A Grand Day Out:LEEDS CASTLE Location: nr Maidstone, Kent, ME17 [map] Open: 10am-6pm Admission: £36.50 (£33 online) House open: 10.30am-5pm Website:leeds-castle.com Four word summary: moated glory amid parkland Time to allow: all day
The thing about Leeds Castle is that it is in Leeds but not the Leeds you expect. This Leeds is a small village in Kent, not Yorkshire, about five miles east of Maidstone. If you drive in it's only a mile from Junction 8 on the M20, which is damned convenient. If you take the train it's a half hour walk from Hollingbourne station, plus you get 20% off the admission price (ditto those arriving by bus or bike). It's a fairly whopping admission price but for that you can return any time for a full year, so you could come back again next Spring Bank Holiday. Plus it's gorgeous.
The castle's glory years began in 1278 when Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I, bought the original Norman fort here and transformed it into a royal residence. The site was perfect, spanning two islands in the River Len which was duly flooded hereabouts to create a huge protectivelake. Later Edward II besieged it, Richard II's wife-to-be overwintered here and Henry VIII gifted it to his first wife long before that fateful divorce, so the castle can claim plenty of history. Its last owner was Lady Baillie, a Manhattan socialite, who retained Leeds Castle in her second divorce settlement and on her death chose to gift it to a charitable trust (and definitely not the National Trust). Hence we can all pop round today.
The main thing to see at Leeds Castle is thus the castle, although it may be a bit of a hike across the grounds to get there. It stands proud in the middle of the lake and you can only reach it by crossing an arched bridge (and showing your wristband to a member of staff). This delivers you through a portcullis throat to the Inner Bailey, which is mostly lawn with the main crenellated building on the far side. Prepare to do that thing where you walk round a series of old rooms on a prescribed route entering each one with an 'ooh'. The Library unsurprisingly is full of books, the Dining Room was being polished in readiness for some grand meal and you may or may not find a guide tinkling the ivories in the Drawing Room.
Where things really pick up is when you cross another arched bridge, this time fully internal, from island number one to island number two. This is the older part of the castle where Catherine of Aragon had her apartments, although a lot of reconstruction and faux-medieval infill has been added since. Here are splendid wooden ceilings, massive fireplaces and gothic iron lanterns, plus scattercushions embroidered with facts about former female residents. Most of the rooms are laid out as they might have been in the heyday of Lady Baillie's occupation with props including typewriters, champagne towers and Harrods hatboxes, so the ambience is more prewar Art Deco than Tudor palace. But what a splendid place to have lived, secure on your own double island, these days the only potential attack being from a golf course across the moat.
Ten other things to see and enjoy at Leeds Castle[map]
• Adjacent to the giant moat is a second lake called the Great Water, which may looks old but was actually added in the 1970s when Leeds Castle was being transformed from family home to landscaped attraction. It's broad enough that you can take a boattrip across it - slow and flat-bottomed - for the additional fare of £1.50 each way. Watch out for swans (and currently cute little cygnets).
• A trio of formal gardens is scattered across the site, the finest probably the Culpeper Garden behind the cafe with its low box-hedgedbeds. Again it's a 1970s addition, transformed from a small sloping cottage garden into a semi-geometric pattern divided by brick paths, and currently ablaze with colour. Apparently the plants were originally laid out in twenty-six alphabetical rows, although the alliums are now so widespread (and so few plants labelled) that you'd never guess.
• Nowhere else in the world has a Dog Collar Museum, a collection of canine neckwear spanning five centures donated to Leeds Castle by antiquarian collector. I stepped in expecting to see dozens but the stuffycases have been replaced by "a fresh and creative new presentation" which means only fifteen remain on display. They're fascinating creations, from an iron beast with chunky spikes to ornate silver rings, but alas merely a fraction of the good stuff and thus more of a disappointing whimper.
• Added in 2022, the Queens With Means Experience is "a seven-minute cinematic experience featuring the Castle's six medieval Queen owners stepping out of the shadows of history to share their untold stories", but I can't tell you if it's smart or crass because it wasn't clearly enough signed and I never spotted it existed.
• The courtyard above the Great Water is the site's refreshment nexus, from a sit-down restaurant ("can you get me some chips?") to a seasonal ice-cream kiosk (expect lengthy queues for two scoops of Hackney Gelato).
• The Leeds Castle Trust have worked out that the best way to earn repeat custom on a year-long ticket is to create a large adventure playground zone, vaguely medievally themed, for kids of all ages. Expect plenty to clamber up and lots of sand, plus an array of parents and grandparents sitting patiently on the grass bank inbetween nipping to the cafe for another cold drink. The Adventure Golf course is Leeds-Castle-themed, which is dead clever but the hole with the ferry appears to take ages so was creating a long tailback of frustrated putters.
• The Maze comprises 2400 yew trees and was "designed using a computer programme", which must have been cutting edge for 1987. It's also a decent challenge with just enough loops to be frustratingly fiendish, perhaps too much so because at one point in the labyrinth we found a uniformed member of staff nudging everyone down one particular path. BestMate's Mum said she'd heard the secret was to take the left hand path at every turning whereas in truth it's the opposite, always turn right and you'll reach the centre in the optimum time. Here you get to climb a small mound and look out across what you've just been solving, confirming yes it's bigger than you thought. And the unexpected prize is then to descend into a brilliantly bonkers grotto, supposedly themed on Ovid's Metamorphoses, which winds through a long dimly-lit cavern decorated with all kinds of mythologicalsymbolism to a final hermit's cave. You'll never be impressed by Hampton Court again.
• The wider parkland is extensive, should you feel the need to explore further than the already lengthy hike from the entrance. It's also criss-crossed by at least four public footpaths which means you can walk in legitimately so long as you stick to the appropriate routes, which conveniently include the scenic stretch between moat and lake past the entrance to the castle.
• At the top end of the site is a Bird of Prey centre where you can eye up owls, vultures and eagles in shedlike cages. But the best time to arrive is 2pm when the daily display takes place, first the snake-thwacking Red Legged Seriema, then a pair of harris hawks swooping low over the audience from gauntlet to gauntlet, then the gleefully free-flying red/black kite hybrid. If you want value for money out of your day, don't miss it.
• Leeds Castle often hosts special extra events, many of these expensive add-ons but huzzah, the three day jousting tournament over the bank holiday was included with general admission. A big arena had been set up on the Clover Lawn with quintains and all that malarkey, overlooked by food stalls selling non-medieval fare like Yorkshire Pudding wraps and tubs of apple crumble. Knights from England, France and Norway were competing in teams, duly smashing their lances to smithereens for the honour of a Canadian queen on horseback, while umpteen folk wearing a variety of cloth headgear performed lowlier tasks like umpiring the horses, replacing the cabbages and playing the shawm. It was nothing I hadn't seen before at the Lambeth Country Show, to be honest, but all the better for being in a historically appropriate location just off the M20 in Leeds.
