My warm memories of Chillingham Castle
ONE of the great joys of living in Sunderland, as I did for 25 years, was that you didn’t need to travel for more than a couple of hours from home to go on holiday.
The Lakes were two hours west, the North Yorkshire Moors, an hour-anda-half to the south and Northumberland and the Scottish Borders an hour or two to the north.
Several of our most memorable holidays were spent at Chillingham Castle in Northumberland.
Chillingham is an oasis of tranquillity in one of the England’s most beautiful counties.
The 12th Century castle is owned by Sir Humphry Wakefield and once belonged to his wife’s ancestors. Abandoned in the 1930s, it was in almost terminal decline until he purchased and restored it in the ’80s.
Sir Humphry rents out apartments in the castle and on several occasions, when my children were young, we stayed in one of these.
The castle opens to the public at noon, but until then the inhabitants of the apartments have the grounds to themselves. My daughters had hours of fun playing hide-and-seek in the beautiful Italian garden, picnicking by the lake and watching badgers at night.
Chillingham has other attractions. The church, also 12th Century, houses a magnificent tomb topped by lifesize figures of Sir Ralph Grey and his wife, Elizabeth, who inhabited the castle 600 years ago.
And in the park behind the castle are the famous Chillingham wild cattle, the only surviving herd of wild cattle in the country.
On the third occasion we stayed at Chillingham Sir Humphry recognised me.
“What’s a socialist doing staying in a place like this?” he inquired with just a hint of indignation.
“My money is probably as good as anyone else’s,” I replied.
“Oh,” he said, “These apartments must be awfully under-priced then.”
Despite this inauspicious beginning, Sir Humphry and I have since become good friends and I now live in Northumberland, not far from Chillingham.