Easy hikes and walks around Kenilworth

A hike around it is always worth it. The castle ruins look different from every perspective. There is a bus stop nearby, so you can easily get to the castle.

The area surrounding Castle Green offers picturesque views of the castle ruins and a greenery for visitors interested in England's rich history and architecture

The Finham Brook is a lower tributary of the River Sowe, it flows through Kenilworth and Warwickshire, England, to join the Sowe near Finham. The Inchford and Finham brooks were dammed by the Tiltyard causeway to create a lake and water defence for Kenilworth Castle by King John in the 13th century.

Formerly a fishpond belonging to the Abbey of St Mary up until the dissolution, Robin Leach dates its draining to become the oxpen meadow as c1650. The meadow was first flooded for skating in 1879, and re-flooded as a wartime water supply in 1940. By 1948 it was drained again and used for an agricultural show. The decision to flood the meadow permanently came in 1997.

The church is built of local red sandstones. The main phases of building are Decorated Gothic, Perpendicular Gothic and a Gothic Revival Victorian restoration of 1864. It is a Grade I listed building. The church is a short distance south of the High Street, next to the Norman and Gothic ruins of St Mary's Abbey, over which much of the churchyard of St Nicholas now extends.

Abbey Fields is set in the dramatic valley of the Finham Brook and enjoys views of the historic town and Kenilworth castle. Grassy slopes, a lake, historic buildings and veteran trees recall Abbey Fields’ past as the farmland of St Mary’s Abbey, whose ruins adjoin the park. Because of its important heritage, Abbey Fields is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

The castle was founded after the Norman Conquest of 1066; with development through to the Tudor period. It has been described by the architectural historian Anthony Emery as "the finest surviving example of a semi-royal palace of the later middle ages, significant for its scale, form and quality of workmanship". Kenilworth played an important historical role: it was the subject of the six-month-long siege of Kenilworth in 1266, thought to be the longest siege in medieval English history, and formed a base for Lancastrian operations in the Wars of the Roses. Kenilworth was the scene of the removal of Edward II from the English throne, the perceived French insult to Henry V in 1414 of a gift of tennis balls (said by John Strecche to have prompted the campaign that led to the Battle of Agincourt), and the Earl of Leicester's lavish reception of Elizabeth I in 1575. It has been described as "one of two major castles in Britain which may be classified as water-castles or lake-fortresses...

Robert Langham (C16) - "The Castle has the name of Killingwoorth, but if truth grounded upon faithful story, Kenelwoorth [Kenilworth]. It stands in Warwickshire, a 74 mile North-West from London, and as it were in the navel of England, four mile somewhat South from Coventry a proper city, and a like distance from Warwick, a fair Shire town on the North. In air sweet and wholesome, raised on an easy-mounted hill, is set evenly coasted with the front straight into the East, has the tenants and town about it, that pleasantly shifts from dale to hill, sundry wherewith sweet springs burst forth; and is so plentiful and well sorted on every side into arable, meadow, pasture, wood, water, and good air, as it appears to have need of nothing that may pertain to living or pleasure."