Magnificent Tudor castles and stately homes to visit this year

As the final part of Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" trilogy hits our TV screens, "I predict a sudden revival of the Tudor aesthetic", said historian Suzannah Lipscomb in The Telegraph.

The impressive architecture and interiors on show in the BBC's adaptation of "The Mirror and the Light" will no doubt "drip its way into our collective subconscious", and soon many of us will be "longing" to explore one of Britain's "gorgeous" Tudor mansions.

Indeed, the locations where the TV action was filmed have already seen a steep uptick in website traffic. "The Tudors, it seems, are still box-office gold," said Kevin Rushby in The Guardian.

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Earlier this year, English Heritage revealed that there has been a "post-pandemic resurgence" in visits to historic sites, reported The Times — this renewed interest in the past no doubt spurred on by popular history podcasts like Radio 4's "You're Dead To Me" and Goalhanger's "The Rest is History". And it's the Tudors who are reliably among the "biggest draws": four of the nine properties that recorded their best-ever visitor numbers "boast of a connection to Henry VIII".

Eltham Palace in London, Henry VIII's boyhood home, saw its highest footfall in 2023, while there was a 19% rise in visitors to Gainsborough Old Hall in Lincolnshire, the beautifully preserved former home of Henry's sixth wife, Catherine Parr.

Thornbury Castle, just outside Bristol, is the "only Tudor castle in England where you can stay the night" and is well worth visiting , said Lipscomb in The Telegraph. Guests may even get a chance to stay in the "very bedchamber" where Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn slept during their royal tour in 1535. The architecture is "magnificent": expect crossbow loopholes, gun ports and "the best original Tudor chimney stacks in the country".

Another "must for Tudor acolytes" is Hever Castle, Anne Boleyn's childhood home. Located in the Kent countryside around an hour-and-a-half drive from London, it has landscaped grounds and a walled rose garden to explore, and a "wonderful collection of Tudor portraits" to marvel at in the wood-panelled Great Hall.

For Peter Kosminsky, series director of the "Wolf Hall" trilogy, Haddon Hall is the "perfect" place for a day out, said Rushby in The Guardian. Situated on the river Wye near Bakewell, Derbyshire, the meticulously preserved 11th-century stately home remains "relatively unchanged since Henry visited, bringing a tapestry that still hangs in the banqueting hall".