A Year with English Heritage
(vero;2022-Jan-01)
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. 
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:
- December 2021: Stonehenge (Wiltshire) and Donnington Castle (near Newbury, Berkshire)
- January 2022: Portchester Castle (Hampshire), Dover Castle with Walmer and Deal castles (Kent)
- February 2022: Wellington Arch and Westminster Jewel Tower in London, Eltham Palace, the Roman villa of Lullingstone and Darwin's house (both in Kent), 1066 Battle Field and Abbey in East Sussex.
- May 2022: Wolvesey Castle (Winchester, Hampshire), Osborne House, Carisbrooke Castle, Appuldurcombe House, St Catherine's Oratory (all four on the Isle of Wight)
- June 2022: we made a trip to Dorset and visited a few EH sites on the way. Our first visit was for Portland Castle just south of Weymouth, then St Catherine's chapel in Abbotsbury, Maiden Castle just two miles south of Dorchester, Sherborne Old Castle in the delightful town of Sherborne with its great abbey church, Old Wardour Castle in the middle of nowhere and finally Old Sarum just on the outskirts of Salisbury.
- July 2022: a very busy month in our EH activities…
- Heatwave in England! the perfect weather for an escapade to North Cornwall and Tintagel Castle. We planned our itinerary carefully visiting Muchelney Abbey, Okehampton Castle and Launceston Castle on the way. We continued to Dartmoor where we checked Lydford Castle which happened to be very near to our base. After two days of great walking on the moor, we drove back home, stopping en route in Totnes Castle and the highly photogenic and evocative Berry Pomeroy Castle.
- Vero's birthday: we combined her birthday treat (Blenheim Palace not an EH site but membership gave us a 30% discount) with a visit of Kenilworth Castle in the West Midlands. We stopped en route in the pleasant town of Abingdon (south of Oxford, quite posh if you ask us) to see the County Hall Museum and stroll through its streets and squares.
- We finished the month with a day trip, combining the visits of Audley End House and Gardens in Essex, Wrest Park and Houghton House (both in Bedfordshire).
- October 2022: We went back to Kent for a visit to Rochester Castle and Upnor Castle along the river Medway. We made a stop in Canterbury and visited St Augustine's Abbey and because we had enjoyed our first visit to Dover Castle so much, we returned for a second time, checking the fort redoubt of the Western Heights before leaving. Driving back home, we made a detour to see the evocative ruins of Bayham Old Abbey at the Kent-Sussex border. We also had a final day in London where we visited Ranger's House to see the Wernher collection in Greenwich and Apsley House, Wellington's house at Hyde Park Corner.
We have created some photo galleries dedicated to our EH experience: go and have a look!
Want to read more? Go back to Introduction or go on to Eltham the Courtauld's Way or go up to Blog
$updated from: Blog.htxt Mon 04 Mar 2024 16:04:46 trvl2 (By Vero and Thomas Lauer)$