A day at Warwick Castle, Part One

Right, now the blog is up and running, time perhaps for the first "proper" post about places we've been. I should state here that I won't necessarily be blogging places in the order in which they were visited, more in order of what I feel like talking about.Today I feel like talking about Warwick.

Warwick is an ancient town - the land it occupies has been inhabited since at least the neolithic era, and a drive through the centre reveals the place to be crammed with Elizabethan buildings, great shopping and many attractive looking restaurants. The streets are narrow and characterful - in a way that makes me glad I didn't try to get a caravan down them* - but that really is all I can tell you about the town itself, because unusually for us, we didn't really visit it, we just drove through.

We'd meant to follow a walking trail through the town which takes in the many historic buildings, museums and other places of interest but we didn't get around to it. The reason we didn't get around to it?

 

Warwick Castle.

There's been a Castle on the site since the Normans pitched up in 1068 and built the first fortifications as a base from which they could keep the Saxons in line. The castle became home to the Earls of Warwick, at various points in history amongst the most powerful families in the kingdom - you may remember "Warwick the Kingmaker" from Shakespeare. The castle that stands now is largely fourteenth century, although there were significant alterations in the seventeenth and eighteenth  centuries as its role changed from "defensive military stronghold" to "big country house".

Like most castles in England, Warwick is no longer in the possession of the family that built it. Unlike most castles in England, Warwick is not under the care of an organisation like English Heritage or The National Trust. No, Warwick is owned and run by the same company that owns and runs attractions like Blackpool Tower, Madame Tussaud's and Thorpe Park. 

Let's just say there isn't a tea room...

First impressions of the Castle were not good. We drove up the drive to the car park, and were met by a barrier bearing a sign that informed us that car parking would cost us six pounds. I'm not even sure it said "Welcome to Warwick Castle", although it might have done - I was too busy complaining about the parking charge. I mean, six quid isn't a lot to pay for all day parking in the middle of a town which is not overly blessed with open space in the centre that can be squandered on car parking. But the Castle is a paid for attraction - and not a cheap one. Surely the least they could do is throw car parking in with the price of admission?

Still, we pressed on, and were guided to our parking space by a veritable army of  nice young men in hi-viz jackets. At least you can see where your parking charge goes...

On leaving the car however, our opinion of the place did not improve. I'm not sure how they managed it - perhaps they had M.C. Esher on their landscaping team - but the walk from the car park to the main gate seemed to be about fifteen miles**. There was a special gate very close to the parking for the use of coach tours and people who had pre-ordered their tickets, but if you're buying your ticket on the day be prepared for a bit of a hike.

Eventually we got to the ticket barriers and joined the queue. Things started to look a little more promising, in a kitsch kind of way. As we stood in line we were watched over by a Knight in Shining Armour, who sat astride a steed fully decked out in jousting regalia. I'm not sure whether he sat there all day - he might have done, it looked like a very patient horse - but he certainly added to the atmosphere.

Our wait in the queue was shortened by the family in front of us clocking the admission prices and deciding not to bother. I'm not entirely sure I blame them.  At the gate an adult ticket will set you back a wallet lightening £30.60, with children's admission costing £25.80. That means full price admission for a family of two adults and two children comes in at a whopping £112.80! That's a lot of money.

It is worth pointing out, however, that there is no need to actually pay full price.  A quick visit to the   Warwick Castle Website   reveals a range of offers that will reduce that financial hit considerably. Add to that the fact that discount vouchers aren't hard to get hold of (I got two "two for one" vouchers just before we set off when I bought a pack of biros at Staples, and every tourist information centre in the South West also seems to have them) and English Heritage members get in half price.

So, we got to the front of the queue and wielding our English Heritage cards, asked for two adult tickets. The nice young lady at the desk seemed a little non-plussed by this. She was clearly well briefed, and quite aware that our cards entitled us to half price membership. What she didn't seem to have was any kind of system on her computer to allow her to process that discount. I'm guessing that they don't get a lot of English Heritage members there.

This, however, is the point at which our experience started to improve. In my experience the usual consequence of a member of sales staff not having a system to process a transaction is either a flat refusal to accept that the transaction is possible, or a slightly desperate call for a supervisor. Both of these possible consequences generally involve at best a tedious delay, and at worst a tedious delay coupled with a heated conversation which puts you in a bad mood for the rest of the day. No such nonsense here though. The nice young lady at the desk looked puzzled for a second, then rang the discount through and, having no other means of doing so, recorded our English Heritage details on a scrap of paper.

As she did so she politely enquired whether we wanted admission to just the Castle and Grounds, or whether we wanted to "enhance" our tickets by adding (for an extra charge) admission to "The Merlin Tower", "The Castle Dungeon" and "The Princess Tower". We declined, took our tickets and strode through the gate. The nice young lady at the desk had improved my opinion of the place considerably. Having polite, calm, efficient and above all competent staff at the entrance is the mark of a quality attraction. On the other hand, the fact that our ticket prices clearly didn't cover the whole place made me worry that Warwick Castle might be nothing more than a machine for separating the public from their money.

