Days out around Coventry

Warwick Castle

William the Conqueror founded Warwick Castle as a wooden fort in 1068, on a sandstone bluff above a bend of the River Avon. Rebuilt in stone in the twelfth century and refortified during the Hundred Years War, it is one of the best-known examples of fourteenth-century military architecture. The Greville family, later Earls of Warwick, owned it until 1978. Merlin Entertainments now runs it as an attraction.

Kenilworth Castle

Kenilworth Castle, now largely ruined and cared for by English Heritage, has been called the finest surviving semi-royal palace of the later Middle Ages. King John added huge water defences, it withstood a six-month siege in 1266, thought to be the longest in medieval English history. In 1575 the Earl of Leicester entertained Elizabeth I there in lavish style.

The British Motor Museum at Gaydon

Beside Jaguar Land Rover's Gaydon Centre, the British Motor Museum holds the largest collection of historic British cars in the world, charting the industry from the turn of the twentieth century to today. Aston Martin's headquarters is next door. It pairs well with Coventry's own Transport Museum for anyone who works in the motor trade.

Closer to home

Coombe Abbey Park, a former Cistercian abbey turned country house, has 500 acres of parkland, part of it landscaped by Capability Brown. Stoneleigh Park, once the home of the Royal Show, is now a business park with an exhibition and conference centre. In Baginton, the Lunt Roman Fort shows a partly rebuilt timber fort from around AD 60.

How far from the houses

From Humber Hub, in Lower Stoke, Kenilworth Castle is about 8 miles by road, Warwick Castle about 14 miles and the British Motor Museum about 18 miles. Coombe Abbey Park is about 4 miles from the nearest of our homes and the Lunt Roman Fort about 3 miles from Humber Hub.