Thanks to Game of Thrones, The White Queen and the BBC revival of Shakespeare’s history plays, the Plantagenets are rapidly overtaking the Tudors as the hippest dynasty in British history. They certainly left their mark on the landscape of the country. From the lowlands of Scotland to the south-east corner of England, you can find castles, cathedrals, palaces and battlefields that will bring back to life the great moments of the high middle ages.
The Plantagenets: On the trail of Britain’s bloodiest dynasty
Dan Jones, the presenter of a new Channel 5 television series on the Plantagenets, goes on the trail of Britain’s most murderous monarchs
Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket is hacked to death in Canterbury Cathedral Photo: GETTY
By Dan Jones
27 Nov 2014
The Telegraph
Thanks to Game of Thrones, The White Queen and the BBC revival of Shakespeare’s history plays, the Plantagenets are rapidly overtaking the Tudors as the hippest dynasty in British history. They certainly left their mark on the landscape of the country. From the lowlands of Scotland to the south-east corner of England, you can find castles, cathedrals, palaces and battlefields that will bring back to life the great moments of the high middle ages.
This summer I spent several months touring these places while filming Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty, the four-part adaptation of my book The Plantagenets, which begins on Channel 5 on November 27.
Everywhere we went reminded me that there is really nothing quite like treading the ground where history was made. We stood on the spot where Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket was hacked down in his own cathedral; where Edward II’s favourite, Piers Gaveston, was adjudged to have committed treason; and where Simon de Montfort – often regarded as the father of the English parliament – made his most famous stand against the Crown at the Battle of Lewes.
So these are my favourite Plantagenet sites in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – all of them open to the public virtually the whole year around. I could happily revisit all of them again and again – and will certainly be dragging my children around many of them as soon as they are old enough.
I’ve concentrated here on the Plantagenet trail from the accession of Henry II in 1154 to the deposition of Richard II 1399. There could be another list again to cover the most famous sites from the Wars of the Roses. But I’ll save that one for another time…
Caerphilly Castle
The town in south Wales may be most famous for its cheese (hard, buttery white, faintly tangy) but it is also the seat of one of the largest and most striking medieval castles in Britain. The moat is full and still, the walls and much of the fabric of the 13th-century fortress is intact. The south-east tower leans drunkenly over as if it were about to collapse – its angle of wonkiness is twice that of the more famous leaning tower of Pisa. Caerphilly was an important fortress in the regular violence that took place during the Welsh marches (borderlands) during the Plantagenet years: Edward II and his loathsome favourite Hugh Despenser the younger wound up here during the last weeks of Edward’s dismal reign. Not that it did them any good: both were captured and, later, killed (poor Edward had a red hot poker shoved up his anus in Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire).
cadw.wales.gov.uk/daysout/caerphilly-castle/?lang=en
The Tower of London
The list of eminent Plantagenets who entered the Tower of London and did not emerge is depressingly long. Most famously, Edward V and his younger brother Richard Duke of York (the Princes in the Tower, who were disappeared during Richard III’s reign.) Henry VI was murdered here. Margaret Pole – one of the very last Plantagenets – was hacked to death at the block here aged 67. The axeman had to chase the terrified woman, who got up and ran after the first blow to her neck, round and round the chopping block, hacking at her until she succumbed. My favourite tale of the Tower, though, is of the Peasant’s Revolt in 1381: a mob stormed the precincts, encouraged by the boy-king Richard II. They dragged out Richard’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon of Sudbury, and beheaded him on Tower Hill before going on to bring England to the verge of full revolution. They were foiled by Richard at Smithfield. But only just. hrp.org.uk/TowerOfLondon
The Princes in the Tower (Photo: Getty)
The skull of Archbishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury, who was murdered during the 1381 Peasants' Revolt, still has some of its skin attached
Warwick Castle
The castle has been celebrating its 1,100th birthday this year
A brilliant place to take the children, Warwick has archery shows, birds of prey displays and a massive trebuchet that belts fireballs about 500ft in the air several times a day. The earls of Warwick were always involved in Plantagenet intrigue: it was here that the royal favourite Piers Gaveston was tried by a kangaroo court, before being dragged down the road to Blacklow Hill, run through with a sword and decapitated by a couple of Welsh thugs. (You can still trek to the Gaveston monument there, which in springtime is surrounded by swathes of stunning bluebells.) Best of all, Warwick is owned by the same people as Madame Tussauds, so you can spot the stars whose waxworks have been repurposed as historical characters. My favourite is Top Gear’s James May, dressed up as a medieval squire.
