Original subtitles

For me, a great British castle

is a fortress, a palace, a home.

And a symbol of power, majesty, and fear.

For nearly 1,000 years,

castles have shaped Britain's famous landscape.

These magnificent buildings have been home

to some of the greatest heroes and villains in our national history.

And many of them still stand proudly today

bursting with incredible stories

of warfare, treachery, intrigue, passion, and murder.

Join me, Dan Jones,

as I uncover the secrets behind six great British castles.

This time I'm in Leeds Castle.

Not the Leeds in Yorkshire, this one's in Kent.

It's been called the loveliest castle in England.

But scratch that perfect surface

and you will discover its darker side.

Leeds Castle might look pretty and genteel,

but its history certainly isn't for the faint hearted.

For hundreds of years, building a castle was the ultimate macho statement.

Big and aggressive, castles usually bristle with historical testosterone.

But not this one.

Leeds Castle has seen its fair share of war and terror,

but it holds a fascinating secret

because its history has mostly been shaped not by men but by women.

There's been a castle here at Leeds for nearly 900 years.

But what we see today is largely the work of one woman,

Olive, Lady Baillie. The daughter of an English baron

and a wealthy American heiress.

Lady Baillie was one of the great hostesses of her age.

She bought Leeds castle in 1926 and turned it into

one of the most glamorous party houses in England.

Her guests included the controversial heir to the British throne,

Edward, Duke of Windsor, and his wife Wallis Simpson.

Movie stars like Charlie Chaplin and Jimmy Stewart,

the great Winston Churchill, and even James Bond creator Ian Fleming.

During the 1930s, they enjoyed lavish dinners and parties,

played tennis and croquet and even swam in a pool with its own wave machine.

But there was far more to Leeds than banquets and blow-outs.

And the castle's charmed life was about to change dramatically.

When the Second World War broke out in 1939,

Leeds Castle became a secret center of British military research.

Now, instead of parties there were flame throwers being tested on the lawn

to prepare to defend England against Nazi invasion.

It's that play hard, fight hard mentality

that summed up this castle throughout the ages.

From the outside, it's beautiful, glamorous, feminine even,

but beneath that veneer it's no stranger to menace and violence.

Britain, of course, has another famous Leeds in Yorkshire.

Here in Kent, the name comes from the old English word Hilida

which means a babbling stream.

The first castle built on this site around the year 1100

was the work of a Norman knight

with the impossibly romantic name of Robert Decrevco,

or "Robert the Brokenhearted".

Sitting on three small islands

in an artificial lake formed by the River Len,

it really is a masterful piece of medieval engineering,

to manipulate the natural power of the river into a man-made moat.

And it means Leeds Castle is cunningly defended by water on every side.

Sadly, Robert the Brokenhearted went broke and had to sell up.

Much later, in 1278, the castle was purchased by the Queen of England.

Edward I's Spanish wife Eleanor.

It was the start of a long royal association.

Queen Eleanor, or Eleanor of Castile was a successful business woman

and a property magnate in her own right.

And, under her instruction, the King's engineers began

substantial alterations to the castle.

With the moats and the barbican providing defenses,

the rest of the castle was free to be an elegant home for a very impressive queen.

Eleanor extended the castle on the smaller island and called it her gloriette,

the name of a fantasy tower in a popular 12th century poem.

In Eleanor's time,

it would have been a single storied structure around a courtyard,

with timber walls and a leaded roof.

A main hall, a banqueting hall, and apartments.

But it wasn't just the decor Eleanor was interested in.

She also brought new European notions about personal hygiene,

at a time when most English Lords and Ladies were not so big on washing.

Thirteenth century documents

record the building of the Queen's baths here at Leeds.

And archeologists have now found the baths

in what was once thought to be a boat house.

So, originally, this would have been one of the earliest English bath houses

that was built.

And it was built by Eleanor of Castile towards the end of the 13th century.

It would have been lined with reigate stone tiles.

It would have been seriously opulent, it may have been fed by piped water.

Eleanor sounds like

quite a lover of luxury, is that fair?

