Note: I originally wrote this post in 2017 for my old blog. I have edited and updated it for posting here.
The United Kingdom has quite a reputation when it comes to castles. There are many beautiful, medieval castles spread out all over England, Scotland, and Wales, so it’s a virtual treasure trove for travelers whose greatest priority is seeing castles. As a student in Edinburgh, one of the student trips I joined took us to the north of England to visit Alnwick Castle, a gorgeous castle within a picturesque landscape that will please any castle enthusiast.
Alnwick Castle is located in a small town called Alnwick in the county of Northumberland. Because of the English habit of shortening the actual pronunciation of words (and to be fair, words that would be a pain to pronounce), most people pronounce Alnwick as “Annick.” The first parts of the castle were constructed in 1096 and the first mention of the castle was in 1136 when it was captured by King David I of Scotland. After being passed around a bit the castle was sold to the Percy family, who became the Earls and later Dukes of Northumberland. Except for a period of time during the Wars of the Roses when the castle was held by the house of Lancaster, Alnwick Castle to this day belongs to the Percy family and is the winter home of the Duke and his family, though they only reside in part of the castle.
Though I could not take any pictures inside the castle, only on the grounds, it was very interesting to walk through a castle that is still inhabited and see family photos, electronics, and an alcohol collection. Other current uses of Alnwick Castle include a permanent archaeology collection composed mostly of Romano-British artifacts and military displays. Also, since 1981 a part of the castle has served as a branch campus for the International Study Program of St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. This means there are students from this university that get to live in Alnwick Castle during their study abroad program in England.
Alnwick Castle has also been used as a setting in various films like Becket, Elizabeth, and Robin Hood. Most notably, the courtyard of the castle was the setting in the first Harry Potter film where Harry and his classmates receive their first flying lesson. This is what most excited me about the castle before visiting, but I honestly think anyone who doesn’t care about these films would enjoy visiting anyways. The castle itself is like a storybook representation of an English castle, which explains its use in so many films, and you could say the same of the quaint English countryside landscape around it, which was designed by celebrated landscape architect Capability Brown.
