The Most Beautiful Castles in England
6 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful castles in England are Tower of London, St Michael's Mount and Bamburgh Castle. The list covers 6 castles. Last updated 13 October 2026.
England's castles begin with a conquest. After 1066 William the Conqueror and his barons held the country by building, first earth mounds with timber towers and then great stone keeps, in towns, at river crossings and along the coasts. Over the next centuries castles followed every change in English power: frontier fortresses on the Scottish border, coastal defences against France, and finally palaces and romantic houses that kept the battlements long after the need for them had passed.
The Tower of London shows the beginning. Its White Tower, raised by William in the 1070s and 1080s, still stands at the heart of the fortress beside the Thames, which later became a royal palace, a prison and the home of the Crown Jewels. Windsor Castle, also founded by William, is the oldest and largest castle in the world that is still lived in, crowned by its Round Tower and St George's Chapel.
Others belong to their landscapes. Bamburgh Castle sits on a crag of dark volcanic rock above the Northumberland coast, on the site of a royal seat of the ancient kingdom of Northumbria. Bodiam Castle, built in 1385 by Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, rises straight out of a broad moat as a near-perfect square with round corner towers. Leeds Castle in Kent spreads across islands in a lake and was for centuries a residence of English queens.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tower of London | Castle | ✓ |
| 2 | St Michael's Mount | Castle | |
| 3 | Bamburgh Castle | Castle | |
| 4 | Windsor Castle | Palace | |
| 5 | Bodiam Castle | Castle | |
| 6 | Leeds Castle | Castle |
01 Tower of London
United Kingdom · 3 km from London51.508° N 0.076° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Matthias Bethke · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Tower has been a royal palace, armoury, treasury, menagerie, mint, record office and prison, and it still guards the Crown Jewels. Its grim reputation owes much to Tudor propaganda and Victorian novelists: before the twentieth century only seven people were executed inside the walls, while most executions took place on Tower Hill outside. The Yeomen Warders still live and work here, a detachment of the King's Guard joins them for the nightly Ceremony of the Keys, and at least six ravens are kept on the grounds, honouring the old belief that the kingdom will fall if they leave. The fortress is cared for by the charity Historic Royal Palaces and is a World Heritage Site.
Did you know? In the 18th century visitors could pay to see the royal menagerie with three half-pence or with a cat or dog to feed the lions.
02 St Michael's Mount
United Kingdom · 5.5 km from Penzance50.117° N 5.478° W
Image by LeeChandler from Pixabay In 1659 Colonel John St Aubyn bought the island, and his descendants, later the Lords St Levan, have lived in the castle ever since, gradually turning the monastic buildings into a family home. In 1954 the family gave most of the Mount to the National Trust while keeping a very long lease on the castle. Around the medieval church at the summit, gardens have been built on terraces cut into the granite on the sheltered side of the rock, where the warmth stored by the stone and the mild climate let exotic succulents and plants from far warmer countries flourish above the sea.
Did you know? A brass footprint at the top of the landing stage marks where Queen Victoria stepped ashore from the royal yacht in 1846.
03 Bamburgh Castle
United Kingdom55.609° N 1.711° W
Image by 18623647 from Pixabay Inside are the restored state rooms with their furniture and paintings and a museum devoted to Armstrong's engineering and armaments, with aviation artefacts from both world wars. But the setting is the masterpiece. Walk the beach at low tide in the evening, when the walls turn gold, or look back from the dunes toward Lindisfarne, about five miles to the north.
Did you know? In the dunes south of the castle, archaeologists found about 120 people buried in the 7th and 8th centuries, some of whom came from Scandinavia, the Mediterranean and North Africa.
04 Windsor Castle
United Kingdom · 26.1 km from Reading51.484° N 0.604° W
Image by diego_torres from Pixabay The finest single work at Windsor is St George's Chapel in the Lower Ward, begun by Edward IV in 1475 and one of the high points of the Perpendicular Gothic style. Henry VIII, Jane Seymour and Charles I are buried here, and the Order of the Garter still gathers in the chapel each year. Elsewhere, look for Queen Mary's Dolls' House, designed by Edwin Lutyens and furnished in miniature by the leading makers of the day, and walk out along the Long Walk, a tree-lined avenue running roughly two and a half miles south into Windsor Great Park, from where the castle rises on its ridge exactly as it was meant to be seen.
Did you know? Geoffrey Chaucer, serving as Clerk of the King's Works, oversaw restoration work on St George's Chapel for Richard II.
05 Bodiam Castle
United Kingdom51.002° N 0.544° E
Image by diego_torres from Pixabay The ivy-covered ruin became one of England's earliest tourist sights. Three owners saved it: "Mad Jack" Fuller, who bought it in 1829; George Cubitt; and Lord Curzon, who drained and cleaned the moat after buying it in 1916. Curzon left the castle to the National Trust in 1925. The outer walls, towers and gatehouse stand to their full height and were given new roofs by the National Trust, while the courtyard inside is open to the sky. The castle is a Grade I listed building and a Scheduled Monument. It appears in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and in several episodes of Doctor Who.
Did you know? Above the main gate are three carved shields, for Dalyngrigge, his wife's Wardeux family and his mother's Radynden family, topped by a helm with a unicorn-head crest.
06 Leeds Castle
United Kingdom · 34.1 km from Southend-on-Sea51.249° N 0.630° E
Worldfootage · CC BY-SA 4.0 The castle's last private owner, Olive, Lady Baillie, bought it in 1926. She had the interiors redone first by the French designer Armand-Albert Rateau and then by the Parisian decorator Stéphane Boudin. In the 1930s she filled its rooms with politicians, royalty and film stars. During the Second World War it served as a hospital where burned Commonwealth airmen recovered. On her death in 1974 she left it to a charitable foundation so that the public could see it. Diplomacy has visited too. In July 1978 the foreign ministers of Egypt and Israel met the US Secretary of State here, a step towards the Camp David Accords, and in 2004 the castle hosted talks on Northern Ireland.
Did you know? The castle escaped destruction in the English Civil War because its owner, Sir Cheney Culpeper, sided with Parliament; it served as an arsenal and a prison.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful castles in England?
- On our list, Tower of London ranks first, followed by St Michael's Mount and Bamburgh Castle.
- Who built the Tower of London?
- William the Conqueror began the White Tower, the central keep, in the 1070s after the Norman Conquest. Later kings, notably Henry III and Edward I, added the surrounding walls and moat.
- What is the largest castle in England?
- Windsor Castle, founded by William the Conqueror in the eleventh century, is the largest castle in England and the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world.
- What is a motte-and-bailey castle?
- An early castle type brought to England by the Normans: a wooden tower on a raised earth mound (the motte) above an enclosed courtyard (the bailey). Many were later rebuilt in stone.
- How many castles are on this list in England?
- The list covers 6 castles.