Absolutely, she was famous for having glazed windows and carpets in her rooms.

It actually caused a lot of controversy

because it was seen as a bit too luxurious, not quite the done thing.

She also owned forks in a period when nobody ate with forks.

Eleanor traveled constantly with her husband

because she hated being separated from him.

And they obviously had a good time on the road

because whenever she returned to Leeds Castle

she was expecting yet another baby.

She was almost constantly pregnant, wasn't she?

She was. We know of at least 16 children.

Most of them didn't survive to adulthood,

but she was basically pregnant for most of the years of her marriage

which eventually came to undermine her health.

Eleanor died at the age of 49 after 36 years of marriage.

Leeds Castle passed back into the hands of her husband, King Edward l.

But not for long.

After mourning Eleanor for several years, the 60 year old king married again.

His new wife was the King of France's sister, Princess Margaret.

She was 17 and people called her the flower of the French.

In 1299, Edward and his new teenage wife Margaret

spent their honeymoon here at Leeds.

And just a few weeks later, the King gave Margaret a very special gift

the castle itself.

She was getting one of the finest royal residences in England.

Leeds Castle's association with England's queens

gave it a reputation as an idyllic pleasure palace.

But that was all about to change as the castle was thrust

into one of the bloodiest rebellions of the Middle Ages.

At the heart of it all

was one of the most unpopular and spiteful kings in British history.

During the 13th Century, Leeds Castle had been run as a palace

by two wives of Edward l.

But when Edward's son, Edward II, came to the throne

he proved to be a big let-down.

Thanks to him Leeds would become embroiled

in one of the bloodiest rebellions of the entire Middle Ages.

Edward ll was one of the most useless and unpopular kings of the Middle Ages.

He was thrashed in battle by the Scots.

And he infuriated the English Barons

with his outrageous favoritism towards a handful of intimate friends.

But he was still the King

and if you crossed him things turned very nasty very quickly.

One of Edward's most trusted favorites

was a talented knight and politician called Bartholomew Badlesmere.

He came from the village of Badlesmere just a few miles away from Leeds Castle.

And he made a stellar career for himself in Royal service.

He fought in foreign wars. He put down Welsh rebellions.

He even went to Rome to talk to the Pope on behalf of the King.

In return for all that loyal service, Edward made Badlesmere rich.

And one of the prizes he rewarded him with was Leeds Castle,

which Badlesmere received in 1318.

But that was where all his problems began.

In 1321, just three years after Badlesmere was given Leeds Castle,

a rebellion broke out against the King.

Many of his Barons protested

against the growing influence of one of the king's favorites,

the ruthless Hugh Despenser.

Despenser was a major rival to Badlesmere in court.

After much agonizing, Badlesmere decided to join the rebellion against the King.

It was the wrong choice.

Edward II was enraged at Badlesmere's disloyalty.

He ordered him to hand Leeds Castle back to the Crown.

Badlesmere refused.

Instead, he fled to join up with other rebels in Oxford.

He left Leeds Castle under the command of his wife Margaret.

Once again, a woman was in control.

The King responded immediately.

But curiously, instead of handling the matter himself,

he sent his wife, Queen Isabella, to do his dirty work.

A devious plan was underway.

Early October 1321,

Queen Isabella rode up to the gates of Leeds Castle

and asked Margaret Badlesmere to let her in.

She said she'd been on pilgrimage to Canterbury just down the road,

and she needed somewhere to rest.

But Margaret only had to take one look to see that that wasn't true.

For a start, Isabella was backed up by a posse of heavily armed Royal soldiers.

She hadn't exactly popped around for tea and biscuits.

Since Margaret's husband was in rebellion against the King

and he told her to keep the castle safe, she refused to let the Queen in.

It must've been a very tense standoff.

Then, in the heat of the moment, the soldiers within the castle

started shooting a volley of arrows.

In the skirmish that followed, several of the Queen's men were killed.

Now, this looked very bad,

but actually, it's what Edward II had wanted all along.

"Shooting arrows at my wife!"

Now he had the perfect excuse to humiliate Badlesmere for abandoning him.

