Amberley Castle 1103-2003: A Celebration of 900 Years

Arundel: The Dovecote Press. Very Good/Very Good. 2002. First Edition, First Impression. Hard Cover. Sm 4to 1904349048 Dust jacket complete, unclipped, slight creas to top edge. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. Colour maps on end papers. Numerous illustrations and photographs, some in colour. 108 pages clean and tight. Dimensions: 25.1 x 21.3 x 1.8 cm. Few English castles enjoy so idyllic a setting as Amberley in Sussex, nor have many played so colourful a role in the rich pageant of our nation's history. Cradled by the chalk downs, lapped by water meadows famed for their wildlife, it has a backdrop equalled in beauty by only a handful of other castles, whilst even fewer have been enjoyed by both Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Elizabeth II. As the distinguished local historian David Arscott says in his introduction, to follow the highs and lows of this remarkable medieval survivor is to see goo years of history passing before our eyes. Amberley Castle has its origins in a timber-framed open hall built in 1103 by the Norman Bishop of Chichester as a hunting lodge and administrative centre for his estates. In the turbulent fourteenth century it was transformed into a fortified manor house, complete with battlements and portcullis. Two centuries later it fell victim to Cromwell in the Civil War, and its defences were deliberately destroyed. The castle's renaissance began in the 1870s with its purchase by the 15th Duke of Norfolk, who lived downstream of Amberley at Arundel, and it was he who began its gradual transformation from romantic ruin to family home. In 1988 it was bought by Martin and Joy Cummings, and the story of their struggle to turn it into an internationally renowned family-run hotel is as extraordinary a chapter as any in Amberley Castle's goo-year history. .