warwick-castle.com
Canterbury Cathedral
One of the most notorious fallings-out in the Middle Ages was between the first Plantagenet king, Henry II, and his archbishop and erstwhile friend, Thomas Becket. The archbishop was hacked to death in Canterbury Cathedral on December 29 1170 by four knights who thought they were doing the king’s bidding: a very moving monument marks the spot where Becket’s brains were smeared on the cold floor at the point of a sword. In the crypt, you can stand on the spot where Henry did penance for his friend’s death: the king was stripped and ritually flogged by all the monks of the cathedral in 1174, in an attempt to earn God’s favour during a massive rebellion against his rule. (Remarkably, it worked.) Also here are the tombs of the Black Prince and of Henry IV, who deposed his cousin Richard II in 1399. canterbury-cathedral.org
Westminster Abbey, London
Groaning with nearly a millennium of history, but the best bit of the great abbey church – redeveloped during the Plantagenet years by the enthusiastically pious King Henry III – is the royal mausoleum in the quire. Five Plantagenet kings (Henry III, Edward I, Edward III, Richard II and Henry V) and four of their queens (Eleanor of Castile, Philippa of Hainault, Anne of Bohemia and Catherine of Valois) are buried around the shrine of Edward the Confessor. You can’t see them very well normally – but go to the abbey at 11am and 3pm daily and you will be allowed to climb up to the otherwise off-limits mausoleum to join in prayers for Plantagenets gone by. While the prayers are being said, peek around at some of the greatest royal tombs in Britain. westminster-abbey.org
Bannockburn, near Stirling
Seven hundred years ago the Scots under Robert the Bruce inflicted their most famous military defeat on their southern neighbours, as their disciplined, spear-bearing infantry, organised into hedgehog-like schiltroms, gored the cream of English cavalry and sent Edward II’s army “homeward,” as the song goes, “tae think again”. A statue of Bruce and visitor centre bring the battlefield to life – and if you’re in the area, then you should also pay a visit to nearby Stirling. The castle there was besieged in 1304 by Edward I, who erected outside the walls Warwolf, a legendarily large and unpleasant siege catapult which more or less terrified the garrison into giving up the fight. battleofbannockburn.com
Kenilworth Castle
A massive fortress – once the greatest in the Midlands – is in semi-ruin now, having been slighted by Parliamentary forces during the Civil War. But enough survives to appreciate what a stunning building it once was: a palatial, imposing royal fortress surrounded by a lake, or mere, that covered about 100 acres. It was held by some of the greatest lords of the Plantagenet era, including Simon de Montfort – who holed up here in defiance of the king in 1266 – Thomas of Lancaster, enemy and cousin of Edward II, and John of Gaunt, the 14th-century Duke of Lancaster and uncle to king Richard II. Some of the ruins date from the Tudor years, but the keep, Oriel Tower and great hall are all remnants of its medieval magnificence. english-heritage.org.uk
Carrickfergus
I spent a week in Northern Ireland this summer finding out about the history of Carrickfergus Castle: once the most important fortress in Ulster, and a place much valued by the great Plantagenet villain King John, among others of his family. (There’s rather an amusing waxwork here of King John sitting on the medieval lavatory, which is worth the modest admission fee alone.) Carrickfergus is a good place to strike out for the insanely beautiful coast of Antrim, from where you can take a boat to Rathlin Island, where Robert the Bruce supposedly watched that spider spinning its web. Antrim is also, nowadays, the location for much of Game of Thrones – a show with its roots in Plantagenet history, since it was inspired by the Wars of the Roses. discovernorthernireland.com
Lewes, East Sussex
Lewes is not just a picturesque East Sussex town, it’s also a living link to the age of Henry III, whose furious struggle with his brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, resulted in one of the most dramatic battles of the Plantagenet age, fought in 1264 on the Downs above the town. The legacy of Henry and Simon’s war was ultimately the birth of Parliament. If you’re interested, you should also visit Evesham, where a second battle – the return fixture, if you like – ended with Simon dead, having been hacked to pieces with his genitals stuffed in his mouth. visitsussex.org/page/lewes
Runnymede
The Magna Carta temple is one of three historic memorials around Runnymede
The meadow where Magna Carta was granted by King John in 1215 is curiously unmarked by memorials to the most famous agreement in the whole of the anglophone tradition, save for one erected by the American Bar Association. But it is a beautiful spot, especially on a warm day. You can sit beneath the shade of the great oak trees there and have a picnic, or walk along the banks of the Thames. Next year marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta and Runnymede will be the focus of much royal pageantry, including a visit by the Queen – ironic, I suppose, since in a sense the Great Charter marked the first point at which the untrammelled power of the English monarchy began slowly to be constrained by the realm’s subjects. nationaltrust.org.uk/runnymede
Dan Jones will front Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty, a four-part documentary drama which is starting at 9pm this Thursday on Channel 5.
