Castles.
Royal castles of England: Open
Library
"None of the ancient
buildings of England, neither its
venerable village churches with their
moving memorials of bygone rural life,
nor its historic cathedrals with their
resplendent tombs of " ladies dead and
lovely knights," can for a moment vie in
interest with those stately castles
which have been associated with the
loves and hates, the triumphs and
defeats of the sovereigns of that land.
A few of the most notable of those
feudal fortresses have been razed to the
ground, or have left no other vestige of
their presence than those shapeless
heaps over which nature is wont to cast
her green mantle of kindly oblivion; but
a great number have survived the
iconoclasm of man and the ravages of
time, and it is the purpose of the
ensuing pages to conduct the reader on a
pilgrimage to those haunts of vanished
greatness. The story touches the whole
gamut of human emotion: love, the love
of a man for a maid; parental affection,
which sways the royal as well as the
plebeian heart; illicit passion, against
which a crown is no talisman; pride of
power; thirst of glory ; the effulgence
of a throne ; the gloom of a prison; the
poison or lethal blade of vii viii
Preface the assassin; the final horror
of the headsman's axe all the shows and
shadows of regal life find their image
here."
Britain's castles are either privately owned or are under the
ownership of English Heritage, the National Trust, Cadw, or Historic Scotland.
These latter organizations provide free entry to members.
|
