Chillingham Castle with kids: what will they remember when they’re 50?

Whole school holidays have disappeared. I couldn’t tell you the admission prices of the castles my mam and gran took me to, where we parked or what the guidebooks said.

But I remember cucumber sandwiches.

Specifically, I remember cucumber sandwiches because on one memorable journey home from Edinburgh I was sick in my mam’s car.

Sorry, Mam.

I remember a mechanical swan, a talking dead budgie, ice cream with my gran and cucumber sandwiches for all the wrong reasons. Not one interpretation board has survived.

I remember the mechanical swan at the Bowes Museum because it was shiny and strange and completely unlike anything I expected to find inside a museum.

I also remember the old Hancock Museum in Newcastle, now the Great North Museum: Hancock, because my gran would take me there when Mam was working.

There were stuffed animals, including what I remember as a Noah’s Ark of creatures.

And there was Sparkie.

Sparkie was a stuffed budgie, but not just any stuffed budgie. You could put money in and listen to a recording of him talking.

To a child, this was magnificent.

Then Gran and I would go for ice cream at Mark Toney.

Those are the things that stayed. A mechanical swan. A talking dead budgie. Ice cream sundaes with my gran, and cucumber sandwiches for all the wrong reasons.

These were school holiday trips.

After my grandad died, my gran had more time to explore the world around her. She and my mam were always close, and they both loved a castle.

Or an old graveyard, for that matter.

So did I.

I remember wandering between headstones reading the inscriptions and studying the language people had chosen for epitaphs.

I remember the smell inside old churches.

Slightly damp. Cold. Ancient.

Although I should probably confess that, as a child, I wasn’t always thrilled about wandering around old churchyards. They could be creepy, particularly when my imagination was already quite capable of supplying occupants who hadn’t entirely accepted that they were dead. The funny thing is that years later, at college, I went back.

For my A-Level English Language coursework, I chose to study the language used in gravestone epitaphs. That meant revisiting old Northumberland churchyards, except this time I wasn’t simply trailing around after Mam and Gran.

I was looking properly at the words. What did people choose to say about somebody after they died? Which words appeared again and again? What did those inscriptions tell me about the people who wrote them, the person they had lost and the way people thought about death?

Looking back, it was perhaps a slightly melancholic choice of coursework for a teenager. I’m pleased to report that at 50 I’m rather less preoccupied with mortality. But it got me a B at A-Level English Language, so all those childhood afternoons wandering around slightly creepy churchyards had finally paid off. Perhaps they had done something else too. They’d taught me to look at the words people leave behind.

Castles had their own pull. I loved the calmness of them, but also the adventure of wondering what had happened behind those walls. Who slept here? Who looked through that window? Who was frightened? Who was lonely? And, because my childhood imagination rarely knew when to stop, was somebody still here? Watching?

When I was about 10, we visited Warkworth Castle in Northumberland.

I remember the cells.

I don’t remember what anybody told me about them or whether I dutifully read whatever information was provided. What stayed was the thought of being shut inside one.

Alone.

My imagination took over.

I started thinking about what it might feel like to be a prisoner there, cut off from everybody outside. I went home and wrote a poem about it.

I called it “Loneliness.”

It went on to win the local newspaper poetry competition. What I couldn’t possibly have known at 10 was that my 30s, I would end up working for that same newspaper as a reporter. There’s something rather pleasing about that now.

A castle visit with my Middle School made me want to write. My local paper gave that childhood writing a prize and more than 20 years later, I walked through its doors as a journalist and was paid to write for it. I don’t remember thinking any of that was significant at the time.

At 10, I was probably just pleased I’d won. But at 50, I’m still slightly surprised by the emotional language I was using at 10. I hadn’t looked at Warkworth and imagined kings or battles. I’d wondered about the person left alone in the cell.

Perhaps that’s what old places have always done to me. The history matters, but it’s the people inside the history that catch my imagination. Old places made me want to write when I was 10. They still do at 50.

In my 20s, I picked up where those school holiday trips with Mam and Gran had left off and travelled along the coast exploring the great castles between Newcastle and Scotland. So years later, when I had a six-year-old of my own, taking Cyrus castle-hopping around Northumberland felt perfectly natural.

Our first stop was Dunstanburgh Castle.

Dunstanburgh is magnificent.

The ruins rise above the Northumberland coast with the North Sea beyond and that enormous northern sky overhead. Wind sweeps across the grass and the old stone seems to belong to the landscape. It is precisely the sort of place I’ve loved since childhood.