The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones (Faber & Faber, £20) is available to order from Telegraph Books at £15 + £1.95 p&p. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk
The Plantagenets: On the trail of Britain’s bloodiest dynasty - Telegraph
The Plantagenets: On the trail of Britain’s bloodiest dynasty
Dan Jones, the presenter of a new Channel 5 television series on the Plantagenets, goes on the trail of Britain’s most murderous monarchs
Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket is hacked to death in Canterbury Cathedral Photo: GETTY
By Dan Jones
27 Nov 2014
The Telegraph
Thanks to Game of Thrones, The White Queen and the BBC revival of Shakespeare’s history plays, the Plantagenets are rapidly overtaking the Tudors as the hippest dynasty in British history. They certainly left their mark on the landscape of the country. From the lowlands of Scotland to the south-east corner of England, you can find castles, cathedrals, palaces and battlefields that will bring back to life the great moments of the high middle ages.
This summer I spent several months touring these places while filming Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty, the four-part adaptation of my book The Plantagenets, which begins on Channel 5 on November 27.
Everywhere we went reminded me that there is really nothing quite like treading the ground where history was made. We stood on the spot where Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket was hacked down in his own cathedral; where Edward II’s favourite, Piers Gaveston, was adjudged to have committed treason; and where Simon de Montfort – often regarded as the father of the English parliament – made his most famous stand against the Crown at the Battle of Lewes.
So these are my favourite Plantagenet sites in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – all of them open to the public virtually the whole year around. I could happily revisit all of them again and again – and will certainly be dragging my children around many of them as soon as they are old enough.
I’ve concentrated here on the Plantagenet trail from the accession of Henry II in 1154 to the deposition of Richard II 1399. There could be another list again to cover the most famous sites from the Wars of the Roses. But I’ll save that one for another time…
Caerphilly Castle
The town in south Wales may be most famous for its cheese (hard, buttery white, faintly tangy) but it is also the seat of one of the largest and most striking medieval castles in Britain. The moat is full and still, the walls and much of the fabric of the 13th-century fortress is intact. The south-east tower leans drunkenly over as if it were about to collapse – its angle of wonkiness is twice that of the more famous leaning tower of Pisa. Caerphilly was an important fortress in the regular violence that took place during the Welsh marches (borderlands) during the Plantagenet years: Edward II and his loathsome favourite Hugh Despenser the younger wound up here during the last weeks of Edward’s dismal reign. Not that it did them any good: both were captured and, later, killed (poor Edward had a red hot poker shoved up his anus in Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire).
cadw.wales.gov.uk/daysout/caerphilly-castle/?lang=en
The Tower of London
The list of eminent Plantagenets who entered the Tower of London and did not emerge is depressingly long. Most famously, Edward V and his younger brother Richard Duke of York (the Princes in the Tower, who were disappeared during Richard III’s reign.) Henry VI was murdered here. Margaret Pole – one of the very last Plantagenets – was hacked to death at the block here aged 67. The axeman had to chase the terrified woman, who got up and ran after the first blow to her neck, round and round the chopping block, hacking at her until she succumbed. My favourite tale of the Tower, though, is of the Peasant’s Revolt in 1381: a mob stormed the precincts, encouraged by the boy-king Richard II. They dragged out Richard’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon of Sudbury, and beheaded him on Tower Hill before going on to bring England to the verge of full revolution. They were foiled by Richard at Smithfield. But only just. hrp.org.uk/TowerOfLondon
The Princes in the Tower (Photo: Getty)
The skull of Archbishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury, who was murdered during the 1381 Peasants' Revolt, still has some of its skin attached
Warwick Castle
The castle has been celebrating its 1,100th birthday this year
A brilliant place to take the children, Warwick has archery shows, birds of prey displays and a massive trebuchet that belts fireballs about 500ft in the air several times a day. The earls of Warwick were always involved in Plantagenet intrigue: it was here that the royal favourite Piers Gaveston was tried by a kangaroo court, before being dragged down the road to Blacklow Hill, run through with a sword and decapitated by a couple of Welsh thugs. (You can still trek to the Gaveston monument there, which in springtime is surrounded by swathes of stunning bluebells.) Best of all, Warwick is owned by the same people as Madame Tussauds, so you can spot the stars whose waxworks have been repurposed as historical characters. My favourite is Top Gear’s James May, dressed up as a medieval squire.
