Birmingham Day 3 – Warwick Castle

11/9/2014

Warwick Castle

Warwick Castle is one of the best preserved castles in England and is only a 25 minute train ride from Birmingham. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to stay in Birmingham. ^.^ The train’s relatively cheap at 7.5 pounds roundtrip per person and you can hop on any train during the day.

There’s clear signs telling you how to get to the Castle once you get out of the station. It’s a 10 minute walk, and along the way, you get to see some very nice Tudor-style houses. The town of Warwick is very quaint and well-tended.

St. Mary’s Church contains the tomb of Richard, Earl of Warwick, who oversaw the trial and execution of Joan of Arc:

Warwick is also operating on winter hours, which is 10am-4pm for today (the hours change daily). We thought we’d have plenty of time to check out all the attractions, and let me tell you, boy, was it tight. We got there right when it opened at 10am and we had to rush toward the end of the day. We didn’t even get to see the Aviary, the Peacock house (with actual peacocks!), and the Victorian Mill, still in operation today.

Warwick Castle

Princess Tower, which is an attraction for young kids. Darn. Princess Tower? I sooo want to see what’s in there!

I had a Days Out buy 1 get 1 free voucher, which saved us 18 pounds. Awesome! Gotta love Days Out.

The entrance to the main courtyard:

We started out our visit in the exhibit about the Kingmaker. They did a really good job showing the daily activities of castle life using wax figures. It’s kinda like Disneyland! We kept marveling how real the wax figures looked…and as we later found out, Warwick Castle is now owned by Madame Toussaud’s. Duh.

Kingmaker Exhibit

The exhibit focuses on 1471, right in the midst of the War of the Roses (basically 2 cousins, Edward IV and Henry VI, vying to be king). Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, is preparing for the Battle of Barnet.

Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, being fitted into his armour by his squire

When the War of Roses broke out a decade or so ago, he’d sided with Edward IV. He vowed to Edward that he’d put Edward on the throne, and pledged his money, resources and army to Edward. He didn’t do this for free, of course. He was aiming to be the power behind Edward, should he be crowned. The Yorks prevailed in a vital battle that decided who’d be king. Out of 6 loyal men, Richard Neville was chosen to personally crown Edward IV and thus became known as The Kingmaker.

Richard immediately went out searching for a suitable bride for the new king. He settled on a French princess for Edward. However, Edward fell in love with a most unsuitable choice. Anne, from a disgraced noble (though lowly) family. Her family had supported the Lancasters, which made her very unpopular with Edward’s supporters (anyone thinking Rob Stark in Game of Thrones? George R.R. Martin did say he based a lot of Game of Thrones on the War of the Roses. I guess that makes Tywin Lannister Richard Neville.). Over the years, as Edward settled into his kingship, Anne kept persuading Edward to take away Richard Neville’s properties and give it to her family.

After a decade of this, Richard Neville said “enough.” He had a secret meeting with Henry VI of the house of Lancaster, and promised he’d put Henry VI on the throne if Henry would give him his properties back (the ones Anne took away). Henry agreed to this, so Richard set about convincing Edward that Henry was amassing an army and would land in Wales. Edward believed Richard, and rode to Wales with an army to head off Henry. Edward never got to Wales. It was a trap. Richard captured Edward and threw him in the jail at Warwick.

Man, are these helmets heavy!

Richard then put Henry on the throne. One night, Edward somehow escaped from his jail cell—they still don’t know how he escaped. In the medieval ages, the towers where prisoners were held had tiers. The higher your status, the higher in the tower you were housed. So Edward was housed in the highest tower—how, then, did he escape???

Jail Tower

This is Fortune, the earl’s trusty steed. He’s wearing a Chamfron with a metal spike. The horse has been trained to use this spike to kill in battle.

Blacksmith making armor

The kid playing with the bow and arrow will be taken to the Battle of Barnet. He will be expected to pick up old arrows in the battlefield…and retrieve arrows from dead bodies. Poor kid!

The highest skilled archers can fire up to 12 arrows per minute. They needed to be incredibly strong in order to operate the bows as the force needed to pull the bow back could be shoulder-dislocating. Crickey!

Look how tall the bow is!

The Porter Guard controls all access around and in the castle. If the first portcullis is breeched, he’ll order his sentry to pour down dangerous liquids through the “murder holes” in the ceiling to prevent the second portcullis from being breeched. Liquids such as boiling tar and urine. Yuck!

The Porter Guard

Cannons back then were brought to the battlefield piece by piece, and constructed on site because it was too hard to move a whole cannon around.

Cannon

These nets were knotted with thick nails and were thrown in the path of approaching enemies. Man, how painful!

