Project Background

Set against Gloucestershire’s beautiful Cotswold Hills, Sudeley Castle is home to Lady Ashcombe and her family, who are committed to the continued preservation of the castle, its treasures and the ongoing regeneration of the gardens. But for nearly a thousand years it was home to some of England’s most famous monarchs.

Starting with Goda, daughter of King Ethelred the Unready, the castle was later occupied by Richard III, who built its magnificent banqueting hall, and then by King Charles I, who made it his temporary base during the English Civil War.

But it was the Tudors who really made Sudeley their own: it’s where Anne Boleyn stayed with Henry VIII while he made his decision to dissolve the monasteries, and most famously where Katherine Parr, Henry’s last wife, later lived after he died.

It’s also where, in 1592, Elizabeth I came to celebrate the fourth anniversary of her victory over the Spanish Armada – a party that is remembered as one of the longest in English royal history!

Partly a late-medieval castle, dating from 1442, and partly an Elizabethan mansion, it was in the nineteenth century that Sudeley came to be owned by the family of Thomas Cubbit, the great Victorian builder who made it a stately home, and began the restoration of the stunning gardens that so many visitors enjoy today.

These include the Queens Garden, a Victorian design on the site of an Elizabethan garden, and the Knot Garden, whose design is inspired by the front cover of The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul, a book embroidered by Elizabeth I when she was 11 years old.

These Tudor-inspired gardens built in the Victorian period are gorgeous places to spend a day, but there’s something even more stunning buried in the castle grounds – the rare remains of an original Tudor garden that has survived undisturbed for over 400 years!

This whole excavation began thanks to Sudeley Castle’s Head Gardener, Stephen Torrode. He’d noticed that one of the large, untamed fields to the side of the castle, was filled with strange lumps and bumps. Out of curiosity, he decided to investigate, and got a geophysical survey done. The results were astonishing!

Our 2022 dig will be our third excavation at Sudeley Castle. Located in full view of the Garderobe Tower, we’ve already revealed the ruins of impressive Tudor walls, gorgeous stone carvings, and the ghostly outlines of lost paths and walkways. Experts now believe that this is the site of a temporary Tudor palace and gardens, adapted by Thomas Seymour and enjoyed by Elizabeth I. All we need to do now is find the evidence to prove it. It’s delicate archaeology, and we’ll have to scour the trenches for the evidence we need: stone carvings, ceramics, coins, bones, or any kind of dateable evidence that can help us to unravel the story of this long-lost ruin.