Getting there requires a walk. Cyrus considered this a significant design flaw. He trudged across the fields providing regular updates about the distance and, more urgently, what he described as “a lot of sheep poo”.

Eventually, we reached the ruins. I looked at the castle. The cliffs. The sea. The extraordinary landscape.

Cyrus looked at exactly the same thing.

“It’s broken.”

And there it was. Several centuries of Northumberland history dispatched in two words.

To me, Dunstanburgh looked like something Turner might have painted but to my six-year-old, somebody had neglected the building work.

I laughed. But perhaps I should have recognised what was happening. Adults had taken me to museums, castles and historic places too. What had I retained? A mechanical swan and a talking budgie. Children have absolutely no respect for the brochure.

The mood changed before we even reached Chillingham’s front door.

The road narrowed. Old trees crowded around us and shadows fell across the drive. You half expect a knight to gallop past or, at the very least, a ghostly butler to appear offering tea.

Then we reached a ford. Cyrus was delighted. We splashed through while I silently imagined explaining to my husband why his car was floating downstream. We hadn’t even parked and Cyrus was interested.

Chillingham Castle is tucked away in the Northumberland countryside and has long traded on its reputation for ghosts, dark history and things that may or may not go bump in the night. It isn’t immaculate.

Thank goodness.

There are winding staircases, uneven floors, dusty corners, peeling walls and rooms filled with things that seem to have accumulated over several lifetimes. Some displays look as though someone’s eccentric aunt arranged them after too much sherry and then threatened anybody who tried to interfere. I mean that affectionately.

It is the opposite of Disney’s Haunted Mansion, where I assume every cobweb has been discussed at a meeting. At Chillingham, the cobwebs look as though they have tenure.

Cyrus found one of the narrow slit windows. I saw medieval architecture. He saw somewhere to fire arrows.

Within seconds, he was defending Chillingham Castle against an invisible army. I don’t know who was attacking Northumberland or what diplomatic efforts had already failed, but negotiations were clearly over.

There was no touchscreen. No flashing button. Nobody had put up a sign instructing children to IMAGINE YOU ARE A MEDIEVAL KNIGHT. He just did it.

Then came Chillingham’s torture chamber.

I entered with the expression of a woman demonstrating a mature interest in medieval history. Cyrus was considerably less bothered than I was. Naturally.

This was a child who could be suspicious of a dark landing at home but apparently regarded medieval instruments of torture as an interesting development in the afternoon. He didn’t linger, and neither did I.

Chillingham has the sort of atmosphere that makes an overactive imagination particularly unhelpful. I’ve always found castles peaceful and eerie in almost equal measure.

There is something about the quiet inside thick stone walls. The temperature drops. Footsteps sound different. A dark doorway suddenly becomes much more interesting than it has any right to be. And I start thinking about everyone who walked through these rooms before us.

Chillingham’s ghost stories are part of its identity, including tales associated with the Blue Boy.

I didn’t see him. I didn’t particularly try.

I enjoy the paranormal right up until there is any possibility of the paranormal being interested in me.

Perhaps that’s why Chillingham works so well. You don’t have to believe in ghosts to enjoy wondering.

A creaking floorboard becomes slightly more suspicious. A dark corridor deserves another glance. A portrait seems to be looking at you for rather longer than is polite. At 10, that possibility thrilled me.

At 50, it still does, although I would prefer any lingering medieval resident to respect my personal space. Cyrus seemed considerably less concerned. Children are funny like that. They can be terrified of something under the bed but perfectly prepared to investigate a supposedly haunted castle.

Then, among all the oddities, I spotted something I hadn’t expected.

A Persian rug.

I stopped. Being married to a Persian man means a Persian rug is rarely permitted to exist simply as a rug.

There can be an inspection. Patterns will be considered. Origins discussed. Opinions offered. My husband prides himself on spotting a good one, and even he was impressed. But standing there with Cyrus, I thought about something else. Persian culture runs through his ordinary life: food, words, family, Nowruz and stories from his dad. The little things children absorb without anyone announcing, this is your heritage.

And here we were, in an eccentric English castle in Northumberland, surrounded by medieval history and ghost stories, looking at something from another part of his world.

It was only a rug. Except, to me, it wasn’t. Cyrus probably spent considerably less time contemplating this than I did. Mums are irritating like that.