This is the ladies’ room, where the countess is busy with her ladies sewing the men’s clothing for tomorrow’s battle:

A man dressed in full medieval clothes and armor came up to us at this point and gave us insight into what was happening on this all important eve before the battle. Everyone has a job to do. He pointed out the washerwoman, who’s washing clothes in urine. Ewww! But back then, water was very unsafe for drinking and washing purposes. It was full of disease as people pissed in the rivers, washed dirty clothes in the river…and if you aged urine for 2-3 weeks, a little compound called “ammonia” starts developing. Yeah, like the kind we use nowadays to clean carpet. Ammonia kills germs, so you get the idea.

Also, black and colored fabrics were very expensive as it required dye. The most common color that people wore was brown. In WWII, you hear about women dying their legs brown with tea bags to imitate panty hose. Well, in the medieval ages, they used dung to dye the fabrics brown. Eugh!!!! Seriously grossed out now!

You know the man on the left is very rich because he’s wearing richly colored clothing. He has a fur-lined cape with fur-lined pockets, where he would put herbs so that when he’s walking on the streets, he’s smelling the herbs and not the stink of human waste.

Most people—unless you were a rich nobleman—didn’t have toilets back then. There was no plumbing. So they threw their shit out onto the street every day. You can see the wealthy man with his rather unique shoes:

The more pointy your shoe, the richer you were. The idea was, if you’re wealthy, you can afford more leather for your shoe. Most commoners had round-toe shoes. Kings wore pointy shoes curled up, to show off that they could afford all that extra material.

This man’s shoes are also heeled, so that when he’s walking in the streets, his shoes won’t touch the shit on the floor.

Here we are at last, in the earl’s room, where he’s rallying his men:

And of course, instead of focusing on the men, Angel’s eyes zoom toward the medieval loo:

I swear, this trip, she’s more amused with finding toilets than anything else. She’ll gleefully point them out to me if I haven’t noticed them. It’s kinda like a Where’s Waldo game for her (or, in the UK, they call it “Where’s Wally?”).

So here we are at the end of the Kingmaker exhibit. Tomorrow, at the Battle of Barnet, Richard Neville will march his 15,000-strong army against Edward IV. Richard will die tomorrow in battle. After stabbing him to death, the Yorkists will strip Richard, tie him to the back of a horse and have his naked, dead body dragged all along the battlefields as a clear message that they’ve defeated The Kingmaker.

The Mound

We went outside to see The Mound. It’s the oldest standing part of the castle, first erected in the 900s. William the Conqueror ordered it built to make Warwick into a fortress, complete with moat and bailey.

Warwick Castle has tours included in the admission price. Each lasts for about ½ hour and we were lucky enough to catch all three tours today. The first gave an overview about Warwick’s 1100 years’ worth of history. The tour guide, Ben, had a lot of enthusiasm and made the history fascinating to listen to. He seriously went through all the earls of Warwick, starting with Fulke Greville, who was the first Earl of Warwick. His manservant stabbed him when he found out that the earl was only going to leave him twenty pounds in his will. The earl survived the stabbing, but his doctor ordered the wounds to be patched up with pig fat—which was infected with something or the other. Less than a month later, the infections did the earl of Warwick in.

The tour guide’s favorite owner of Warwick was Richard Beauchamp. He was undefeated in the jousting lists, fought in a lot of important battles against France for the King of England, and made his fortune by taking noble French soldiers prisoner. He’d hold his prisoners at Warwick while he waited for the ransoms to come in. In today’s money, he was worth 34 billion dollars. Holy cow.

He was incredibly famous around Europe for his dueling and jousting skills. His powerful position well-established in England, he decided to undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Well, this pilgrimage lasted 10 years, thanks in no small part because every few cities he visited, someone would inevitably challenge him to a duel to see if the legend of Richard Beauchamp was true. As they say, curiosity killed the cat. Richard Beauchamp butchered numerous men in these duels and remained undefeated in the dueling circuitry.

His only son died and so the line of the earl of Warwick was due to die out and go out of the family. Beauchamp had a daughter, Anne, and it fell to her the important task of choosing a worthy man to marry. Whoever the lucky man was would inherit the Beauchamp fortune and the title of the earl of Warwick.

Unfortunately, Anne chose rather badly. She married Richard Neville, the man who would become The Kingmaker. With his death in the Battle of Barnet, the title of earl of Warwick and the estates reverts back to the Crown because the Nevilles had no children. All of Richard Beauchamp’s efforts lost. Oh, and at one point in time, when England went to war against France, the Beauchamps changed their surnames to Beechum, to sound less French. Angel and I were both shocked by this—who wants a last name of Beechum when you can have such an elegant-sounding last name of Beauchamp?

