Warwick Castle

OVERVIEW

A castle above the River Avon founded by William the Conqueror in 1068 and rebuilt in stone through the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, with Caesar's and Guy's Towers among the finest military work of the 1300s. James I granted the ruin to Sir Fulke Greville in 1604, who made it a house; his family, Earls of Warwick from 1759, sold it to the Tussauds Group in 1978 and Merlin Entertainments runs it as an attraction.

HISTORY

On 1 September 1628 Greville, in his London house in Holborn, was stabbed twice by his manservant Ralph Haywood, who had found himself left out of the will; Greville died four weeks later. The Watergate Tower, where he had his study, has been called the Ghost Tower since. The castle's dungeon in Caesar's Tower dates from the fourteenth century.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Greville is the castle's named ghost, seen in the tower; the dungeon and the Kingmaker exhibition have their own stories. The castle sells them — a live show, Warwick Ghosts Alive, tells the murder — and the entry records that the tradition is old and the attraction is new.

VISITING

Open daily, ticketed; the Ghost Tower is part of the route. Evening ghost events in season.