistaken belief that it had killed his infant son, only to discover that the dog had in fact saved his child by killing a wolf. Except he didn’t. The story was popularised in the 18th century by local innkeeper David Pritchard to drum up custom. It worked too: tourists still come to the village to seek out Gelert’s grave. Naturally, that’s fake, too.
STONE CIRCLE, ABERDEENSHIRE
Occasionally, a hoax is carried out in all innocence. Earlier this year, archaeologists breathlessly announced the discovery on a remote farm near Alford of a spectacular late Neolithic circle comprising nearly 100 stones. It was only when a previous owner of the farm pointed out that he had built the circle in the 1990s to amuse himself that the archaeologists were reduced to stony silence.
KELVEDON HATCH, ESSEX
Who would look twice at a boring-looking bungalow partially hidden by trees in the Essex countryside? Well, no one, and that’s exactly what the government wanted. For inside, and 38 metres below, was a secret Cold-War nuclear bunker, designed to hold 600 people who would take charge of the nation after the bomb had dropped. It’s now open to visitors. secretnuclearbunker.com
HUME CASTLE, BERWICKSHIRE
There are numerous fake castles, but Hume is probably unique in being a real castle masquerading as something else. The hoaxer was one Sir Hugh Hume-Campbell. To spice up the view from his house, he rebuilt Hume Castle, topping it with outlandish crenellations. It looks as though a French Foreign Legion fort has been airlifted from the Sahara and dropped on Berwickshire. humecastle.org
CROP CIRCLE, WILTSHIRE
The UK’s crop-circle season starts as early as May each year, featuring mysterious designs as simple as perfect circles or as complex as this example, near Silbury Hill in Wiltshire. Though some people remain convinced that aliens or forces beyond our ken are responsible for creating such patterns among Britain’s cereal crops, it seems more likely to involve ropes, ladders, planks, a genius for geometry and a soupçon of mischief.
PORTMEIRION, GWYNEDD
When architect Clough Williams-Ellis fell in love with the look of Italian fishing villages, he knew a place that ought to have one: the north-west coast of Wales. Starting in 1925, it took him 50 years to build Portmeirion. Surprisingly, this exquisite little bit of Italy is now living in harmony with its unlikely surroundings and has become a very real tourist resort. portmeirion.wales
TUDOR VILLAGE, KENT
A Tudor village at the childhood home of Anne Boleyn sounds right, doesn’t it? It certainly did to William Waldorf Astor when he bought Hever Castle in 1903. So he built one. Eclipsing all the mock-Tudor houses in English suburbia, the enormous extension to the castle, now called the Astor Wing, resembles a row of perfectly preserved 16th-century cottages. In reality, it was a lavish home fit for the richest man in all of the United States. hevercastle.co.uk
CHAPEL ISLAND, CUMBRIA
“Ah,” you might exclaim when looking across the waters of the Leven estuary to the ruins on Chapel Island, “so that’s how the isle got its name.” Sadly not. The eponymous chapel erected by 14th-century monks has disappeared. What graces the island today is a ready-ruined, mock-medieval chapel built by Colonel RG Braddyll in the 1820s. Why? To make the view from his home more romantic, of course.
McCAIG’S CASTLE, ARGYLL Look up from almost any street in Oban and you’ll see it – a vast Roman colosseum looming over the skyline. It’s an odd sight, as the Romans never tamed Britannia this far north. Step forward John Stuart McCaig. The monied banker designed the monolith as a monument to his family, but died in 1902 with only the outer shell completed. indeed. Ars longa, vita brevis
SHAM CASTLE, SOMERSET
On a golf course above Bath stands a mighty battlemented stronghold. Or, rather, there doesn’t. What’s actually there is an enormous Georgian advert. Wealthy local postmaster Ralph Allen happened to own a quarry and so had the impressive – but virtually 2D – folly erected in 1762 to show off his stone (and to improve the view from his house into the bargain). But, hey, if you’re taken in by something named Sham Castle, you really only have yourself to blame.