Our knight in a castle! A stay in the grounds of Dover’s storied fortress while exploring its new siege-themed playground makes a memorable history lesson

Few places can fling you back and forth across our nation’s history like Dover Castle. 

10am? We’re in 1942, wandering wide-eyed through a WWII hospital buried deep in the White Cliffs, before visiting a subterranean lattice of war offices, where much of the Allied evacuation of Dunkirk was masterminded.

Lunchtime? We’re in the 1180s in the Great Tower, Henry II’s 83ft-high centrepiece of pomp and pageantry with its 21ft-thick walls and medieval furnishings – where my children, Belle, 12, and Cleo, ten, have a go at adding hunks of meat to a fine-looking (wooden) stew in the kitchen.

Dover castle has two self-catering properties that guests can stay in – the one-bed 13th-century Peverell’s Tower (left and right); and, sleeping six, the Sergeant Major’s House, which harks back to the castle’s Georgian garrison days 

And now, I’m watching my lucky two getting first dibs on a brand new playground with tunnels and a chance to fire a play-version of a trebuchet catapult.

It’s part of Dover Castle Under Siege, a new interactive, family attraction at the castle (included in the main entrance price) that tells the story of two sometimes forgotten attacks against King John’s kingdom in 1216 and 1217.

Part of the First Barons’ War, these attacks saw French and English rebels besiege the castle.

Family fun: Tourists stroll along the moat, with Constable’s Gate in the background

Joanna explores Henry II’s Great Tower, above, ‘an 83ft-high centrepiece of pomp and pageantry with its 21ft-thick walls and medieval furnishings’

At its most brutal, there was a frenzy of chain mail-clad knights and soldiers swinging axes, swords and maces, with arrows flying, and buildings aflame.

Dover Castle Under Siege paints the picture with a whizz-bang interactive exhibition, access to the castle’s northern defences and the playground, which puts young day-trippers in the thick of medieval warfare.

Inside the exhibition itself, there’s the chance to fire a laser-beam crossbow, and then to wander through defensive tunnels built after the siege, in places medieval and crudely-hewn and elsewhere with tidy Georgian brickwork. 

The tour’s crescendo is a visit to the Spur, the defensive barbican. This enables history fans to see the castle through the eyes of the attackers for the first time – where they stared death or victory in the face.

There are two self-catering properties: the one-bed 13th-century Peverell’s Tower; and, sleeping six, the Sergeant Major’s House, which harks back to the castle’s Georgian garrison days.