Bolsover Castle
Derbyshire
Bolsover Castle is a partly ruined mockmedieval castle built (and rebuilt after extensive Civil War damage) in the seventeenth century by the Cavendish family. It has been owned by the State since 1945 and is currently in the hands of English Heritage. A sumptuous and intelligent restoration was completed in 2000. Bolsover attracts about 80,000 visitors a year, of whom only a small proportion – less than 10% – are school parties, because it is said to lack the child-appeal of the true castle and also because its seventeenth century history does not fit easily into the National Curriculum. This is a shame – and points to the way in which the National Curriculum can sometimes inadvertently lead to the under-exploitation of wonderful historic assets – because the interpretation on offer to visitors is exceptionally imaginative and sophisticated.
Display boards liberally scattered around the site explain the social and architectural history of the various buildings and include illustrated re-creations of the ruined parts based on scrupulous scholarship. There is a kind of son et lumière experience in the spookily empty Riding House. There are separate children’s and adults’ audioguides and, unusually, the former conveys almost the same information as the latter, but presented in a child-friendly way. The adult audioguide offers two, and sometimes three, layers of analysis, and its tour through the jewel-like Little Castle at the centre provides an intense emotional and intellectual experience, casting light on a wide range of seventeenth century themes. These include social relations between masters and servants, diet and comfort, attitudes to sexuality, privacy and mortality, art and music, and some fairly abstruse intellectual history (conveyed through the explication of the symbolic design and decoration).
There is a seemingly under-used Discovery Centre, aimed at children, though it could usefully offer higherlevel resources for visitors who wish to follow up on the audio tour. Visitor interest was high during the restoration and staff would like to be able to show videos which were taken showing the restoration work. The audio guide provides a good deal of information on restoration, though more could be said about the process of reinterpretation by successive generations. Oddly, the Civil War is given relatively little attention, perhaps because the interpretation focuses on the lives of the owners, who were in exile for much of the period. There have been very popular Civil War events in the extensive grounds staged by recreators. These and other events are planned very largely on a commercial basis. There have been fairly serious events for schools unconnected to the history of the site, on medieval chivalry and surgery, and on King Arthur (not the Disney version, but a fair stab at the Romano-Celtic period). These events are difficult to organise because they require co-ordination between a number of schools in order to make them financially viable - the job LEAs used to perform, not so easy as individual schools become more responsible for their finances. PM
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