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Times
4 days ago
- Times
Seven of the best English Heritage sites to plan a weekend break around
A day out at an evocative ruin in a thrilling location or a romp around a stately home with enviable gardens and an adjoining café serving tea and scones is always a good idea. English Heritage manages 400 such addresses that span our island's history, as far back as 4,000BC, from Kit's Coty House in Kent — the remains of megalithic 'dolmen' burial chambers — to a 1961 Cold War bunker in York. You'll find English Heritage properties everywhere from the Scilly Isles to Berwick-upon-Tweed. Better still, 250 of them are free to enter. With a bank holiday weekend on the horizon, we've picked our favourites. This article contains affiliate links that will earn us revenue There's something about this ruined fort that once guarded the Hardknott Pass at the top of the Esk Valley that really fires the imagination (free; Like Hadrian's Wall, it dates from the second century, and as you wander among the remnant walls and towers it's easy to visualise the Dalmatian soldiers once stationed here, marching to and from its sister forts at Ravenglass on the coast and Ambleside in the Lake District. Get there on the La'al Ratty steam train from Ravenglass (from £16; or drive up and over the terrifying Hardknott Pass, continuing to the charming Drunken Duck Inn in B&B doubles from £150 ( • Lake District v Peak District: which is better? This circular tower, on a rocky headland over the Fal estuary, was one of 30 forts and blockhouses built under Henry VIII to defend England's coasts — it still has an arsenal of guns to prove it (from £13.10). If you're self-catering you'll have it to yourselves when it closes; the Custodian's House (sleeping two) and Callie's Cottage (sleeping four) are within the fortress walls. Otherwise catch the foot ferry to St Mawes (from £9; and visit St Mawes Castle — Pendennis's sister fort — on the other side of the estuary (from £9). Overnight at St Mawes Hotel, then venture to the St Just-in-Roseland church the next morning to see what John Betjeman described as the 'most beautiful churchyard on earth' (open daily, free; B&B doubles from £175 ( • Great National Trust properties to visit The 'did they or didn't they' relationship between Elizabeth I and her handsome master of horse Robert Dudley remains one of the most compelling romances in English history. The queen gifted him this Norman castle in 1563 and he returned the favour by spending a fortune on it, readying it for her visits (from £15). Though the castle is now a ruin, the spectacular privy garden he created for her final stay in July 1575 — a 19-day extravaganza involving fireworks and a floating island complete with Lady of the Lake — has been restored using 16th-century descriptions and archaeological evidence. A young William Shakespeare may have attended or been inspired by the celebration; the town of his birth and the 12-room Townhouse boutique hotel are a 30-minute drive Room-only doubles from £100 ( • Discover our full guide to the UK Pilgrims seeking spiritual contemplation still walk barefoot to this tidal island, and it's reachable by car, along a causeway. The poetic setting lends the site an air of mysticism that is enhanced by its vestiges of early Christianity, from Anglo-Saxon runic name stones to the ruins of a 12th-century priory that replaced the 7th-century monastery (from £9). Children will enjoy the trail inspired by animals from the Lindisfarne Gospels, created before the devastating Viking raid of AD793. They'll love rolling down the dunes under Bamburgh Castle (£19; and spotting puffins and seals on Coquet Island (£20; Base yourself at the Whittling House restaurant with rooms in Alnmouth for local seafood and a stylish night's sleep. Details B&B doubles from £150 ( This mighty fortress is a no-brainer for anyone fascinated by the Second World War (from £25.90). Eighty-five years ago Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay coordinated Operation Dynamo from here, evacuating 338,226 Allied troops in 900 craft from Dunkirk. The story is told in the Secret Wartime Tunnels, while other tunnels are dedicated to the sieges of 1216 and 1217. It's a hit with families too — there's a siege-themed playground, a 12th-century keep and a northwest spur with panoramic views to the White Cliffs. A smart stay is on the cards after your visit at the Rose, just along the coast in hipster Deal. Details Room-only doubles from £110 ( • Best UK pubs with rooms Not content with having a collection of paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Gainsborough and co, this neoclassical stately home on Hampstead Heath is hosting an exhibition of John Singer Sargent portraits of American heiresses this summer (until October 5). Entrance to the house (remodelled by Robert Adam) and grounds (laid out by Humphry Repton) is free, as stipulated by the Iveagh Bequest Act of 1929. Which leaves plenty of money for dinner, bed and breakfast at the Bull & Last, a gastropub in Highgate with seven rooms, one named after Dido Belle, the illegitimate daughter of a former slave, who grew up at Room-only doubles from £170 ( • Best weekend breaks from London The thrilling remains of this Benedictine monastery, towering over a headland above this popular east coast town, will forever be associated with Bram Stoker's Dracula: when the blood-sucking count comes ashore as a black dog he runs up the 199 steps to the gothic church and graveyard at their foot (from £11.80). Whitby is not the only atmospheric abbey ruin in these parts. An hour's drive to the west, in a wooded valley of the River Rye, takes you to the grandly derelict Rievaulx Abbey, which has inspired British artists from JMW Turner to John Piper (from £11.80). And half an hour south of here is Byland Abbey, in yet more idyllic countryside (free). Conveniently, it stands right opposite the esteemed chef Tommy Banks's country pub with rooms, the Abbey B&B doubles from £245 (
