Sudeley Castle

Sudeley Castle is a Grade I listed castle in the parish of Sudeley, in the Cotswolds, near to the medieval market town of Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, England. The castle has 10 notable gardens covering some 15 acres (6.1 ha) within a 1,200-acre (490 ha) estate in the Cotswold hills.

Building of the castle began in 1443 for Ralph Boteler; the Lord High Treasurer of England, on the site of a previous 12th-century fortified manor house. It was later seized by the crown and became the property of King Edward IV and King Richard III, who built its famous banqueting hall.

King Henry VIII and his then wife Anne Boleyn visited the castle in 1535; and it later became the home and final resting place of his sixth wife, Catherine Parr who remarried after the king's death. Parr is buried in the castle's church, making Sudeley the only privately owned castle in the world to have a Queen of England buried in its grounds. Sudeley soon became the home of the Chandos family, and the castle was visited on three occasions by Queen Elizabeth I, who held a three-day party there to celebrate the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

During the First English Civil War, the castle was used as a military base, by King Charles I and Prince Rupert, and it was later besieged and slighted by parliament, remaining largely in ruins for the following few centuries until its purchase in 1837 by the Dent family, who restored the castle and turned it into a family home.

Text adapted from “Sudeley Castle” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Sudeley Castle ranks #811 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #59 of the 329 mapped in England. Founded 1443, it is older than 50% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 434 atlas entries founded in the 15th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 11,910 times in the last 60 days, more than 94% of the atlas. 1 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Swindon, 45 km away. See how England compares in the castle statistics.

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