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Sudeley may once have been home to a dowager queen - Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's sixth wife, is buried in its chapel - but its current resident, Elizabeth, Lady Ashcombe, can lay claim to being the longest reigning chatelaine of what is often referred to as 'England's most romantic castle'. 'I've been living here 43 years,' she says. 'I was so daunted when I first came, but I was also excited, a sort of "Wow!", and, for me, that wow has never gone away.'
And, on a misty spring morning, Sudeley Castle is undeniably beautiful, almost floating on its formal gardens, framed by the irregular folds of a Cotswold valley, and outlined by its doughty gatehouse, medieval towers and ruined Plantagenet banqueting hall that stands as testament to a turbulent history of royal owners and Civil War battles. Sudeley's castellated walls have also witnessed a more recent domestic struggle between public and private - how to keep this 1,000-year-old slice of England as a family home while simultaneously generating sufcient income to keep the leaky roof in good repair by welcoming visitors who pay an entry fee. It is an ongoing dilemma that has defined Lady Ashcombe's four decades here and, at times, caused friction between her and her two children, Henry and Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, unflinchingly captured in the 2009 BBC documentary Crisis at the Castle.
Sudeley Castle and Gardens, as it has now been rebranded, has reopened after undergoing the first stage of a three-year, seven-figure refurbishment programme over the winter. More of the private family rooms than ever before will be open to the public seven days a week. Its treasures - Van Dycks and Turners, Anne Boleyn's lace canopy, Marie Antoinette's bed hangings, Charles I's bed, and Katherine Parr's books and very superior red velvet privy - have been given fresh prominence in recon-figured rooms, all painstakingly redecorated under Lady Ashcombe's eye.
What prompted all this activity was a decline over recent years in Sudeley's visitor numbers, which threatened to make the place unsustainable. 'Those we asked were complaining they were not seeing the castle,' she explains. 'In fact, they were seeing all the medieval parts, which are the real castle, but we have now arranged it so that they can...