King Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, was unable to provide him with a male heir, so he very much wanted to divorce her. But first he needed to take the monumental step of breaking away from the Church of Rome that wouldn’t allow it.

This was a colossal upheaval with far-reaching consequences for the country. One of these was that Walmer Castle was built in 1539 – part of a coastal defence system to protect against the threat of an invasion by the Holy Roman Empire, wanting to re-establish the Pope’s authority in England.

The invasion never came, but the castle did eventually see action in the Second Civil War in 1648 when it was seized by Royalists and was only retaken by Parliamentary forces after several months of fighting.

In the 18th century the castle became the official residence of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. Various Prime Ministers were appointed Lord Warden, including the Duke of Wellington who spent a lot of time at the castle and then died there in 1852. By 1904, the War Office accepted that it had no further military use and passed the care of the castle to the Ministry of Works and then subsequently on to English Heritage.

We have a print of an 1822 painting of Walmer Castle by William Daniell as viewed from the south, with Walmer and Deal in the background. If that bonneted lady continued walking her dog just a little bit further towards the viewer, she could have been walking through what today is Walmermeadows:

The Queen Mother was Lord Warden from 1978 until her death in 2002. In 1997, English Heritage built the Queen Mother’s garden at the Castle in honour of her 95th birthday.

A corgi still remains in the garden today:

The current Lord Warden is Admiral Sir George Zambellas who has been newly appointed to the position in October 2024. A statue of him, made out of tiny pieces of slate, is now displayed in the Castle:

Walmer Castle is surrounded by thirty-two acres of formal gardens and parkland:

The Kitchen gardens are a bit of a highlight. At the moment they are looking rather bare:

I am rather envious of the mistletoe that they have successfully ‘planted’ onto branches of their apple trees:

But by April the kitchen gardens will no doubt be show-stopping:

There is a wonderful variety of venerable trees in the gardens:

I have been volunteering at Walmer Castle for the last two years as part of their wellbeing programme. This winter I have taken on an additional role as one of the newly-created volunteer wildlife monitoring team and I’m excited to see what will be discovered there once the grounds come alive in the spring.

But, for now, Dave and I are visiting to properly familiarise ourselves with the garden and to pinpoint potentially interesting areas. We are also photographing some of the birds spending the winter there.

So many of the mature trees have woodpecker holes in them and we are frequently seeing green and great-spotted woodpeckers:

Pleasing to get two green woodpeckers in one shot:

In the gazebo in the Queen Mother’s garden we spotted two of these green, thorny chrysalids high up near the ceiling:

My macro camera turned everything very orange for some reason, but does show the interestingly-shaped chrysalid in greater detail:

This is the overwintering stage of the large white butterfly. It’s a common butterfly but I hadn’t seen one of their chrysalids before. So long as it hasn’t been parasitised, the butterfly should hatch out in March or April.

Now, at the very beginning of February, the woodland gardens are starting to awaken with emerging spring bulbs:

It is a special and historic place and how wonderful to have it on our doorstep. But, although the garden is close to the meadows geographically, it is also a very different habitat in many ways and it will be really interesting to see how that impacts what we find there over the next few months. Another reason to be excited for spring.