A Day Out at Rochester Castle

Dann and Kai are big fans of exploring castle! Last year, we had gone on a bunch of English Heritage sites, but we had not yet explored Rochester Castle. This castle wasn’t like any of the others we had been too. It wasn’t ruins or something recreated – it was a castle that felt very complete, with lots to explore, yet clearly wasn’t re-created in anyway. Rochester Castle is actually on a large lot of land, which you can see lots of dog walkers and other people exploring. These grounds do have some ruins on them, as well as signs and informations.

When it comes to actually exploring Rochester Castle, you will end up climbing a few stairs, which tell you that this castle is massively tall and has over 200 stairs total that you will be climbing. Robin announced that was, in fact, “more stairs than at home!”, but we decided to take the chance and go through the castle with all those steps. The ground level has a place where you can purchase tickets, as well as a gift shop, and then you can walk right into the castle.

There are a few different landings that have been built in Rochester Castle, so that you can look into the depths that are there. These landings often have a sign giving information on what would have been in that area of the castle, for those interested in the history around the building that they are exploring. On the left hand side, there is a massive staircase, which allows you to go down into the depths or high into the sky. We decided to go up to start with. The stairs themselves were really uneven and hard to climb for little feet, but we managed with ours! There are plenty of levels to stop and explore, with the first having a large recreation of the castle itself, with information on each of the areas and buttons that light up the areas to show you where these facts are talking about. All of our children enjoyed lighting up the castle and reading facts about it!

We continued up, where we went through small hallways and read signs about wooden flooring that had been burned in a fire. This castle wasn’t much used for defence, and instead had grand parties and guests staying in it. However, one of the towers was dug under, so it had to be rebuild in a round style instead of a square style, which is much more challenging to collapse from below. Once we did make it to the top of Rochester Castle, the view of the rest of the town and the river was breath-taking. It was amazing to walk around and see all the way around it! We spent a long time pointing out things below and seeing down the middle of the castle as well. Then, we went back down.

We ended up going all the way to the very bottom of the tower which is where waste was once held. This area wasn’t as impressive as the top, but was still interesting to explore, before we headed out and checked out more of the grounds. Rochester Castle is a really fun one to explore, especially if you like heights and seeing castles that are still standing without having been rebuilt!

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!