Medieval Tomb:
Name and Title: Sir William ap Thomas
Born: Sometime in the 1380s.
Died: 3 May 1445, London.
Buried: St Mary’s Priory, Abergavenny, Wales.
Read more and see images of the tomb here…
Raglan Castle: Arrival and Family Ties
When Elizabeth and Henry left Troy after five days of hospitality, they had only a short seven-mile journey in a south-westerley direction to reach their next destination, Raglan Castle (or ‘Ragland’ as it was known until at least the early nineteenth century).
An 1801 account of the road from Monmouth to Raglan describes the scenery the royal couple would have encountered as they began their journey, ‘On leaving Monmouth the road leads for near two miles thro’ a pleasant enclosed valley, skirted by gentle swellings, clothed or cultivated to their summits but gaining the higher ground at Wonastow. The view unfolds itself in a beautiful and extensive manner, over a rich and fertile country…’
The royal party arrived at Raglan Castle on or around 19 August. Their stay there was the apex and, in many ways, the centrepiece of the visit with its incumbent lord, the King’s loyal and erstwhile brother-in-arms, Sir Walter Herbert, playing host…
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From palaces to beaches, castles to cathedrals and churches to Elizabethan houses, with underground tunnels thrown in for good measure, Pembrokeshire is rich with Tudor connections and makes for a fantastic long weekend break.
In this episode, I visit Pembroke Castle in Pembrokeshire, Wales. One of Wales’s largest and best-preserved castles, and birthplace of Henry VII, we discover the castle’s history, from its Norman construction to its connections to Henry.
Tudor Tomb:
Name and Title: Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester
Born: 24 June 1532
Died: 4 September 1548.
Buried: The Beauchamp Chapel, St Mary’s Church, Warwick.
Read more and see images and a video of the tomb here…
In this episode, I return to Sudeley Castle and Collyweston Palace to find out more about the incredible findings from their archaeological digs. I
Venturing out of the city of London, we travel to Cambridge. The city flourished as a centre of learning through the medieval and Tudor periods (when most of the colleges were founded or completed), some of them by behemoths of the Tudor age, including Henry VII, Margaret Beaufort and Henry VIII. We discover the places associated with Tudor royal visits, and summarise where to go and what to look out for when visiting the city today.
Having stayed at Flaxley Abbey overnight, the following day, on the 14 August, the royal cavalcade was on the move again. Troy House was around 15 miles southwest of Flaxley, just a few miles over the Welsh border. The medieval manor house belonged to the powerful Herbert family. It sat in a wide, shallow valley, close to the small village of Mitchel Troy and overlooking the town of Monmouth, which lay just one mile to the north. Here, a twelfth-century castle, in which Henry V had been born in 1386, dominated a strategically important convergence of two rivers: the River Monnow and the River Wye…
In this episode, I head to South Yorkshire to visit Sheffield Manor Lodge. During the sixteenth century, Sheffield Manor Lodge was a luxurious hunting lodge belonging to the powerful Earls of Shrewsbury. Unfortunately, much of the building’s fabric has since been lost to time. The only structure to remain entirely intact is the Turret House, which sits alongside the ruins of the rest of the manor house.
Tudor Tomb:
Name and Title: Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick
Born: c 1530
Died: 21 February 1590.
Buried: The Beauchamp Chapel, St Mary’s Church, Warwick.
Read more and see images and a video of the tomb here…
