The Real Reason Parliament Tore Open Kenilworth Castle

The Real Reason Parliament Tore Open Kenilworth Castle For five centuries a sheet of bright water lay across the Warwickshire fields and carried Kenilworth's towers upside down on its surface, a fortress that fought with its own landscape long before it fought with men. In August sixteen forty two the Royalist garrison simply withdrew and Parliament walked in without a shot. So why, seven years later, did that same Parliament pack gunpowder against the north wall of the Norman keep called Caesar's Tower and blow it open, then drain the Great Mere dry and let the Inchford Brook creep back into its old bed? This episode follows the surgical logic of the sixteen forty nine order to render the castle untenable: keep and curtain wall breached, yet the residential ranges left standing, and one gatehouse handed to its Parliamentary conqueror as a private home. Through William Dugdale racing his pen against the demolition, through Major Joseph Hawkesworth buying the ruin for two thousand pounds, and through the empty lakebed still shaping the ground today, we trace how a working fortress of half a thousand years was deliberately unmade rather than punished. This is the real reason Parliament tore open Kenilworth Castle and spared its finest rooms. Sources: Sir William Dugdale, 1656, The Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated. The Victoria History of the County of Warwick, Volume 6, pages 132 to 143, British History Online (Victoria County History). English Heritage, Kenilworth Castle: History and Stories (English Heritage online history and research). Discovering Britain, Kenilworth Viewpoint (Royal Geographical Society, Discovering Britain online guide).