Windsor Castle
Ancient Home of Britain's Royal Family
While planning our trip, we decided that for at least one day we would leave the work of travel to someone else, so we booked an all day van trip online through International Friends Tours. We loved it. The tour included Windsor Castle, Stonehenge and Bath.
The van picked us up a block away from our hotel early in the morning and we had less than a dozen people in our group. This is what I consider the optimal group size; small enough to feel like you are traveling with friends. We were really lucky because our guide was a friendly older gentleman filled with loads of knowledge and really funny too. Jim and I have had some really amazingly bad (and boring!) guides….fortunately they weren’t in London.
As we pulled into our first stop, Windsor Castle, we found that because we were driving a van, we could pull right up to the front gate passing by the huge mega busloads of tourists stopping at the large parking lot at the other end of the village of Windsor. Yeah! Another reason to avoid the big bus tours! We hopped off at the ticket office and were among the first inside the castle walls when the ticket office opened.
Gazing up at the castle keep, we realized that the Queen’s banner fluttered in the blustery morning breeze. The Queen was at home! Jim kept insisting that his invitation for tea must have gotten lost in the mail and since we didn’t see any royal family member waving at us from the windows, we wound our way down the winding lane behind the castle’s grey stone walls to where the Lower Ward and the tall half-timbered medieval style Horseshoe Cloister were located. The original castle was built by William the Conqueror after the Norman invasion to protect Norman dominance over the area around London. It has been occupied by royalty since King Henry I and is the longest occupied palace in Europe. It was designed as a Mott and Bailey fortification with the Keep at the top of the mound (Mott) and a surrounding protected area (the Bailey). Gradually, the castle walls of wood were replaced with stone and in the 13th century, Henry III built a lavish palace. Over the next several hundred years, a succession of rulers either expanded or rebuilt the palace after periods of neglect or fire to its current historic grandness.
Most of the current castle is Georgian and Victorian built in a Gothic style but it is sprinkled with original constructions such as the 14th century Norman Gate and the 15th Century St. George’s Chapel which is considered a spectacular example of the English Perpendicular Gothic style.
St. George’s Chapel is located in the Lower Ward and is the spiritual home of the Knights of the Garter, but in my mind, the holy grail of the visit were the tombs of King Henry VIII and his third wife and favorite of his six wives, Jane Seymour. Unfortunately she died from childbirth complications. She is buried near her husband and is the only consort who was honored with a Queen’s funeral. Since I had visited the unassuming tombs of Henry’s poor spurned and beheaded wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard in the Tower of London, I couldn’t miss checking out the rather hypocritical (in my mind), grand location of the King Henry VIII’s remains in the choir of St. George’s Chapel. Charles I, the only English king to have been executed by his people, and Edward the IV are also buried in the chapel.
The lavish State apartments were designed in the 19th century and have rich Rococo, Gothic and Baroque interiors. The East Wing rooms burned in 1992 and were subsequently restored to their golden opulence, but have been re-interpreted by their modern restorers so they are not necessarily identical to the original rooms. The rooms undulate with curling plaster molding, glittering gilt, rich gemstone shades of fabrics and gleaming inlaid wood parquet adorning the expansive floors.
The child in all of us can’t help but be fascinated by the giant doll house you encounter as you enter the State Apartments. The doll house was built in 1924 for Queen Mary the wife of King George V at a scale of 1 inch to 1 foot. It is a masterpiece of tiny detail and you could easily spend an hour looking at it. Unfortunately, you must keep moving along in the one-way line as you circle the scene. Every few seconds you could hear, “look at that!” from someone in line and you would follow the latest pointing finger to another perfect tiny surprise.
If you have the time, stop into the town of Windsor. The village or “New Town” has been in existence since the 12th century and is filled with half-timbered structures reminiscent of its middle ages incarnation as a pilgrimage town. Literary notables like Geoffrey Chaucer and Shakespeare walked its narrow streets. We stopped in at the Horse & Groom pub for a coke (yes believe it or not we passed on a beer!) and found its tiny timbered interior decked to the halls in Christmas cheer. It was like being enveloped in the warmth of a fantasy Victorian Christmas and just what we needed before hopping back into our van for the drive across the Salisbury plain to Stonehenge.
