Castles & Historic Attractions
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Forty Hall in Enfield is a free Jacobean manor house built by a future Lord Mayor of London, set in a 273-acre estate above the buried remains of a Tudor royal palace.
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Hall Place in Bexley is a Tudor merchant’s house with a red-brick 17th-century wing, a Second World War message-interception past and free gardens beside the River Cray.
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Ten stone courtyard houses on a Cornish hillside, left by a farming community that lived through the Roman period in the far south-west. Here is the history, and where English Heritage’s closure leaves visitors.
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A ruined circular castle above the Fowey valley, Restormel was a hunting retreat for the earls of Cornwall and twice hosted the Black Prince. Here is its story, and how to visit.
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A small Elizabethan manor near Newquay, shaped by the Arundells and the Aclands, with a knot garden, a kayles lawn and rooms that run from the 1500s to the 1950s.
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A Roman fort on the edge of Breydon Water whose flint-and-tile walls still stand about 4.6 metres high, with an early Christian monastery and a Norman castle in its later story.
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Spitbank Fort rises from Spit Sand in the Solent, a Victorian sea fort built to guard Portsmouth dockyard that later became a luxury hotel. Here is its history and what to know before trying to visit.
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Titchfield Abbey in Hampshire is a free-to-enter ruin where a medieval abbey became a Tudor mansion, with a turreted gatehouse, medieval floor tiles and a Shakespeare tradition to weigh up.
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Portchester Castle on Portsmouth Harbour packs a Roman fort, a Norman keep, a royal palace and a Napoleonic prison into one Hampshire site, with the practical details for visiting.
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God’s House Tower began as a sea gate in 1189, became a gun tower after the French raid of 1338, then a damp town gaol. Today you can climb it to the roof for views across Southampton Water.