Sudeley Castle

Sudeley Castle
Winchcombe, Gloucestershire in England
Aerial view of Sudeley Castle
Coordinates	51°56′50″N 1°57′22″W / 51.94722°N 1.95611°W / 51.94722; -1.95611
Type	Visitor Attraction, Wedding Venue and Private Residence
Area	1,200 acres
Site information
Owner	Elizabeth, Lady Ashcombe Henry Dent-Brocklehurst Molly Dent-Brocklehurst
Open to the public	Seasonally
Status	Intact
Website	www.sudeleycastle.co.uk
Site history
Built	1443 on the site of a previous fortified manor house
Built by	John de Sudeley (d.1165) Ralph Boteler (1394–1473) King Richard III (1452–1485) Thomas Seymour (1508–1549) Edmund Brydges (1522–1573)
Listed Building – Grade I
Official name	Sudeley Castle
Designated	4 July 1960
Reference no.	1154791
National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens
Official name	Sudeley Castle
Designated	28 February 1986
Reference no.	1000784
Battles/wars	The Anarchy (1135–1153) First English Civil War (1642–1646)

Sudeley Castle is a Grade I listed^[1] castle in the parish of Sudeley, in the Cotswolds, near to the medieval market town of Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, England. The castle has 10 notable gardens covering some 15 acres (6.1 ha) within a 1,200-acre (490 ha) estate nestled within the Cotswold hills.

Building of the castle began in 1443 for Ralph Boteler; the Lord High Treasurer of England, on the site of a previous 12th-century fortified manor house. It was later seized by the crown and became the property of King Edward IV and King Richard III, who built its famous banqueting hall.^[2]

King Henry VIII and his then wife Anne Boleyn visited the castle in 1535;^[3][4] and it later became the home and final resting place of his sixth wife, Catherine Parr who remarried after the king's death. Parr is buried in the castle's church, making Sudeley the only privately owned castle in the world to have a Queen of England buried in its grounds.^[4] Sudeley soon became the home of the Chandos family,^[3] and the castle was visited on three occasions by Queen Elizabeth I, who held a three-day party there to celebrate the defeat of the Spanish Armada.^[3]

During the First English Civil War, the castle was used as a military base, by King Charles I and Prince Rupert, and it was later besieged and slighted by parliament, remaining largely in ruins for the following few centuries until its purchase in 1837 by the Dent family, who restored the castle and turned it into a family home.