The English countryside is studded with all manner of manor homes, castles and palaces. Here are a few particularly memorable ones from my current swing through South England and South Wales.
In Victorian times, massive faux-castles were being built all over Britain by ridiculously rich nobles and aristocrats. Visiting Arundel Castle (just outside of Brighton, on England's south coast), it occurred to me that many of our favorite castles are built on historic locations, but are mostly the 19th-century palaces of England's "one percent." And today, given the crippling taxes on both income and inheritances, many of these over-the-top properties can be maintained only by becoming part of the National Trust and charging a hefty entrance fee (around $25) for people to wander through their lavish private apartments.
This is Cardiff Castle's original motte-and-bailey (keep on a mound). Arundel has the same kind of historic core. In both cases, the 11th-century original fort is almost like a garden ornament for a much bigger and more fanciful 19th-century, Neo-Gothic palace.
One of my favorite noble manor houses to visit is Stanway House, in the Cotswolds. Like so many other rural mansions, it's open to the public to help pay the bills. I've become friends with the lord here. For a decade I knew him as Lord Neidpath. Then he inherited a different title, and now he's the Earl of Wemyss. (I never know exactly what to call him.) He's fascinating to chat with; he always has creative projects in the works and cares deeply (in a nobleman's way) for England.
About 15 years ago, I filmed the Earl of Wemyss on a shoot in the Cotswolds, and he ended up having a pretty big part in one of our shows. He had never seen the show. But now, each and every one of my more than 100 TV shows is available to view, free and in its entirety, on my website. You can watch them any time, any place...even in a decaying old manor house deep in England's Cotswolds. So I had the joy of showing the Earl of Wemyss his charming performance, that you can watch here.
If an English girl's soldier was coming home from World War I and she wanted to get her hair curled, she'd head on down to "Curl Up & Dye" -- the Brits love to name their shops with goofy puns -- and climb into this contraption (which I saw in a museum in Chepstow, in the Cotswolds).