On the 23rd of October 1321,

Edward sent an army to besiege Leeds Castle.

And, this time, the King led the siege himself.

Faced with overwhelming odds, it took just a week for Leeds Castle to cave in.

Margaret surrendered hoping for mercy.

But Edward II wasn't feeling merciful.

He put 13 of the castle's garrison to death.

Margaret and her children were all packed off to the Tower of London

to be imprisoned at the King's pleasure.

In April 1322, Badlesmere himself was captured.

He was dragged through the streets of Canterbury behind a horse.

Then he was hanged and finally beheaded

with his head displayed over one of the city's gates,

as a warning to other would-be rebels.

With Badlesmere dead and his wife Margaret in the Tower,

Leeds Castle was confiscated by the Crown.

But, ultimately, it wouldn't be Edward II who enjoyed it.

It would be the woman whose deviousness had helped capture it,

Queen Isabella.

By 1326, England was fed up to the back teeth with Edward II.

He'd made enemies of almost everyone, including his wife.

Along with her lover, a Baron called Rodger Mortimer

Queen Isabella raised an army against her useless husband.

She captured him and forced him to abdicate the crown,

and eventually had him murdered.

Along with her new found power,

Royal records from the 1320s showed that

Queen Isabella now began building up her property portfolio,

and her dower, effectively her pension.

It says here she's increasing her dower from 4,500 marks

to 20,000 marks.

That's a huge increase.

It's like going from £2,000,000 to £10,000,000 today.

And she's laying claim to lands and castles in Norfolk,

Suffolk, Leicestershire,

and we can see here the Castle and Manor of Leeds.

Isabella's links with Leeds would last for the rest of her life.

She was still holding the castle on her death in 1358.

Aged 66.

It was a fitting home for a woman who toppled a king.

In all, some six Queens of England have claimed or been gifted Leeds Castle.

At the end of the 14th century, Richard II gave it to his wife Anne of Bohemia.

A few years later, King Henry IV gave it to his second wife,

the French Duchess Joan of Navarre.

But for Joan, Leeds Castle would not only be her home,

it would also be her prison.

Joan of Navarre was the wealthiest woman in England, but she had one big problem.

Her stepson King Henry V.

Henry spent his whole reign fighting a ruinously expensive war against France.

And when it came to raising war funds no one was off limits.

So, in 1419, he accused his wealthy stepmother of witchcraft,

confiscated her lands and possessions,

and had her imprisoned in a series of castles,

including her own home, here at Leeds.

Joan was accused of using sorcery and necromancy,

which meant using magic and communicating with the dead.

As it turned out, she was never even tried.

It would have been a royal scandal if she were found guilty,

and acquittal would have forced Henry to return her money,

so he just kept her locked up.

For four years, Joan was kept here as the royal witch.

If you want some kind of proof, that all this was basically a sham

to help pay for the King's wars in France,

you just have to look at the accounts for Joan's imprisonment.

She had a stable, horses, 19 grooms.

She had a constant stream of guests.

One of them even stayed for nine months, and there were bills for a bird cage,

and the repair of a harp.

It wasn't easy being a witch.

Eventually, Henry had his stepmother released quietly.

It was as if the entire episode had never happened.

But Joan wasn't the only witch to be imprisoned in Leeds Castle.

Within 20 years this place would be a prison for a much more devious

and cunning woman who was married to an eminent Duke.

Her name was Eleanor Cobham.

For me, Eleanor Cobham was one of the most intriguing women in British history.

Her husband was Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.

Uncle to the useless and idiotic king Henry VI.

Humphrey was the power behind the throne, but more importantly

while Henry was childless, Humphrey was also his heir.

If anything should happen to Henry, Humphrey would become King

and Eleanor would become Queen.

And it's that fact that got Eleanor into so much trouble.

In the summer of 1440, Eleanor decided to have her fortune told.

She went to the best astrologers of the day,

her personal physician Thomas Southwell

and a brilliant Oxford scholar called Roger Bolingbroke.

The reading they gave her was explosive.

According to the horoscope, the King was due to fall ill and die

in July or August of the next year.