The Persian rug wasn’t even the strangest thing we found.

There was a crystal skull behind bars, Easter Island-style figures, portraits, furniture and all manner of curiosities. The whole place is slightly mad.

Wonderfully so.

That’s part of Chillingham’s charm. So many family attractions have been polished until you know precisely what you’re supposed to look at, where you’re supposed to stand and what you’re supposed to learn.

Chillingham leaves gaps, and children are rather good at filling gaps.

Eventually, we emerged from the dark interiors into the gardens.

There were manicured hedges, winding paths and secret-looking corners that seemed made for small children carrying imaginary swords. Cyrus raced ahead pretending to be a knight. I followed behind pretending not to be out of breath.

There comes a point during almost every educational family outing when nobody wants another historical fact. Sometimes a child just needs to run, and sometimes his mum doesn’t.

The man at the ticket office was warm, chatty and full of local knowledge. Part of the castle was closed during our visit, so he reduced the admission price. I paid £8 and Cyrus went free.

Note: Those were the prices when we visited, not today’s admission prices, so check current prices before travelling.

But I don’t really remember the saving. I remember the gesture. Just as I remember the ice cream with Gran more clearly than most of what we saw beforehand. Perhaps people become part of places too.

This is what I couldn’t have understood when I was Cyrus’s age.

The places my mam and gran took me changed. So did I.

The Hancock Museum I remember isn’t quite the Great North Museum: Hancock that exists today. The Noah’s Ark arrangement of animals that looms so large in my childhood memory has gone, although parts of those old collections remain.

I understand why museums change. They have new audiences and new children to fascinate. Still, I miss some of its old character and that’s probably memory being unreasonable.

The museum doesn’t belong to the child I was. Cyrus could walk through it today and completely ignore the things I miss. He might become obsessed with something I barely notice. Then, 40 years from now, perhaps he’ll complain that somebody has removed it. I rather hope so.

My mam and gran couldn’t have known what those school holiday trips would become. There was no master plan to create a woman who would spend her 20s touring castles and still be writing about them at 50.

Mam drove. Gran came with us. There were cucumber sandwiches.

We visited castles, churches, graveyards and museums.

When Mam worked, Gran took me to the Hancock, and afterwards we went for ice cream at Mark Toney.

Ordinary days.

Except I’m still carrying them.

Then I grew up. I carried on visiting castles. Eventually, I had Cyrus.

Now I’m the mum doing the organising, checking opening times, packing things into the car and hoping I’ve chosen somewhere he’ll enjoy. Someone once took me, now I take him, and I don’t get to decide what he keeps.

I don’t think childhood memory has much respect for what adults consider important. It seems to prefer surprise. Smell. Fear. Humour. People. Something strange sitting in a corner that wasn’t supposed to be the main attraction.

At 50, I don’t remember most of the historical facts from those childhood days out. I remember how the places felt.

The cold dampness of old churches. Words carved into gravestones. A cell at Warkworth Castle that made a 10-year-old think about loneliness and go home and write a poem. A shiny mechanical swan. Sparkie the talking budgie. Ice cream with Gran, and, unfortunately for Mam’s car, cucumber sandwiches.

So I shouldn’t be surprised that Cyrus looked past the magnificent ruins of Dunstanburgh and noticed sheep poo. Or that Chillingham’s ford, arrow slits, ghosts, dark rooms and strange objects caught his imagination. I have no idea which part of our day at Chillingham he’ll remember at 20, 40 or 50. Maybe none of it.

Perhaps something I have completely forgotten will turn out to be the thing he carried with him. Maybe he’ll remember the ford or that imaginary battle. Perhaps he’ll remember that his mam was considerably more nervous about the torture chamber than he was. And one day, I hope, he’ll take his own child somewhere and suddenly remember an ordinary day when his mam and dad drove him to a strange old castle in Northumberland.

For us, yes.

Chillingham worked because it didn’t feel as though every part of Cyrus’s experience had already been designed for him.

There was enough history to interest me, enough oddness to keep both of us curious and enough freedom for him to turn an arrow slit into a battle and the gardens into his own kingdom.

Think back to the places adults took you as a child. What actually survived in your memory: the famous attraction, or a smell, a person, a strange object or something nobody else would think mattered?

And if you have children, what tiny detail from the days you’ve carefully planned do you suspect they’ll still be talking about when they’re 50?

Occasional stories, experiments, discoveries and memories from Saffron & Cyrus.