On Sunday we packed up the kids for our first family "adventure." Kevin and I have both had the itch to get out and discover something new since we got back from Ireland so we thought we needed to get out. We found Rockingham Castle to be a short 50 minutes away. Rockingham Castle has been the home of the Watson family for the past 450 years. Can many of us say our families have lived in a home for that long??? I think not. The castle was built by William the Conqueror like many other large castles in England and throughout English history it has been visited by may monarchs, but was bought by the Watson family for 350 GBP almost 450 years ago.
Along with the castle the Lord Watson also purchased much of the land and town of Rockingham, so they continue to own the castle along with 38 buildings in the village including the pub. The Watson's were friends with Charles Dickens, so he frequented the castle very often and dedicated his novel
Bleak House to them. An interesting fact about the round towers that you see Addison and Kevin standing by...they started building round towers on fortresses because it was harder to destroy the structure with cannon balls because how they would hit the structure and with squared off towers they could dig under the corners of the towers and they would fall down, not so with the round towers...cool huh?
We particularly liked the gardens. There is a wall of yews that have been shaped into what they call the "Elephant Wall" because it is meant to look like a heard of elephants. The amazing thing is that these hedges have been growing and shaped like this for hundreds of years.
They also had beautiful rose gardens and some new gardens that had flowers in it that I had never seen before. We had brought a lunch with us to enjoy in that day and it was great because the sun was shining and the weather was perfect. Kevin even got sunburned...should have remembered the sunscreen.
Another cool thing was that from the high tower of the castle you could see five different counties. I can't remember them all but we really enjoyed the view from the back wall of the castle that overlooked the village below and the farm land all around the castle.
Along the way to the castle we found this awesome brick bridge that seemed to span for a couple miles over the valley. I don't know how old it is or what it is used for because it is over land the whole way but it was really cool. As we stopped to take the pictures of the bridge we noticed loads of blackberries on the side of the road so we had to stop and pick some so we could make more crumble!!!!! Yummm!!!!
On Sunday we packed up the kids for our first family "adventure." Kevin and I have both had the itch to get out and discover something new since we got back from Ireland so we thought we needed to get out. We found Rockingham Castle to be a short 50 minutes away. Rockingham Castle has been the home of the Watson family for the past 450 years. Can many of us say our families have lived in a home for that long??? I think not. The castle was built by William the Conqueror like many other large castles in England and throughout English history it has been visited by may monarchs, but was bought by the Watson family for 350 GBP almost 450 years ago. 
Along with the castle the Lord Watson also purchased much of the land and town of Rockingham, so they continue to own the castle along with 38 buildings in the village including the pub. The Watson's were friends with Charles Dickens, so he frequented the castle very often and dedicated his novel Bleak House to them. An interesting fact about the round towers that you see Addison and Kevin standing by...they started building round towers on fortresses because it was harder to destroy the structure with cannon balls because how they would hit the structure and with squared off towers they could dig under the corners of the towers and they would fall down, not so with the round towers...cool huh?
We particularly liked the gardens. There is a wall of yews that have been shaped into what they call the "Elephant Wall" because it is meant to look like a heard of elephants. The amazing thing is that these hedges have been growing and shaped like this for hundreds of years.
They also had beautiful rose gardens and some new gardens that had flowers in it that I had never seen before. We had brought a lunch with us to enjoy in that day and it was great because the sun was shining and the weather was perfect. Kevin even got sunburned...should have remembered the sunscreen.
Another cool thing was that from the high tower of the castle you could see five different counties. I can't remember them all but we really enjoyed the view from the back wall of the castle that overlooked the village below and the farm land all around the castle.
Along the way to the castle we found this awesome brick bridge that seemed to span for a couple miles over the valley. I don't know how old it is or what it is used for because it is over land the whole way but it was really cool. As we stopped to take the pictures of the bridge we noticed loads of blackberries on the side of the road so we had to stop and pick some so we could make more crumble!!!!! Yummm!!!!
1 comment:
It looks like a really neat place. We have not been there so it looks like we will be having to make a trip to visit it very soon. ;o)
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