The Guardian
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry review – life-affirming musical reckons with death
There is nothing like impending death to concentrate the mind on life. Certainly not for Harold Fry, the Bunyanesque modern-day everyman who goes out to post a letter to his terminally ill, long-lost friend and ends up hiking 500 miles to say goodbye to her in person. Harold (Mark Addy), middle-aged and mournful, leaves his Devon home and his distant, disenchanted wife, Maureen (Jenna Russell), to go to the post office. But he is inspired by a petrol station attendant (Sharon Rose, twinkling as Garage Girl) to begin his secular pilgrimage to the Berwick-upon-Tweed hospice where Queenie (Amy Booth-Steel) lies dying. The development of this musical follows a familiar trajectory: it is an adaptation of a best-selling novel (by Rachel Joyce), which has already been turned into a film starring national treasures (Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton). If sentiment laced the story in its original form, then schmaltz led the latter incarnation. The same syrupy, unabashed sentimentality roves through this show, adapted by Joyce herself. But its winning twist lies in the music, composed by singer-songwriter Michael Rosenberg, otherwise known as Passenger, which blasts the story through with folksy heart and foot-stomping soul. One belter follows another from the first song, Rise Up, to the last, Here's One for the Road. The tunes are twinned with vibrant choreography by Tom Jackson Greaves and director Katy Rudd's imaginative staging fuels the show's idiosyncratic spirit. It is performed within a luminous circle on Samuel Wyer's playfully lo-fi set, an abstract back-screen reflecting the changing landscape, with actors standing in for trees, sheep and washing lines. Some scenes break out into fantasy, garish and whirling at times, witty at others. Together, it has the makings of a quirky West End transfer, in the mould of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Jack Wolfe is compelling, first as the Balladeer and then as Harold and Maureen's dead son. He has an uncanny resemblance to Earl Cave (his counterpart in the film) and is an almost ubiquitous presence, first benign, then agitating and angry. Russell is slowly, icily magnificent as a woman estranged from herself, while Addy's Harold, stolid and unremarkable, comes alive slowly, as if thawing back into feeling all of life's pain and joy that he has thus far held at bay. Harold's unlikely Instagram stardom attracts a band of pilgrims/outcasts and they bring broadness and warmth albeit earnestness too. In fact, the stray dog – an exquisite puppet – outshines them all. The book's discussions around faith are muted and emotions come in primary colours, while the script abounds with wholesome mottoes for life. Yet still it does not pull its punches around the messiness of grief and the anger around loss. It pulls you irrepressibly in with its rousing message that life is not for regret but for kindness, gratitude – and most of all for living. At Minerva theatre, Chichester, until 14 June
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
New historical mystery-thriller series to be launched at literary festival
A new historical mystery-thriller series by an Oxfordshire author will be launched at a Headington literary festival this weekend. Amanda Roberts, who lives in Islip, will unveil her third novel, Lady of the Quay, at HeadLitFest on Saturday, May 10. The one-day festival will be held at Headington Quarry Village Hall. Headington Quarry Village Hall (Image: Greg Blatchford) Set in 16th-century Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, the book begins the Isabella Gillhespy series, which follows the only daughter of a wealthy merchant who finds her inheritance is not what she expected after the unexpected death of her father. Ms Roberts, a member of the Royal Society of Authors and the Historical Novel Society, was inspired to set her new series in Berwick-upon-Tweed after a family holiday in the town in 2021. The Elizabethan ramparts and the town's unique past, marked by its strategic importance and frequent changes in ownership between the English and the Scottish from the 11th century to 1482, sparked her imagination. Ms Roberts' first novel, The Roots of the Tree, is a true family story that follows her mother's struggle with the discovery that her biological father was not the man she had known all her life. Her second novel, The Woman in the Painting, is a dual-timeline historical novel set in 2019 and 1645, in her home village of Islip - the site of a little-known battle between Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army and three of the King's regiments. The book was awarded the silver medal in the Coffee Pot Book Club Historical Fiction Book of the Year Awards in the time slip/time travel/dual timeline category. The narrative of Lady of the Quay, as summarised on the book jacket, reads: "1560, Berwick-upon-Tweed, northern England. "Following the unexpected death of her father, a series of startling discoveries about the business she inherits forces Isabella Gillhespy to re-evaluate everything she understands about her past and expects from her future. "Facing financial ruin, let down by people on whom she thought she could rely, and suspected of crimes that threaten her freedom, Isabella struggles to prove her innocence. "But the stakes are even higher than she realises. "In a town where tension between England and her Scottish neighbours is never far from the surface, it isn't long before developments attract the interest of the highest authority in the land, Sir William Cecil, and soon Isabella is fighting, not just for her freedom, but her life. "She must use her wits and trust her own instincts to survive." Ms Roberts is also a member of West Oxfordshire Writers and Oxford Independent Authors.
