Kenilworth Castle - The Gatehouse

The gatehouse was built by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, that you read about yesterday in the long excerpt.

Subsequently, the castle was slighted, or rendered unusable (we'd call it destroyed...hence its current condition) at the end of the English Civil War in 1649.

Colonel Joseph Hawkesworth, responsible for the implementation of the slighting, acquired the estate for himself and converted Leicester's gatehouse into a house; part of the base court was turned into a farm, and many of the remaining buildings were stripped for their materials.^[51] In 1660 Charles II was restored to the throne, and Hawkesworth was promptly evicted from Kenilworth.^[116] The Queen Mother, Henrietta Maria, briefly regained the castle, with the Earls of Monmouth acting as stewards once again, but after her death King Charles II granted the castle to Sir Edward Hyde, whom he later created Baron Hyde of Hindon and Earl of Clarendon.^[117] The ruined castle continued to be used as a farm, with the gatehouse as the principal dwelling; the King's Gate was added to the outer bailey wall during this period for the use of farm workers.^[116]

The furnishings on view today are much as Hawkesworth would have used it.

This is a place well worth a visit when you are in this neck of the woods.