Check out the Photo Montage Below!
The van picked us up a block away from our hotel early in the morning and we had less than a dozen people in our group. This is what I consider the optimal group size; small enough to feel like you are traveling with friends. We were really lucky because our guide was a friendly older gentleman filled with loads of knowledge and really funny too. Jim and I have had some really amazingly bad (and boring!) guides….fortunately they weren’t in London.
As we pulled into our first stop, Windsor Castle, we found that because we were driving a van, we could pull right up to the front gate passing by the huge mega busloads of tourists stopping at the large parking lot at the other end of the village of Windsor. Yeah! Another reason to avoid the big bus tours! We hopped off at the ticket office and were among the first inside the castle walls when the ticket office opened.
Gazing up at the castle keep, we realized that the Queen’s banner fluttered in the blustery morning breeze. The Queen was at home! Jim kept insisting that his invitation for tea must have gotten lost in the mail and since we didn’t see any royal family member waving at us from the windows, we wound our way down the winding lane behind the castle’s grey stone walls to where the Lower Ward and the tall half-timbered medieval style Horseshoe Cloister were located. The original castle was built by William the Conqueror after the Norman invasion to protect Norman dominance over the area around London. It has been occupied by royalty since King Henry I and is the longest occupied palace in Europe. It was designed as a Mott and Bailey fortification with the Keep at the top of the mound (Mott) and a surrounding protected area (the Bailey). Gradually, the castle walls of wood were replaced with stone and in the 13th century, Henry III built a lavish palace. Over the next several hundred years, a succession of rulers either expanded or rebuilt the palace after periods of neglect or fire to its current historic grandness.
Most of the current castle is Georgian and Victorian built in a Gothic style but it is sprinkled with original constructions such as the 14th century Norman Gate and the 15th Century St. George’s Chapel which is considered a spectacular example of the English Perpendicular Gothic style.
St. George’s Chapel is located in the Lower Ward and is the spiritual home of the Knights of the Garter, but in my mind, the holy grail of the visit were the tombs of King Henry VIII and his third wife and favorite of his six wives, Jane Seymour. Unfortunately she died from childbirth complications. She is buried near her husband and is the only consort who was honored with a Queen’s funeral. Since I had visited the unassuming tombs of Henry’s poor spurned and beheaded wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard in the Tower of London, I couldn’t miss checking out the rather hypocritical (in my mind), grand location of the King Henry VIII’s remains in the choir of St. George’s Chapel. Charles I, the only English king to have been executed by his people, and Edward the IV are also buried in the chapel.
The lavish State apartments were designed in the 19th century and have rich Rococo, Gothic and Baroque interiors. The East Wing rooms burned in 1992 and were subsequently restored to their golden opulence, but have been re-interpreted by their modern restorers so they are not necessarily identical to the original rooms. The rooms undulate with curling plaster molding, glittering gilt, rich gemstone shades of fabrics and gleaming inlaid wood parquet adorning the expansive floors.
The child in all of us can’t help but be fascinated by the giant doll house you encounter as you enter the State Apartments. The doll house was built in 1924 for Queen Mary the wife of King George V at a scale of 1 inch to 1 foot. It is a masterpiece of tiny detail and you could easily spend an hour looking at it. Unfortunately, you must keep moving along in the one-way line as you circle the scene. Every few seconds you could hear, “look at that!” from someone in line and you would follow the latest pointing finger to another perfect tiny surprise.
If you have the time, stop into the town of Windsor. The village or “New Town” has been in existence since the 12th century and is filled with half-timbered structures reminiscent of its middle ages incarnation as a pilgrimage town. Literary notables like Geoffrey Chaucer and Shakespeare walked its narrow streets. We stopped in at the Horse & Groom pub for a coke (yes believe it or not we passed on a beer!) and found its tiny timbered interior decked to the halls in Christmas cheer. It was like being enveloped in the warmth of a fantasy Victorian Christmas and just what we needed before hopping back into our van for the drive across the Salisbury plain to Stonehenge.
Check out the Photo Montage Below!