COME REIGN OR SHINE

No matter the weather, there’s a piece of royal-related history you can delve into for an afternoon. Through the centuries our kings and queens have left their stories all over Britain and Caroline Taggart has explored most of the places that tell them

At home, when I was little, we had an encyclopedia with two pages full of pictures of all our kings and queens from 1066 onwards. I’ve been fascinated by our royals ever since. But what I didn’t realise until recently was the extent to which they made their mark on our landscape. Whether waging war against their neighbours and cousins, building formidable fortresses or ending up with their mortal remains in spectacular cathedrals, they’ve left plenty for us to see – if we know where to look.

The place for me is St George’s Chapel, Windsor (above), because of its sheer jaw-dropping magnificence. For a start, it is

incredibly tall. ‘A fine example of the Perpendicular Gothic style,’ the guidebooks say, and if Perpendicular means ‘soaring high above you’, then that is certainly true. If I’d known, I’d have taken binoculars.

Even in this magnificent (and muchvisited) place, there are quiet places where you can stand and reflect. One peaceful side chapel contains the tombs of George VI, his wife Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and their younger daughter Princess Margaret: a surprisingly unassuming spot for three of the 20th century’s most prominent royals. And that’s the beauty of royal monuments, there’s always somewhere you can step away from the other visitors to form your own opinions and imagine the backstories.

KING OF THE CASTLE

Residences such as Buckingham and Kensington palaces are obvious places to unearth royal intrigue. Castles, built for defence rather than domesticity, are rich sources, too. And North Wales is full of them – evidence of Edward I’s determination to subdue the Welsh. But my favourite is way down in the south-western corner of Wales. At Pembroke Castle, birthplace of Henry VII (whose statue is pictured), you can do a surprising amount of unsupervised exploring – up winding staircases, out on to ramparts and up the five-storey keep. Looking down you can see what a rabbit warren the castle must have been – rooms, staircases and towers sprout all over the place. Nottingham Castle (sadly closed until later this year), goes one better: it has a labyrinth of caves beneath it, in which you’ll find the oldest pub in England, Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem.

“You can do a surprising amount of unsupervised exploring – up winding staircases, out onto ramparts”

BATTLEFIELD BULLETIN

The Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre and Country Park (scene of many a school trip) is another good place for a walk, but don’t miss the war memorial in the form of a sundial that details the events of the history-changing day in 1485 when Richard III was killed and the Tudors took over. ‘Early in the morning men prepare their souls and their equipment for the forthcoming battle,’ it tells you, at the point where the sun would have fallen at 8am. At noon, ‘Bodies strew the field, blood soaks the ground.’ Then by three in the afternoon it is all over: ‘The last of the Plantagenet kings slung naked across a horse.’ That naked king is the one they discovered under the car park more than 500 years later and reburied with such fanfare in Leicester Cathedral, should you want to pop in to complete the story.

“Whether waging war or building fortresses, royals have left plenty for us to see – if you know where to look”

GOING TO CHURCH

Peterborough isn’t our best-known cathedral, but it once boasted the tombs of two of our queens. Katharine of Aragon is still here ( pictured), her grave adorned by pomegranates left by well-wishers, with reference to the fruit depicted on her coat of arms. She was much more popular than her successor, Anne Boleyn (inset); when Katharine died in 1536, Henry VIII feared angry scenes in the streets of London and refused to have her buried in Westminster Abbey. She had died in what is now Cambridgeshire, and Peterborough was the nearest suitable place. Mary, Queen of Scots kept her company for 25 years from 1587; then her son, James I, had her upgraded to Westminster.

Divorced, beheaded, died…

Ghost hunters are well served by Henry VIII’s wives, two of whom are said to haunt Hampton Court in Surrey. Jane Seymour is quite sedate, but Catherine Howard, arrested for adultery, is said to have run screaming through the palace, begging Henry for mercy. Some say they hear her in the Haunted Gallery, still wailing. Or head for Blickling Hall in Norfolk, where Anne Boleyn appears each year on the anniversary of her death (19 May), carrying her own severed head, in a coach driven by a headless coachman and drawn by four headless horses. Apparently.

MARCH WITH A MONARCH

If an official royal visit feels a bit much and all you want is to tack a bit of culture onto a walk with the dog, royal grounds and parkland are often open to the public. You can stroll along the River Tay, through pretty Scottish countryside, in search of the ancient Birnam Oak (above) – as close as you can get to Shakespeare’s Birnam Wood of Macbeth fame. Now seven metres in girth, it’s at least 500 years old: it wasn’t there in Macbeth’s time*, but it certainly was in Shakespeare’s. At the other end of the country, the New Forest in Hampshire is where William II – better known as Rufus – was shot while out hunting, probably not by accident. His memorial, the Rufus Stone, is less than two metres high and isn’t the original (so unpopular was he that even his memorial was mutilated), but it’s in a beautiful part of the forest, again with lots of ancient oaks.

“Royal parklands are often open to the public – for when all you want is to tack a bit of culture onto a walk”