Eleanor's husband would inherit the throne and she would be Queen.

It was such a breathtaking prediction

that news of it began to spread around the country.

When news of Eleanor's fortune telling reached the king

he was deeply troubled.

This fatal illness was due to strike within months.

The king's advisors then commissioned a second horoscope

that conveniently rubbished Eleanor's claims.

Then they had her and her astrologers arrested,

locked up in Leeds Castle and questioned.

She had messed with the most important man in the land, the King himself.

While she was here the charges kept on mounting up.

She was accused of having consulted a witch called Margery Jourdemayne,

who had given her a potion to help her conceive a child.

Things weren't looking good for Eleanor Cobham.

Ronald Hutton is one of Britain's leading experts in witchcraft and folklore.

Ronald, today we think about horoscopes as mumbo jumbo.

It's at best a bit of fun.

Was it like that in the 15th century?

In the 15th century, horoscopes looked like

the science of the future, so top astrologers

were rather like nuclear physicists

in the 1930s, they could really have been on to something.

Eleanor was supposed to have been involved in,

on the one hand, astrology, divining the future,

but on the other hand she was accused of trying to procure love potions.

Can you give me an example of a spell or an incantation from the time.

This is a spell to Venus that's why it's an effigy in green wax.

It's actually you because it's got your hair in it.

It's to enable you to be more attractive to audiences

which I think most presenters would wish.

Venus, known as the lady, nourishing one, gorgeous one,

queen of beauty, giver of sweet madness, treasure made flesh.

Bless this man. Hear him. Heal him. Hold him.

I feel better already.

-You look it. -Thank you.

Even if Eleanor Cobham was guilty, we'll never know.

Framing political opponents by charging them with working magic

is a favorite trick of the French and English Royal families,

on either side of 1400.

Eleanor Cobham was charged with 18 counts of treasonable necromancy.

Conjuring up the spirits of the dead in order to influence future events.

And she was imprisoned in Leeds Castle to await her trial.

Eleanor must've been terrified

by the dreadful punishments handed out to her accomplices.

Rodger Bolingbroke, a highly respected academic

was hanged, drawn and quartered.

The physician, Southwell, was lucky to die in the Tower of London,

before meeting the same fate.

And the witch, Margery Jourdemayne, was sentenced to be burned alive.

This was a particularly ghastly way to go.

Tied to a stake, and surrounded by wood and fuel

which was then set alight.

Eleanor herself was spared but humiliated.

She was forcibly divorced from her husband.

She was made to walk barefoot through the crowded streets of London

carrying a lighted taper to signify her penance.

A ritual usually reserved for common prostitutes.

And then she was sentenced to life imprisonment,

finally ending up 300 miles away at Beaumaris Castle in Wales

where she would die.

Her life, and her reputation, utterly destroyed.

Fortunately, not everyone's experience in Leeds Castle

was as harrowing as Eleanor's.

In fact, the 16th century would see the castle transformed

for the arrival of Britain's most famous King,

on his way to the Tudor version of a rock festival.

When Henry VIII stopped by, he came with an entourage of thousands,

and Leeds Castle would have to be ready.

During the Middle Ages, a succession of English Queens had turned

Leeds Castle in Kent into an impressive and well maintained royal residence

and an occasional prison.

But, by the 16th century, the castle had been ignored by the Crown for decades

and had fallen into disrepair.

The arrival of the Tudor Dynasty signaled a revival

in the fortunes of Leeds Castle,

which is apt, because the Tudor royal line may literally have been conceived here.

The Tudors are the most famous and notorious dynasty

in British royal history,

including big names like Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

But this family actually had quite humble and very illicit beginnings.

Probably in this castle.

Those beginnings go back to one of the many queens

to occupy Leeds Castle.

Catherine de Valois, the wife of King Henry V.

When Henry V died of dysentery in 1422,

he left Catherine a widow at the age of 20.

Their only child, the son and heir to the throne, was just nine months old.

Catherine's main responsibility was to raise the infant king,

but that didn't take up all her time.

