Issue 15

Following an intensive programme of research and refurbishment at Hever Castle in Kent, the only surviving suite of rooms that the Boleyn family once occupied is now re-presented in a style and decoration that would be familiar to them. Kate McCaffrey explains the process of refurbishing and reinterpreting rooms where historical evidence underpinned every design decision.

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was once one of the most powerful and wealthy women in England, with extensive landholdings in the southeast of England and across the channel in Calais. Dr Rachel Delman looks at Margaret's principal residence of Warblington Castle. A section of the gatehouse remains as a tantalising glimpse of this once splendid Tudor property.

The English Reformation had a seismic impact on the religious and secular architecture of the period. Dr James Wright argues it also changed our stories and collective understanding of the medieval Catholic practices that preceded it, and he investigates common beliefs about so-called leper squints, Devil's doors and arrow stones as examples of this impact.

Owned variously by the wealthy and powerful Balliol, Beauchamp and Neville families during the medieval period, Barnard Castle held a valuable strategic position overlooking a crossing point of the River Tees. Julian Humphrys delves into the history of this important County Durham castle and examines its role in two Tudor rebellions.

Esher Place's proximity to Hampton Court Palace made it a convenient base for king and churchmen alike to relax, to hunt and to nurse their grief. Dr Elizabeth Norton looks at another of Henry VIII's lesser-known residences, a fragment of which, most surprisingly, is a private residence today.

The first Exeter Cathedral, built during the Norman period on the site of an earlier Saxon Minster, was rebuilt in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Although damaged during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, it was spared some of the excesses of destruction experienced elsewhere. Dr Emma J. Wells explores this wonderful example of Gothic architecture.