warwick-castle.com
Canterbury Cathedral
One of the most notorious fallings-out in the Middle Ages was between the first Plantagenet king, Henry II, and his archbishop and erstwhile friend, Thomas Becket. The archbishop was hacked to death in Canterbury Cathedral on December 29 1170 by four knights who thought they were doing the king’s bidding: a very moving monument marks the spot where Becket’s brains were smeared on the cold floor at the point of a sword. In the crypt, you can stand on the spot where Henry did penance for his friend’s death: the king was stripped and ritually flogged by all the monks of the cathedral in 1174, in an attempt to earn God’s favour during a massive rebellion against his rule. (Remarkably, it worked.) Also here are the tombs of the Black Prince and of Henry IV, who deposed his cousin Richard II in 1399. canterbury-cathedral.org
Westminster Abbey, London
Groaning with nearly a millennium of history, but the best bit of the great abbey church – redeveloped during the Plantagenet years by the enthusiastically pious King Henry III – is the royal mausoleum in the quire. Five Plantagenet kings (Henry III, Edward I, Edward III, Richard II and Henry V) and four of their queens (Eleanor of Castile, Philippa of Hainault, Anne of Bohemia and Catherine of Valois) are buried around the shrine of Edward the Confessor. You can’t see them very well normally – but go to the abbey at 11am and 3pm daily and you will be allowed to climb up to the otherwise off-limits mausoleum to join in prayers for Plantagenets gone by. While the prayers are being said, peek around at some of the greatest royal tombs in Britain. westminster-abbey.org
Bannockburn, near Stirling
Seven hundred years ago the Scots under Robert the Bruce inflicted their most famous military defeat on their southern neighbours, as their disciplined, spear-bearing infantry, organised into hedgehog-like schiltroms, gored the cream of English cavalry and sent Edward II’s army “homeward,” as the song goes, “tae think again”. A statue of Bruce and visitor centre bring the battlefield to life – and if you’re in the area, then you should also pay a visit to nearby Stirling. The castle there was besieged in 1304 by Edward I, who erected outside the walls Warwolf, a legendarily large and unpleasant siege catapult which more or less terrified the garrison into giving up the fight. battleofbannockburn.com
Kenilworth Castle
A massive fortress – once the greatest in the Midlands – is in semi-ruin now, having been slighted by Parliamentary forces during the Civil War. But enough survives to appreciate what a stunning building it once was: a palatial, imposing royal fortress surrounded by a lake, or mere, that covered about 100 acres. It was held by some of the greatest lords of the Plantagenet era, including Simon de Montfort – who holed up here in defiance of the king in 1266 – Thomas of Lancaster, enemy and cousin of Edward II, and John of Gaunt, the 14th-century Duke of Lancaster and uncle to king Richard II. Some of the ruins date from the Tudor years, but the keep, Oriel Tower and great hall are all remnants of its medieval magnificence. english-heritage.org.uk
Carrickfergus
I spent a week in Northern Ireland this summer finding out about the history of Carrickfergus Castle: once the most important fortress in Ulster, and a place much valued by the great Plantagenet villain King John, among others of his family. (There’s rather an amusing waxwork here of King John sitting on the medieval lavatory, which is worth the modest admission fee alone.) Carrickfergus is a good place to strike out for the insanely beautiful coast of Antrim, from where you can take a boat to Rathlin Island, where Robert the Bruce supposedly watched that spider spinning its web. Antrim is also, nowadays, the location for much of Game of Thrones – a show with its roots in Plantagenet history, since it was inspired by the Wars of the Roses. discovernorthernireland.com
Lewes, East Sussex
Lewes is not just a picturesque East Sussex town, it’s also a living link to the age of Henry III, whose furious struggle with his brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, resulted in one of the most dramatic battles of the Plantagenet age, fought in 1264 on the Downs above the town. The legacy of Henry and Simon’s war was ultimately the birth of Parliament. If you’re interested, you should also visit Evesham, where a second battle – the return fixture, if you like – ended with Simon dead, having been hacked to pieces with his genitals stuffed in his mouth. visitsussex.org/page/lewes
Runnymede
The Magna Carta temple is one of three historic memorials around Runnymede
The meadow where Magna Carta was granted by King John in 1215 is curiously unmarked by memorials to the most famous agreement in the whole of the anglophone tradition, save for one erected by the American Bar Association. But it is a beautiful spot, especially on a warm day. You can sit beneath the shade of the great oak trees there and have a picnic, or walk along the banks of the Thames. Next year marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta and Runnymede will be the focus of much royal pageantry, including a visit by the Queen – ironic, I suppose, since in a sense the Great Charter marked the first point at which the untrammelled power of the English monarchy began slowly to be constrained by the realm’s subjects. nationaltrust.org.uk/runnymede
Dan Jones will front Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty, a four-part documentary drama which is starting at 9pm this Thursday on Channel 5.
The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones (Faber & Faber, £20) is available to order from Telegraph Books at £15 + £1.95 p&p. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk
The Plantagenets: On the trail of Britain’s bloodiest dynasty - Telegraph
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