One member of the queen's household particularly caught her eye.

He was a dashing Welsh squire by the name of Owain ap Maredudd ap Tewdwr

or Owen Tudor.

Catherine and Owen began an affair which produced at least three sons.

To prevent this scandal from becoming public knowledge

they spent their time away from the court at London in more discreet castles,

like this one in Leeds.

After all, where better than an island fortress

in the Kent countryside

to keep a scandalous liaison from public gaze.

Owen and Catherine's marriage might have been a guilty secret at the time,

but it would go on to shape British history

because their eldest son was the father of Henry VII, the first Tudor King,

and the man who established the Tudor Royal dynasty.

In 1520, the secret lovers,

Catherine and Owen's great grandson, King Henry VIII,

planned a historic meeting with the French King Francis I.

And as part of this road trip, the King and his Queen

Catherine of Aragon would be stopping off at Leeds Castle,

a kind of medieval motorways services.

But it would be no ordinary stay.

Henry's ultimate destination was France for an event that would be a bit

like the Olympics crossed with a G20 Summit,

crossed with Glastonbury.

The idea was that Henry and the French King Francis I

would gather together their diplomatic corps and their whole courts

and have a party featuring pageantry, music, and sport.

Most famously, Henry and Francis had a personal wrestling match,

which Francis actually won.

These were two of the greatest Kings in Europe trying to outdo each other.

And all camping under tents made of gold cloth.

Hence the name given to this gathering, The Field of the Cloth of Gold.

Now, obviously, Henry and his court needed to get there,

and this painting on display at the banqueting hall in Leeds Castle

gives you a sense of the scale of the traveling circus.

It's showing Henry's ships leaving Dover. I think there are about 27 of them.

And right in the middle is Henry's flagship.

That's the ship that Henry and his Queen, Catherine of Aragon, would've traveled on.

But more than that you've got a sense of the sheer numbers

of people bustling around.

Most of those people would have stayed right here at Leeds Castle.

More than 5,000 of them.

Since 1517, Henry had been ordering major works on Leeds Castle,

making it the perfect palatial pit stop for a king and queen en-route to France.

An upper story was added to the small gloriette, with new apartments

including a bed chamber and a bathroom.

This new floor was exclusively reserved for the Queen

and her closest household staff.

The Maiden's Tower was built especially

to accommodate the Queen's ladies in waiting.

Catherine's total entourage added up to 1,200 staff and 800 horses.

The more I look at this painting,

the more I feel almost overwhelmed by the opulence of Henry's court.

The ships, money, the people, the fine clothes.

I think more than anything else, it tells you about the sheer extravagance

of kingship in the 16th century.

Maybe it's thanks to paintings like this one

that the Tudor's are remembered for their conspicuous consumption.

Good old Henry liked his dinner.

A feast fit for this king included soup, herring, cod, pike, salmon, haddock,

porpoise, seal, lobster, custard tart, fritters, and fruits.

And that was just the first course.

At Hampton Court Palace, there's a replica of the massive wine fountain

Henry took to the Field of Cloth of Gold.

They also have a working Tudor kitchen.

I've come here to meet an expert in Tudor cooking, Marc Meltonville.

So we know when a Tudor court came to Leeds Castle

that there were 100s, 1,000s of people,

and they got through a huge amount of food.

Was this typical of the Tudor court?

That's the whole point. The court consumes conspicuously.

What you do is everything on a large scale. You are the king.

You are the whole country moving.

So everything that you do has to be fantastic, the best of the best.

So you bring in spices, you bring in things from everywhere.

Food miles are really important in Tudor diets,

the further the better.

And there's a kind of showiness about food at the Tudor court.

Well, you do not get much showy than the peacock there.

An exotic Asian bird which you could have just roasted or boiled.

No one knows it's peacock if you do that. How do you let them know it's peacock?

Well, the recipe says to skin it but don't pluck it first.

So lift the whole skin off feathers and all.

You slowly roast the bird and when he's done

on the plate, lay the feathers and skin back on,

dress it up as if it looks like it's alive.

Bring it into the hall.

It's all about having the things that other people can't.

