English Heritage

We absolutely love our English Heritage membership. I think we started it in 2019.

There are several memberships you can get. Family, Joint, Individual and Senior. We have a family membership. It cost us £12 per month, which is for 2 adults and up to 12 children. You can buy them upfront and as a gift too. https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/

They have over 400 sites to choose from including Stonehenge and Dover Castle. The sites can have activities for children. We always get a postcard as a souvenir when we visit a new site.

The main reason we got our membership initially was to visit Tintagel Castle in Cornwall. Kez was with us on this trip and was somewhere she always wanted to go too. We took the medieval gateway to enter the castle and explore the statue of King Arthur. The bridge that you cross is suspended in the air. Me and Ellia absolutely hated walking across it! I’m fairly sure we both cried. It was lovely to visit, extremely picturesque. It was fascinating to learn the history of the site too.

We visited Minster Lovell Hall and the North Leigh Roman Villas on the same day as they were relatively close to each other. Minister Lovell Hall was so nice. It housed the Lovell family in the 12^th century. There was a lovely little church (although we couldn’t go in due to COVID restrictions) there was a little stream that people were sat by having picnics. The graveyard was fascinating. We could see gravestones from the 1800’s. The ruins of the hall were amazing.

The Roman villas were something else. They housed people for over 300 years from the early 1^st century into the 5^th. They had perfectly intact roman flooring in a preserved area. It was beautiful to see and imagine how people would have lived.

Kenilworth castle is another site we have visited. We took Ellia and Layton who loved exploring around the ruins and finding out what various parts of the building were. The views were spectacular. They had an event on due to it being easter. There was an egg hunt that the kids got to partake in.

Pendennis Castle in Falmouth was spectacular. We visited here on a recent trip to Cornwall. They had an event on for the bank holiday. The car park was at the top of a little hill. Then we had to walk down to the entrance. It was spectacular. It was a drawbridge! We got straight to exploring the site. We decided on visiting the Tudor keep first. The was designed by King Henry VIII between 1539 – 1545 and was made with a circular design to allow all round fire. This building was phenomenal. As we were leaving, there was a show where they were firing live guns. Layton wasn’t overly keen on the loud noises, so we ventured over to the big guns and saw the ‘disappearing gun’. We then took a walk down to the Half Moon Battery which was used in WWII. There were etchings on the wall. It was definitely a sight to see. The Royal Artillery Barracks were fascinating. We got to see The First World War exhibition. It was a really great day out.

With the membership being so cheap we will definitely be visiting more sights in the near future.