A new map shows every castle in the UK

The UK is absolutely teeming with castles. In fact, there are so many that we’ve been a bit careless with them over the centuries, letting them disappear under grassy mounds and fields, or repurposing their stones to make grand manors. Now, a new online map is out that’ll help you track down some of the most exciting traces of the UK’s past, whether they’re grand fortresses or enigmatic ruins.

The Castle Map is a free project that’s designed to document the many and varied castles of the world, displaying 6,412 landmarks from 138 countries, alongside their photo, date and story. It’s all based on open data from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, set onto a night basemap from OpenFreeMap and Natural Earth. The castles it shows are a curated selection of the hundreds of thousands of fortified structures you’ll find across the world (especially in hotspots like France), with a focus on showing the ones that have a decent amount of historical data available.

Even so, it feels pretty encyclopaedic, and it’ll help you find loads of castles that haven’t been prettified by the National Trust (with accompanying entry fee). These include free-to-visit Yorkshire gem Sandal Castle, which is the setting for pivotal scenes in Shakespeare’s play Henry VI, and has commanding views for miles around. Or Wales’ Coity Castle, a precarious-looking collection of window-studded walls that rise up from the landscape like coral, built by one of the legendary 12th-century Twelve Knights of Glamorgan. Or the romantic Castle Stalker, which rises up from a tidal island in Loch Laich, and is only accessible for a few hours each day.

Look beyond the UK and you’ll also see thousands of castles across the world, including romantic chateaux dotted amongst French vineyards, grand fortified palaces in India, legendary walled cities in China, and stark defensive strongholds in Australia. Let your fingers do some exploring and you can plan your dream castle-hopping adventure – or just fantasise about how delightful it would be to live in a cool, stone-walled fortress, as temperatures continue to soar. Check out The Castle Map for yourself here.

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