This is the tower Richard Beauchamp kept all those aristocratic Frenchmen in

Richard Neville (from above, remember?) kept Edward IV and Henry VI in this tower at different times of the War of the Roses:

Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s secretary, also stayed in this jail tower. We’re not sure if the tour guide was being sarcastic when he said that “Hess stayed here during his tour of the English prisons.” I thought it meant Hess toured the English prisons to notate the highlights of each prison, like a scholar would. Angel said the tour guide meant he was thrown into a lot of English prisons while awaiting trial. As we don’t have internet in our hotel, we’ll have to Google this when we surface in the land of the internet again.

The original tower was built in 1356. The lowest level, where the lowest strata of prisoners were kept, was poorly ventilated, dark and very drafty. Some prisoners were confined to this wretched prison for many years.

The oubliette, the worst cell in the prison, was a tiny, lightless pit underground, with only a grille vertically above your head as the door out:

I’m standing, looking down at this hole in the floor. Imagine being cramped into this space for years on end!

Across the yard, we went up the ramparts. I walked right past the sign leading up to the ramparts. When Angel caught up with me, she said the sign read that there are 534 very steep steps up to the ramparts. Say what?! 534? I feel faint already. But I’d already gone up a bit and there’s only one exit…on your way out. The steps are so narrow, you can barely get half a foot across it, let alone have people going up and down at the same time. So, you enter through one portion of the castle and you leave through another.

I was huffing and puffing by the time we reached the quarter-way point. But the view is beautiful:

And when we finally get to the top:

So thankful to be going back down! I’m all out of breath!

They had a Birds of Prey show at 12:30pm and it seemed like the whole castle turned out to watch it. The benches were all filled. A Chilean eagle and a Bald-Eyed Eagle were shown, soaring around the audience. Sometimes they passed a foot above our heads! The Chilean eagle’s father was a really good show bird, but one day, he got a mind of his own and instead of flying to his perch during a show, he flew down to the river and caught himself a hare. He did this on several consecutive days, after which he had to be retired as too unruly.

Chilean eagle named Bruce

Bruce molted his feathers these past few months, which meant he had a really nice time relaxing and not having to do any shows. Molting is an important stage in a bird’s life so the caretakers wanted to make sure Bruce was amply fed and well-rested during this time. He’s now back on the show circuit, though because he’s had so much time off, it’s a bit hard for him to fly very long. Toward the end of his routine, he was supposed to fly to the top wall of the rampart. But because he was tired, he only flew to the bottom wall of the rampart. He cheated a bit by resting, then hopping onto the top. Haha reminds me of me working out!

Bald eyed eagle

When the caretaker tried to stroke him, he bit the caretaker because he doesn’t like to be stroked. He clearly doesn’t understand “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

Right after the Birds of Prey show was a tour about the armors at the castle. Warwick Castle was voted as having the best (and if not the most valuable) private collection of armors in the world. They have a German Maximilian armor. At the time it was made some few hundred years ago, it probably cost 50,000 pounds!

Milanese armor, one of only a handful of surviving Milanese armors in the world

The Milanese and the German Maximilian were two of the most famous workshops to make armory. Henry VIII tried establishing a workshop in England, but it didn’t take off. Not due to inferior workmanship, but it’s all about brands. The Milanese and Maximilian were so established, who’d want to pay a fortune for any other brand? Like paying for a LV versus a new fashion label :T

This is Oliver Cromwell’s death mask, made just a few days after he died in 1658. What’s curious is that the craftsman decided to show Oliver Cromwell, warts and all. You can see his wart very clearly. I wonder if it was a status symbol in those days, like the fake beauty marks of Marie Antoinette’s age?

Armored knight and horse

The next owner of Warwick is the Greville family, who would own the castle for 300 years from the 1600s to the 1970s. The Grevilles loved to party. Some went bankrupt, others passed on their heavy debts to their children, until David Greville finally had to sell off Warwick Castle in the 1970s…for a measly sum of 1.5 million to Madame Toussaud. David Greville partied with the likes of Princess Margaret and Mick Jagger, funding his high fallutin lifestyle by quietly selling off the treasures of Warwick Castle that his ancestors had amassed over the years. The Crown got wind that David Greville was selling off his family’s possessions on the cheap (he basically sold to whoever had the first offer on the table), disapproved of this, and let it leak to the media what David was doing. This caused a huge scandal and was a humiliating blow to the Greville family. They sold off Warwick Castle and left the country. They have not returned to this day, though they still retain the title the earl of Warwick.

They had an exhibit on the Greville family, centering on the earl of Warwick’s house party in the late 1800s.

Francis was the countess of Warwick then, and she threw large, lavish parties that the nobility adored and scorned at the same time. One ball, named the Bal Poudre, requested all guests to dress circa the Marie Antoinette era (Francis’s idol). Her costume was so fanciful and…I guess “loud” is the word? it was the scandal of the era.

Francis as Marie Antoinette

The man on the left is the Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the throne after Queen Victoria. He was a debauched rake and his mother Queen Victoria disapproved of his lifestyle. He formed the infamous Marlborough House Set.

