4Apr2009: Day 313: Arundel Castle

We finally got to this castle that we saw as we drove past the town sometime back in October or November of last year. Today was the opening day for the season. You can see this castle as you come down into town as it's up on a hill and very ominous looking.

On the way to the castle, I was driving and hit one of these birds (pheasant). Not as big as this one but still a pretty good sized one. I had no choice as I had cars all around me. We saw quite a few feathers fly everywhere and when we got to the castle, there were feathers all underneath the car and even on the back of the trunk.

The castle was originally owned by the Earl of Arundel who was given the land from William the Conqueror in 1067. As most castles, it was built with earth and timber and then over the centuries, it was replaced with stone, actually flint type stone. So it looked really interesting on the outside.

The castle is now used more as a home and it looks as such. I said to Chris how I would love to live here as long as we had plenty of maids. It had a chapel inside that was pretty spacious. A lot of castles have some sort of chapel but usually it’s a very small room. I had heard that a relative of the current owners just had gotten married here a week ago.

There were a lot of nicely decorated bedrooms. One in particular called the Victoria room as Queen Victoria visited and stayed here. The owners at the time had actually had two years notice before the Queen’s arrival (along with her husband Prince Albert,) and refurbished the room.

Makenna really enjoyed this place as there were a lot of places that had stairs, especially when we got to the older sections of the castle—the gatehouse and keep. In this section, there were a lot of spiral staircases and it got a bit nerve wracking with her wanting to do the stairs herself, but we got through it. We were able to take photos of these sections. Although, I did take a few pictures inside the newer, house like section but I took them looking out onto the grounds such as this picture.

There is also a separate chapel on the grounds called the Fitzalan Chapel. This was founded in 1380 by the 4th Earl of Arundel and surprisingly it’s a Catholic church, “an unusual, if not unique, anomaly in England,” as stated in the brochure. It’s mostly used as the burial place of the Dukes of Norfolk. So there are a lot of tombs here such as this freaky one of John, 7th Earl of Arundel. It has him on top in armor looking majestic and then below it’s him looking very emaciated. I guess the brochure says it’s to remind us of mortality. Well that’s just lovely.

We then decided to walk up to the cathedral church that is in the town of Arundel. Chris and I took turns pushing Makenna up this steep hill. We figured we could use the exercise. We got to the Cathedral Church of Our Lady & St. Philip Howard which is another Catholic Church. There were quite a few people inside praying as its Holy Week. We tried to walk around quietly, hard to do with Makenna, especially when she saw steps. (pic 140). It really, in my opinion, was not much to look at. There were a few stone carvings but other than that, we couldn’t see much as most of the figures were covered in purple—again, something to do with Holy Week.

On our way up the hill there was another church so we stopped on our way down. It’s called, “The Parish and Priory Church of St. Nicholas.” We didn’t end up going into this church as they were having choir practice. We walked around it and saw a lot of tombs and graves. Some were even cracked a bit.

We walked back down into town and walked around a bit. We got some ice cream which made Makenna extremely happy. A couple of times today when we asked Makenna if she liked something she’d say, “umm, not bad.” We had a good laugh. Especially when it was for things such as noodles and ice cream, both of which she loves.

As it’s light out longer now, when we got home, Makenna helped Chris to cook dinner on the grill and water plants. This girl would drown plants given the chance. We then had a chance to Skype and see Makenna’s new cousin Natalie, along with her other cousin Katie and her uncle Josh and aunt Autumn. This new cousin, according to Josh, is extremely different from how her cousin Katie was when she was born. This one is quite happy and content and a much better sleeper. I say it has to do with how big she is (over 9lbs!). We got a chance to ask Autumn if she knew she was going to have a baby this big and she said the doctor had measured and said probably around 7lbs. Whoops!