Hever Castle and Gardens Review
Hever Castle and Gardens
The childhood home of Anne Boleyn
Reviewed by Kirstie Fruen
Myself, my husband, our 4 children (girls aged 13 & 5, boys aged 3 & 2) visited this fabulous attraction on Saturday 27 June 2015.
We travelled by car to the castle, very well sign posted from a good few miles away, we found it with ease. As we entered the car park, we were met with an incredibly entertaining chap (who we will remain forever in our memories of the day) directing the entering cars into their spaces through the medium of dance. I do hope he does this every day.
We started our day with a tour of the gardens, this appeared to be the only way to start but by this point we had not consulted our map!
What beautiful, fragrant gardens. All set within stone walls, the flowers had a wonderful fragrance as we walked through and even had my 2 year old asking what that lovely smell was, something I never considered that he would notice.
Outside of the walls was the boating pond/boat tours. The walls had openings which would make for lovely photos, if my children would oblige, but for the wedding that was booked for the day we visited would make some incredibly beautiful memories.
We made our way through the stunning gardens to the water maze. The maze was set within a hedge and once inside looked wonderful fun. In the centre, a giant waterfall with water cascading almost all the way round, minus two openings for the middle of the maze, which we didn’t enter as there were several big children being big children.
The maze was set with trap flooring which would squirt up jets of water. They weren’t all the same through, thought had gone into the entertainment value of this maze and some jets squirted towards you, some away from you and some in different directions, to keep you on your toes!
We played here for a while until my husband soaked me and the fun was well and truly over!
After a thorough soaking, we found a spot in the gardens overlooking the castle for our lunch. There wasn’t a huge amount of shade however but luckily while we were eating, there was some cloud cover which gave us some light relief from the sun.
The castle was our next stop after lunch, we blasted round quite quickly as although steeped in incredibly interesting history, with rooms all labelled as to what they were used for, filled to the brim with of the time furniture and factual information of Anne Boleyn, (which personally I would have loved to have spent all day indulging myself in), the small people in my life had other ideas.
They wanted to see the park! The park, with a wooden maze in the same compound was perfect. A fence all the way round to avoid escapees was the icing on the cake for us. With such an age difference, finding a park which is suitable for all is a brilliant find. Hever has this park! We would have stayed in here all day and we almost did. The children didn’t want to leave, not even when we bribed them with ice cream!
We bought our ice creams from the Moat Restaurant. I have to say, although the ice cream was a local offering and delicious, it was incredibly expensive. Not might I add, in comparison to the Wall’s ice lollies in the freezer to one side though. 6 ice creams came to almost £15! And when you have already spent the £42.50 gate price (luckily we have 2 children under 5, otherwise this would have been an extra £9 for each of them), this is working out to be one expensive day.
No trip to any attraction like this is complete without a souvenir to take home. The Hever shop was very well stocked with a variety of offerings in the adult section. We didn’t venture in as taking the children in would have left the same devastation as a natural disaster, so we kept to the children bit which thankfully, was totally separate! We left with 3 foam swords and a small hand fan! These were much more reasonably priced in comparison to the edible goods mentioned earlier!
Before we left we decided to check out the archery field and shield painting. There were no prices displayed (which should have been a massive warning sign, but after the gate price we thought it would be included in the price) and upon getting closer we find that the shield painting is £5 per cardboard shield and £10 per wooden shield. The archery was £2 for 5 arrows and increased in price from there. We promptly left the field and headed back to the water maze.
Despite marching through the castle as fast as our feet could carry us, we did spend the whole day here. There was so much to do and all activates were so close to each other there wasn’t much walking to do. Perfect for us and the smaller ones.
Hever castle gets a 4/5 rating, with the only downside being the cost of the day. A trip like this would be something we would have to save up for, like a trip to a theme park, but it would be a day out I would be keen to repeat as we did truly have such a wonderful time. Just maybe when the children are old enough to enjoy the castle with me!
Rating: 4/5
Tickets (Castle & Gardens): £16 Adult, Child £9, Family £42.50 (book online for discounts).
For more information or to book tickets online visit www.hevercastle.co.uk.
Hever Castle & Gardens, Hever, Edenbridge, Kent, TN8 7NG | 01732 865224