At the end of the day, it tastes not much different to chicken.

And he's got in the kitchen beef roasting on a spit just as we've got over here.

Yeah, you don't just boil something in a pot.

You use a ton of oak just to roast the meat up for people.

This fire place, one of Henry's original ones,

just like the ones you see in the tents in the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

Huge pits covered in meat.

This is the best way of treating fresh meat.

A good spit turner will turn at the right speed to keep all the juices in the meat

to make it tender and juicy.

Juice into the meat, I think we should stop talking and try some of this.

Wow, that looks amazing.

So there we are, Royal Roast Beef.

Smells delicious.

Really good.

Really good, yeah.

It's a little custard tart. It's got dates in it.

But it's made green with parsley, and the base of the pastry

is sweetened with marrow bone.

With marrow bone?

Mmm.

It's actually quite sweet, particularly with the dates, but then

you can really taste the parsley in there, which is kind of a weird combination.

That actually looks very appetizing.

This... I don't want to offend you. This is less...

-Pleasant looking. What is this? -That's, uh...

The name of it in the recipe book is aboulette or aboulettes.

And it's a cream, and egg, and cheese mix.

It doesn't look very good because it's split, it's curdled.

Smells cheesy.

But actually...

It's a very strange kind of sensation. You know it is...

Lumpy and sort of

watery at the same time. But it tastes quite nice it's got

a depth of flavor, it's quite savory.

Eat that with a big hunk of bread, a mug of bee,

I think we're going to be okay.

Now I'm sold. Now I'm sold. You should've done that to start with.

So really all of this isn't just about eating well, having delicious food.

It's about status. It's about sending a message that I am the King

and this is my world.

It's more than just the king, it's a message about your country.

It's "I am England.

"We are great.

"Look at what I provide just for my court.

"It must be so special.

"I must be in charge."

Amazing! Thank you Marc.

As Henry VIII's love life became increasingly complicated,

the tradition of Leeds Castle being given to a Queen ended.

In 1552, after 300 years of royal ownership,

the castle was granted to a trusted knight, Sir Anthony St. Leger,

for helping to quell an uprising in Ireland.

Its rent was just £10 per year.

From then on, this perfect, pretty castle changed hands at least five times,

but remained in private ownership

for better or worse.

Over time, the gloriette fell into ruin.

Most of the medieval buildings were demolished in the 17th century.

This building, called the New Castle, only dates from the early 1800s.

This was the era of the stately home

when a castle like Leeds no longer needed to be a fortress

but a celebration of aristocracy and wealth.

If you had it.

It goes without saying, you need vast amounts of money

to maintain a place like this.

Leeds Castle has brought plenty of families to the brink of bankruptcy.

In the early 1920s, it was up for sale again,

this time to pay for death taxes.

And it was in a pretty bad state.

Whole sections of the castle were lying empty.

Thousands of acres of park land were being neglected.

Its heyday as the playground of kings and queens had become a distant memory.

But another golden age was about to dawn.

The future was new money from the new world.

American dollars.

Leeds Castle had found what it always needed,

another strong lady, a wealthy Anglo-American heiress

looking for the ultimate fixer upper.

She decided this would probably do.

Her name was Olive Paget.

Though by her third marriage, she gained the more glamorous title, Lady Baillie.

Under her ownership Leeds Castle would be back to its magnificent best.

Darker times were also on the horizon,

as the castle took on a key role in Britain's fight against the Nazis

in a mission straight out of the pages of a James Bond story.

Leeds Castle had been a playground for medieval queens,

an occasional prison and a pleasure palace

for the great Tudor monarch, Henry VIII.

In the 20th century, it was transformed again under a new owner,

the wealthy Anglo-American heiress, Olive Paget,

or as she became known, Lady Baillie.

You know, the more I learn about Olive Paget, the more I like her.

She was born in America, educated in Paris,

and volunteered as a nurse during the First World War.

She married a war hero and had two daughters

then divorced.

She married again the same year.

And the happy couple bought Leeds Castle.

Now, she divorced again, but she kept the castle.