Sierra Redwood tree planted by Prince Albert to mark his and his wife’s visit to Warwick in 1858:

The Great Hall was burned during the Great Fire in the 1800s. Servants tossed the weapons and treasured artifacts out the windows to save the historical pieces, and so most of the Greville collection survived. The only thing not to burn in the room was the Venetian marble floor, though it did take the servants 10 days to clean the soot. There are curlicues inlaid in the floor that are amoeba from 65 million years ago. It was incorporated into the design:

Wicked, hunh?

The Grevilles knew how to throw parties. They wanted Warwick to be a symbol of their high rank and status, so no expense was spared in decorating Warwick. All the gold in the building—from the wall sconces to the portrait frames to the gilded ceiling—is 24 carat gold. Wowza.

One of the most valuable items at Warwick Castle is this table:

Lapis Lazuli in its solid form is more expensive than gold. This table has 2.5 kg of it inlaid, along with onyx and other precious stones. One earl of Warwick had gone to Venice and stayed at the Grimani Palace. He loved the table and asked if he could buy it. The Grimanis replied, “Why not, we still have 6 left.”

You could say they weren’t of the best taste (Crayfish and the Oyster, anyone?). As someone once said of Charles Dickens, they were “of the flash sort.” In the 1700s, the Grevilles bought tapestries to decorate the walls. Tapestries are hugely expensive and are a definite sign of wealth upon wealth, so the Grevilles bought a bunch of tapestries. Problem is, upon arriving home, they discovered they’d bought too many tapestries. Not all would fit on the wall. Instead of just hanging a few, they said, “We’ll make them fit.” They took a pair of scissors and slashed the tapestries down to the satisfied sizes. Excuse me???

You can see the seam very clearly where they cut the tapestries down to size to fit the room:

That was one generation of Grevilles. Another generation, (2281, 2^nd?) another earl of Warwick loved the artist van Dyck’s portraits. Van Dyck was hugely popular for his portraits of the royal family, and his paintings commanded high prices. Now, artists like van Dyck would have schools of students who studied their work. Van Dyck would paint a subject, then basically tell his students to copy his painting stroke for stroke. He’d then sell these paintings as “studio copies.” It wasn’t quite as expensive as an original van Dyck, but still very expensive.

Well, the earl of Warwick was enamored with van Dyck’s portraits, but sought to budget himself by buying studio copies. He’d already bought 24 carat gold frames to frame these portraits in. When the paintings arrived, he found out that the paintings were too big. So, in clear Greville fashion, he had all the paintings cut down to fit the frames.

Angel’s howling by now. No, no, no!!!

What’s worse, he cut off the hands in the paintings. In those days, hands were considered the hardest to paint, so therefore the most expensive. So if you wanted your hand painted, it’d cost you extra. And likewise, if you wanted to buy a painting with a hand in it, it’d cost you extra.

To make matters worse, Greville bought himself a van Dyck studio copy of King Charles I with his wife, Henrietta Maria. This is the only studio copy known to be in existence of this painting (the original is in Prague). The painting is rare because van Dyck usually paints one person at a time. This is a painting with two people in it, and it shows them in love. This is especially rare in a painting because most kings did not marry for love. Charles I loved his wife very much, but he was a Protestant and she was a French Catholic. The English Parliament, comprised of strict Puritans, disliked Henrietta Maria intensely. It is partly due to her that Cromwell led an uprising against Charles, with Cromwell ultimately beheading Charles.

Henrietta Maria, minus a few fingers...oh yeah, and her husband

King Charles I, minus both hands

The Grevilles through the ages were full of men who wanted to show off their wealth, though perhaps they went about it in a clueless manner:

…and then:

Anyone know what the ghost army is in Lord of the Rings? I've never read the books or seen the movie, but am intrigued by a "ghost army."

Robert Dudley! *sigh* I love Tom Hardy as Robert Dudley!!!

Queen Elizabeth I's saddle

Behind Angel is the largest working trebuchet in England:

They put on shows in the summer of jousting and launching the trebuchet, but as we’re here in winter, we missed out ;(

Overall, Warwick was a great day of fun and learning. The tour guides were so amazing, energetic and knowledgeable. Madame Toussaud’s is a private corporation so they maintain the grounds and castle with no help from the government. It costs a lot to upkeep a property of this scale and size, and to continually come up with fun activities for everyone. It’s like a medieval Disneyland with a  real history behind it. If you’re ever in this neck of the woods, I totally recommend visiting Warwick and supporting a great cause!

Tudor village!

Dinner was a Sainsbury’s special. Quinoa and bulgar wheat with roasted butternut squash, pumpkin seeds, currants and feta cheese…all for the ridiculously low price of 30 pence! The store was closing and there were things on clearance that everyone was fighting for.

And croissant with cheddar and chives dip mixed with prawns: