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Welcome to Hever Castle, my name's Duncan Leslie, I'm a Chief Executive,
and am joined here by my two dogs Vern and Winny, who are having a lovely morning as you can see.
We are here to do our first video diary at Hever Castle,
we are going to tell you a little bit about what's going on here,
there will be a little bit of behind the scenes and a little bit of what's coming up over the next month.
Here we are in the Astor Suite, top floor of the castle and we are going to go,
well follow me, you'll soon find out.
Morning Clive, morning Duncan, how are you, not to bad,
Clive is head of maintenance and he is going to take us up to the very top floor of the castle
and we are going to go up onto the roof.
Right, this is the door that leads onto the very top of the castle,
we are actually in the military museum at the moment and this will take us actually on to the roof of the castle.
Lead the way Clive...
It's a bit dark here so watch your feet.
These are really old steps, part of the oldest part of the castle.
and here we are at the top of the Castle.
Well the reason we are up here is we need a new flag.
Our old flag was getting a bit tatty and it didn't really represent Hever Castle anyway,
so we have made a new flag and Clive is just about to raise it up the mast there.
The design of the new flag is based on the four most significant owners of Hever Castle
and today we've got Anna Spender, who is one of our stewards, who's done a bit of research into this,
to explain who the four different owners are.
[ANNA SPENDER] Yes, the four owners depicted on the flag are theHever family, the Boleyns, the Waldergrave family and the Astor
[DUNCAN] Now some people will say what about Anne of Cleves, because she was more famous and a queen, another of Henry's wives, why have we not got her?
[ANNA] Anne of Cleves only lived here for 17 years and we are unsure as to whether she had an impact on the actual building itself,
but the Waldergrave family who owned the castle after her were hear for 150 years and alot of the rooms are as the Waldergrave family would have seen them.
[DUNCAN] So they were, if you like, the longest owners, is that right?
[ANNA] Yes, 150 years,
[DUNCAN] Longer than anyone else?
[ANNA] yes, that's it.
[DUNCAN] And then we've got the Boleyns, which I recognise, which is the one with the 3 bulls head and the red chevron.
[ANNA] Yes
[DUNCAN] and then presumably that's the Waldergraves; we've got a red and white flag and ermine with gold medallions on blue; And then the last one must be the Astors?
[ANNA] The astors is the one with the falcon and the fist and stars
[DUNCAN] And they are pretty much responsible for what you see today?
[ANNA] They are and William Waldolf Astor bought the castle in 1903, he was the wealthiest man in America at the time
and within 5 years he'd totally restored the castle, which was basically a ruin, as he bought it,
laid out the gardens, had the lake hand dug and it can all be seen today, still.
[DUNCAN] So essentially these are the 4 most significant owners from what you see today at Hever and the Boleyns,
of course, we forgot to mention the Boleyns are the ones who actually created, deHever built this bit we're standing on, this oldest part, which is 13th century.
[ANNA] That's it,yes.
[DUNCAN] And the Boleyns, built the bit, all the sides and the back of the...
[ANNA] It's almost a Tudor manor house built inside the Medieval castle walls if you like.
[DUNCAN] Brilliant, thank you very much Anna, that's great.
and now over to Neil our Head Gardener who will tell us a little about what's going on in the gardens this month.
[NEIL] Now's the time of year we should all be starting to do our mulching in the garden.
and here we are at Hever Castle, a couple of my guys mulching the herbaceous border with spent mushroom compost. No mean task as the border is over 110 metres long, so it's something that takes them 2 - 3 days.
[DUNCAN] Other things worth seeing over the next month or so, well we have already seen the Daffodils at the beginning of this programme and there only just starting to come out now,
there will be a lot more in the next few weeks, but every day we get the sunshine like this we get a lot more beautiful daffodils,
which is one of the things that certainly worth seeing here.
We've got the cherry blossom just starting to come out in a few places, the gardeners are still busily, you can here the noise of the tractor in the background,
they are putting all the compost around the beds and smartening up the place up for your next visit.
I would definitely recommend a walk around the lake, there are still a lot of wintering birds on the lake and Spring visitors are coming in,
ducks are beginning to build nests, we've got some Maderin ducks who nest in the trees, there all worth looking at
and of course I personally love the willows with a lot of weeping willows round the lake at this time of year
have got vibrant green foliage on them that sways gently in the breeze like a marvellous long skirt.
We hope you enjoyed our first video diary, we are going to be producing one of these every month,
that's our intention, so please keep looking at our website and we will have one about the middle of April.
So we very much look forward to seeing you here soon and indeed, enjoy your next visit.