After that divorce, she married Sir Adrian Baillie.

Which gained her the title "Lady Baillie."

She turned what had been a tumbled down wreck

into a fairy tale stately home.

She didn't just have the taste,

she had the money.

She'd buy exotic birds on her travels and fly them home first class.

Llamas and zebras were bought and allowed to roam freely around the grounds.

It was all simply marvelous.

Lady Baillie worked closely with a famous interior designer, Stephan Budan.

Who went on to create the French rooms at the White House

for Jacqueline Kennedy during the 1960s.

In the 50 years that Lady Baillie owned this place,

Leeds became one of the greatest castles in Britain.

And she was renowned for her parties.

The guest lists included politicians and diplomats, actors and musicians,

socialites, and royalty from across Europe.

Lady Baillie employed a permanent staff of 40

to maintain the daily life of her castle.

Not as many as the 5,000 that followed Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon,

but still pretty impressive.

She also developed friendships with powerful political figures

like future prime ministers Winston Churchill

and Anthony Eden, ambassadors, and high ranking civil servants.

A reputation as a discreet and charming hostess

meant she frequently had the ear and the undivided attention

of important men.

Then, in 1939, World War II broke out and the parties stopped.

Leeds Castle had to adapt to the times.

Lady Baillie moved her whole family and her household

here into the Gloriette.

Outside, the moat was drained to prevent reflection on the water

from attracting the Luftwaffe's bombs.

Then Lady Baillie did something unexpected and incredibly patriotic.

She gave over Leeds to the War Effort.

The New Castle, her own home, became an emergency hospital.

The Battle of Britain began in the summer of 1940.

And much of the fighting took place in these skies above Kent.

Now here's a quote from Pauline, one of Lady Baillie's daughters. She said,

"We could watch dog fights in the air and sometimes we'd search for Nazi pilots

"who'd been shot down.

"I remember I'd take a pitchfork and wondered what in the world I'd do

"if I ever found one."

We shall fight on the beaches.

We shall fight on the landing grounds.

We shall fight in the fields.

And in the streets.

We shall fight in the hills.

We shall never surrender.

To help deal with casualties, the castle was taken over by the Army Medical Corps.

They used this room as an operating theater for the wounded.

The castle was also used for the rehabilitation of badly burned airmen

who were treated by the pioneering plastic surgeon, Archie McIndoe.

He saved the lives of countless pilots, and those who benefited from his skills

and his treatments were known as the Guinea Pig Club.

By the end of the war, there were 649 members.

But Leeds Castle was much more than just a makeshift hospital.

Among Lady Baillie's collection of famous and powerful friends

were David Margesson, the Secretary of State for War

and Geoffrey Lloyd, the head of the Petroleum Warfare Department,

a secret government agency set up to develop deadly new weapons

to defend Britain from Nazi invasion.

Because they were such good friends, and probably because Geoffrey Lloyd

knew he could trust Lady Baillie's absolute loyalty and discretion,

she allowed him to test petroleum warfare weapons on the castle lawns.

Petroleum warfare was very new and very deadly.

Weapons range from burning roadblocks to raging seas full of burning oil,

to simply hand held flame throwers that could be fired down fox holes,

into trenches or directly at troops.

When these were demonstrated, to admirals and generals,

they were usually as appalled as they were amazed.

But Churchill was impressed and he wrote as much in a letter

to the team at Leeds.

"There must be no faltering in the drive to nurturing British people

"by all possible means. The virtues of skills and inventiveness,

"these are the true characteristics of a virile nation in a technological age."

The castle survived the war without being damaged,

although bombs were dropped on the castle grounds,

apparently killing one of Lady Baillie's llamas.

In 1974, Lady Baillie died, but she wanted Leeds Castle to live on.

And she left behind a trust and £1,400,000 to make sure

it remained a living, vibrant castle.

Calling Leeds Castle the loveliest castle in England

actually does it a major disservice

because beneath that undoubted beauty

there's a core as hard as those stone walls.

This is a castle that has been shaped by strong women

and it's played a full and fearsome role

in the political and military history of our nation.