Norman Conquest and Plantagenet Power - Great castles and churches of south-east England

Leave central London by coach at 9.30am. Standing next to the wide estuary of the River Medway, Rochester Castle was established soon after the Norman Conquest, and some of its early masonry still remains. The castle’s crowning glory, however, is its massive, 125ft great tower, built from 1127. The cathedral was rebuilt around the same time, has one of the finest Romanesque doorways in England. In the priory scriptorium, the Textus Roffensis [Book of Rochester] was produced in 1123. First of two nights in Canterbury.

The morning is spent exploring the medieval parts of Dover Castle. Henry II, whose ‘Angevin Empire’ included half of modern France, as well as most of Britain and Ireland, built a magnificent great tower here from 1180, on a scale to rival the Tower of London. This mighty donjon is still floored and roofed, and its rooms have been redecorated to reflect their 12th-century appearance. In the afternoon, we return to Canterbury to visit the cathedral. A church has stood on this site since the time of St Augustine’s mission to the English in the late sixth century, but the present architecture is all post-Conquest.

‘New’ Winchelsea was built on a hill to a rigid grid pattern during the reign of Edward I, after its previous incarnation was engulfed by the sea. The king visited regularly during its construction. Much of the medieval fabric remains, including the gatehouses and over 50 vaulted wine cellars. William the Conqueror and his army landed at Pevensey in 1066. They occupied an existing Roman shore fort, the walls of which still stand to their original height. Within them stands the later medieval castle, besieged in 1264 by Simon de Montfort. William built Battle Abbey to commemorate the site of his victory against Harold Godwineson in October 1066, and to atone for the blood shed on that day. Parts of the abbey date to the 11th century, and the site of the church’s high altar marks the spot where Harold fell. Overnight in Rye.

In 1385, having obtained a ‘licence to crenellate’ from Richard II, an up-and-coming knight, Edward Dallingridge, began to build the castle at Bodiam. Dallingridge was a veteran of the Hundred Years’ War, but his castle has little genuinely warlike about it – rather it is one of the most beautiful of all English castles, a country seat nestled in the Sussex countryside for a rising star at the royal court. Tonbridge’s giant motte-and-bailey castle was established soon after the Battle of Hastings to guard the upper reaches of the Medway. In the mid 13th-century it was expensively rebuilt in stone by the earls of Gloucester, who added a formidable twin-towered gatehouse, creating a castle like the ones being built by Edward I in Wales. Return to central London by c. 4.30pm.