The New Murrey and Blue blog

Recently it was reported that a secret staircase some 600 years old was unearthed at Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire. Immediately the reporter leapt on the idea that  ‘Maybe Henry VIII walked down these stairs?!’ as if  that ultimately was the most exciting thing about the new discovery. (Why, why, why, are there so many newspapers articles that exclaim ‘Henry slept here’, ‘Henry  stood here’, ‘Henry stuffed his face here’  as if he is the only pre-modern royal worth mentioning. ) The stairs were not even  built in his lifetime but probably a hundred years earlier, and LOTS of famous historical figures must surely have walked on them–Mary Queen of Scots for one, and of course Richard III  whose visit in October 1484 has only fairly recently been ‘rediscovered.’  Richard was at Tutbury  to look into a large building project that was in progress–possibly this even included these new-found stairs that seem to only be considered exciting to the press if Henry VIII’s bulk was  crushing them!

(Apparently the castle normally holds a Richard III buffet dinner once a year, so they do celebrate the connections with Richard.)

Tutbury  has a very interesting history, anyway,  being a royal castle. Richard’s brother George of Clarence held it for a while and during his tenure there were some scandalous goings-one to do with members of the  garrison and some prostitutes!

At an earlier time, John of Gaunt also did much rebuilding of the castle, and gave it to his wife Constance as her main residence, where she had a flourishing court dedicated to various arts.

All of these are, to my mind,  a lot more interesting than ‘Henry VIII may have walked  down the stairs!”

SECRET STAIRWAY DISCOVERED AT TUTBURY