Berkeley Castle is a fantastic and historic English fortress, situated north of Bristol. The castle has been lived in by the same family (descended from Saxon nobility) since its construction in the twelfth century and is in excellent condition. Up until about 2017 they used to hold an annual medieval fayre but constant flooding in the English summer bought those to a halt.
Visiting
The castle is well signposted from the M5 motorway and has a good sized car park. Note that the castle is closed Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. There is a cafe and a picnic area on site as well.
My Experience
This particular visit was with our seven year old grand daughter so we didn’t do the interior tour. I have done it before though and can well recommend it. The guides are engaging and you obviously learn a lot about the castle and family.
Our focus on this visit was the gardens and the exterior of the castle. The terraces in front of the castle were designed by Gertrude Jekyll and were a riot of colour on our visit. There are also several fountains and pools to add variety to the views. There is also a butterfly house but we were too busy with face painting to visit that as well!
The final gallery is from the distant past when Joust used to be held every year until flooding stopped it, these are from 2009. Joust was a fabulous medieval weekend with medieval reenactments, crafts, costume and as you may have guessed, jousting!
Photo Gallery
As these photos are taken in the dim and distant past of 2010 they were not taken in RAW so these are pretty much unedited jpgs. I’d like to think my own skill in photography has moved on since then too so these may not be ideal pictures. Sorry!
History
This is a very brief summary of the history on the Wikipedia page below.
The castle was originally a motte and bailey affair, being built a year or two after the Norman conquest. The original holders, the de Berkeleys, were disinherited for disloyalty and the title passed to a Bristol merchant and founder of the current family. The castle was rebuilt in stone in the twelfth century and further expanded in the fourteenth.
Edward II was famously killed in the castle and his alleged cell and dungeon are visited on the tour. The castle was taken by Parliament in the English Civil War and subsequently slighted but luckily the family were still able to live there and preserve the rest of the structure.
Berkeley Castle is the third oldest continually inhabited castle in the UK, after the Tower of London and Windsor. It is the oldest inhabited and occupied by the same family.
References
Berkeley Castle website is here
The Wikipedia page on the Berkeley family is here