Leeds Castle — Six Royal Queens and An American Heiress
“The beautiful Palace in Kent” — wrote a French chronicler in 1395.
Castles may seem grand romantic edifices to us, especially when built in pale stone and surrounded by a mirroring lake, but they were built for warfare and subjugation.
For Leeds Castle, strategically sited between the Channel port of Dover and London, the spur was the successful invasion in 1066 of the kingdom of England by the dukedom of Normandy, now a region in northern France. The English manor of ‘Esledes’ found itself transferred into the hands of the de Crèvecoeur family, who within fifty years felt secure enough, and more importantly rich enough, to exchange the family’s wood and earthwork stronghold for the start of what is recognisable today.
Two rocky outcrops were chosen in the valley of the River Len — the smaller held the main fortification of the castle’s stone keep, and across a drawbridge the larger island held the bailey where the service buildings and industry were situated. Doubtless the river was then re-routed to ensure it created an encircling moat, though certainly not the great lake seen today.
Alas, castles don’t come cheap to either build or to maintain, and debts mounted; which is when the first of the six Queens stepped in.