You enter the grounds and are swept along the path to the portcullis of the castle proper. We arrived at half past ten, just in time to see the "Raising of the Portcullis" event. This involved a bloke in medieval dress climbing to the top of the portcullis and declaiming to the gathered crowd some of the history of Warwick, the Castle, and the Earls who threw their considerable support behind the House of Lancaster during the wars of the roses. He was entertaining, informative, and really knew how to work a crowd. He soon had the crowd cheering the House of Lancaster (not us, we're Yorkists) and laughing along with his more off piste comments, proclaiming "This is better entertainment than you'd get at the RSC in Stratford! Not that I'm bitter..."

He got us off to a good start as the Portcullis raised and we entered the inner courtyard. As we did so, the first difference between Warwick and your average English Heritage castle became abundantly clear. At English Heritage castles, unless there is some kind of event going on, the inner courtyard of a castle tends to be an empty place, with informative display boards placed at strategic points to ensure that no visitor goes uninformed.

The inner courtyard at Warwick was vibrant and garish. Vivid flags fluttered in the breeze. Even at ten thirty in the morning the aroma of cooking meat filled the air. On the neatly mowed expanse of lawn in the centre of the courtyard a crowd of laughing children threw dead rats through a hoop. Sorry? Nope. Not joking. Well, the "dead rats" were rat shaped beanbags, but you get the idea. The place was buzzing. The card carrying English Heritage member in me thought it was all a little tacky, but most of me  thought it probably gave a better idea of what a Medieval castle would have been like. It was certainly a lot more fun!

However much fun it was however, there was no escaping the myriad ways in which the castle tried to separate you from your cash. The courtyard is where the aforementioned "Princess Tower", "Merlin Tower" (based on the BBC TV series)and "Castle Dungeons" could be found. We didn't pay the additional entrance fee, so I can't tell you whether they were worth it - but for what it's worth they all seemed to be doing a brisk trade.

We're rather cultured folk, so eschewing these fripperies we stepped into the state rooms to examine the accumulated finery collected by generations of Earls.  It was all rather impressive - lots of suits of armour and swords and suchlike, alongside rooms decorated in period style. Very "National Trust". 

Helpful display boards, lifelike wax figures and smiling staff on duty. OK, so actually not all that much like The National Trust. But interesting and well presented, if a little old fashioned in style.

Having taken in all of that history, asked one of the omnipresent helpful members of staff for directions to the castle's famous trebuchet, which was scheduled to be fired at eleven thirty and sounded spectacular. 

It was.

The trebuchet is a huge siege engine designed to hurl rocks (or, as the helpful commentator pointed out, anything else, apparently dead animals were a real favourite) either at your enemy's castle walls, or over the walls and into the besieged castle itself. Ursa, as the example at Warwick is called, is massive - the largest working trebuchet in the world, according to the website - and will chuck a big rock over a hundred and fifty metres.

Now, a trebuchet is more complicated than a catapult but in essence, all you do with this thing is pull it back and let it go. However, because it is so big it takes two teams of people walking inside supersized hamster wheels about twenty minutes to pull the throwing arm into firing position. As you can imagine, however spectacular the final result is, watching a big stick move slowly from vertical to an angle of about ten degrees to the ground is not the most riveting thing in the world. And yet there must have been a couple of thousand people sitting on the slope watching the Trebuchet on the other side of the river.

This was entirely down to the commentary, delivered (via loudspeaker) from the trebuchet side of the river by a rather splendidly dressed medieval herald type bloke. He kept the crowd entertained with explanations of how the machine worked and how it would be used.  Clearly knowing his audience the herald made great play of the way dead animals would be catapulted into besieged castles to spread terror and disease, how the winders in the "hamster wheels" could suffer from motion sickness "and vomiting in an environment where the floor rapidly becomes the ceiling is never a good idea".  

The audience lapped it up***. Finally the arm had been drawn back, the rope had been tied off, the sling had been loaded and Ursa the Trebuchet was ready to fire. With the crowd, urged on by the herald,  generating its own drum roll, the firing rope was pulled by the "trebuchet master", the giant arm swung upwards and a massive rock was hurled into the middle distance to the sound of thunderous applause.  It might well be a lot of effort to go to just to throw a stone, but it was also a fascinating, entertaining and informative lesson in medieval siege tactics. And if I'm honest, it was also spectacularly cool.

And there was considerably more to come...

                       

*More on this kind of thing when I eventually talk about Devon and Cornwall...

**Well, alright. But it was a good ten minute walk, and we didn't dawdle.

***The commentary obviously, not the vomit. That would have been both weird and disgusting.