Maxstoke Castle

Maxstoke Castle stands on a broad moat in Warwickshire, built in the 14th century to a rectangular plan. Sir William de Clinton began it in 1345 with octagonal corner towers, a gatehouse on the east and a residential range on the west. Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, added to it after 1437, and the castle survives largely intact. The Fetherston-Dilkes family have held it since the 17th century. During the Civil War it was garrisoned for Parliament, with Captain Layfield as the first known governor in 1642–43. Among its antiquities is a 15th-century chair on which Henry VII was crowned after Bosworth in 1485. A table owned by Sir Everard Digby, cousin to the Digbys of Coleshill, was used for planning the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. A ‘Whispering Door’ from Kenilworth Castle also remains. The parkland once held deer and now forms part of a golf course laid out in 1898. Visitors walk through the gatehouse and see the residential range and towers still standing. The moat frames the grey stone walls and octagonal turrets. In the parkland, deer graze beside fairways and the old deer-park boundary can still be traced. The castle’s interiors include rooms with historic furnishings and the chair and table kept on display.