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Path: Blog > A Year with English Heritage
Tags: UK  England  EnglishHeritage  2022

A Year with English Heritage

 

(vero;2022-Jan-01)

Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, the perfect shrine for all things Victorian Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, the perfect shrine for all things Victorian December 2021: Covid19 was still very much an item and we were debating whether we wanted to make our usual French Winter trip at the cost of (too many) tests or maybe for once stay in the UK instead? In the end, we decided to stay home and as if to make a statement, we committed to a one-year membership to English Heritage (EH).

English Heritage is a charity managing over four hundred historic monuments, buildings and places all over England including prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The most famous are surely Stonehenge, the palace of Osborne on the Isle of Wight, Dover Castle, some structures along Hadrian's Wall, just to name a few and whilst many have an entry charge, more than 250 properties are free to enter. Audley End House in Essex. Audley End House in Essex.

With a promotion code we paid £83.25 for a one year joint membership, a very well invested amount of money which we quickly amortised just by visiting Stonehenge, Dover and Darwin's House… However, all those visits are bound to travelling a fair distance, adding transport and/or accommodation costs to the whole enterprise. But for us it was definitely worth the effort and we were resolved to make the most of it.

We had already visited some of the free of charge sites like the abbeys of Netley and Titchfield in Hampshire or Hadrian's Wall, something we could always do, membership or not, so we decided at first to concentrate on sites charging a visiting fee. However, visiting in winter is not so easy: many properties are completely closed from November to April 1st and if open, this is mostly only on Saturdays or Sundays or during school holidays. All this restricts quite a bit any EH activity during the cold season and outings have to be carefully planned. We nevertheless saw quite a few sites during the cold months. We started with a big one: Stonehenge, a few days before the winter solstice and afterwards turned our attention to our home county of Hampshire, then London and Kent, destinations not too far away from home for short winter days.

Come Spring and Summer, we took advantage of the longer days and the exceptionnaly good weather to go on several short trips, all tailored around the EH sites we wanted to see. After a holiday in France we concluded our EH season with a few more outings, mostly in October, as many sites close and go into winter sleep on November 1st. Following is a summary of our 2022 season:

The gate house of Battle Abbey in East Sussex, an interesting visit to this defining site for English history The gate house of Battle Abbey in East Sussex, an interesting visit to this defining site for English history

We have created some photo galleries dedicated to our EH experience: go and have a look!

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Want to read more? Go back to Introduction or go on to Eltham the Courtauld's Way or go up to Blog


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