The Collector Earl's Garden
Fountains and the shell-lined Oberon's Palace in a recreated seventeenth-century garden, the best part of the visit.
The duke who owns this castle still lives in it. For more than 850 years one family, the Dukes of Norfolk, has held the fortress that looms over the little town of Arundel, and when you climb up from the River Arun it looks like a Norman stronghold lifted straight from a schoolbook. The truth is more amusing: the round keep and the stone gatehouse really are medieval, but the grand halls you walk through are largely a Victorian rebuild of 1875 to 1905, Gothic Revival at full volume, done with a bottomless budget and a taste for excess. The result is a Baronial Hall under a vast timber roof, a mahogany library more than thirty metres long, and state rooms where Van Dycks and Gainsboroughs hang as if they were family snapshots. The gardens are the real surprise. The Collector Earl's Garden, laid out in 2008, recreates a seventeenth-century pleasure ground with fountains and the shell-encrusted Oberon's Palace, where water trickles down a canopy of shells, and beside it a walled kitchen garden grows fruit and vegetables as they once did for the duke's table. In April the whole place becomes a Tulip Festival of more than a hundred thousand blooms, the loveliest time to come and also the busiest. Climbing the old keep gives the best view over the town and the green Sussex countryside to the sea, but it is a narrow stone stair and unkind to bad knees. Plan the day carefully, because the timings are lopsided: gardens and keep open at 10:00, the castle rooms not until noon, with last entry at 16:00. So do gardens, keep and chapel in the morning, lunch in the castle cafe or a picnic on the grass, then the rooms after midday. The castle is shut every Monday except bank holidays and August, when it opens seven days a week for the school holidays, and it is closed for the whole winter from early November to the end of March. That matters for Gulf families who tour Britain in the summer holidays: August is the one month you can get in on a Monday, but it is also the busiest month of the season, so arrive for the 10:00 opening. Pushchairs are left at the buggy park by the entrance and do not go into the rooms. From Brighton the train takes roughly an hour and a quarter with a change at Barnham or Ford, then a fifteen-minute walk from Arundel station across the river and up to the gate. By car it is about 45 minutes along the A27, and the Mill Road pay-and-display car park opposite the entrance costs between GBP 3 and GBP 6 for the day. A Castle and Gardens adult ticket is GBP 29, gardens only GBP 17, family GBP 71; buy online or at the gate by card only, and advance booking is not needed except on major event days.
Fountains and the shell-lined Oberon's Palace in a recreated seventeenth-century garden, the best part of the visit.
A Victorian hall under a huge timber roof and a mahogany library over thirty metres long, open from noon only.
The genuinely medieval part, with the best view over Arundel and the countryside to the sea, up a narrow stone stair.
Mill Road, Arundel, West Sussex BN18 9AB
Worth it if they are over six and you have a full day; the gardens, the keep and the wide lawns please them far more than the state rooms. With very young children the gardens-only ticket (GBP 17 adult, GBP 8 child) is a sensible compromise, especially as pushchairs are not allowed into the rooms anyway. In August the castle opens even on Mondays, but it is the busiest month of the season, so arrive for 10:00.
Arundel is the living one: inhabited, furnished, hung with paintings and wrapped in gardens, so it is the pick if you want to see how the aristocracy actually lives. Bodiam is a romantic moated ruin that fills an hour with nothing to see inside, and Leeds Castle is further east and more commercial. With one day out of Brighton, Arundel is the choice.