She sometimes gives stuffed rats as wedding presents. It seems the Duchess of Northumberland, chatelaine of Alnwick and creator of the Poison Garden, keeps several stuffed dogs up at the castle. “The Duchess loves taxidermy.” It’s Bridget, who is gathering up the tour. The back half of a hare is mounted on one wall over a pile of unidentified pelts. A stuffed gray-and-white cat holds a stuffed rat in its mouth. Stuffed ravens, stuffed foxes, stuffed rabbits, their glassy eyes flickering in the firelight. Instead of hokey horror, the place is full of animals - dead animals. I stick my head in the door, half expecting to find a homage to “Harry Potter” or an animatronic witch. Next to the locked gate, there’s a hut, kind of a cross between a prehistoric dwelling and a hobbit house, round with a sod roof. The Poison Garden tours go every 15 minutes, and I have a few minutes to wait for the next one. Because I had limited time, I decided to save the castle for another day and concentrate on the gardens: How often do you get to keep company with plants that can produce heroin, cocaine and ricin, one of the deadliest toxins on earth? So I drove up over the moors, dodging death-wishing sheep (they like to lick the salt on the road), north of Hadrian’s Wall to Alnwick. They kept asking whether I’d been to the Poison Garden - apparently, it’s notorious in these parts. I’d been staying in Barnard Castle, a lovely market town on the River Tees, about an hour and a half’s drive to the south, seeing friends. It was also the setting for the Season 5 finale of “ Downton Abbey.” Parts of it are nearly 1,000 years old and stuffed with Titians and van Dykes, Louis XIV furniture, Meissen china and Georgian silver. If you’ve seen the first two “Harry Potter” movies, you’ve seen Alnwick: Harry learned to fly a broom and play Quidditch in the castle’s Outer Bailey. Article contentĪlnwick Castle is a vast stone edifice strategically located on the River Aln, not far from the Scottish border. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
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