No mere scrape of a ditch surrounding an upended bucket of sand will do: a proper sandcastle, according to an English Heritage curator should have curtain walls, an inner bailey, a great tower or keep, a gatehouse and a ditch and bank.
Roy Porter said: “By studying hundreds of years of trial and error by the real castle builders, our ultimate sandcastle contains everything you’d like to see, with each element showing off castle-building ‘perfection’ from a different era.”
Sand sculptor Jamie Wardley has followed Porter’s instructions to the letter, creating what is billed as the ultimate sandcastle within the walls of the real castle at Dover, where it will be on display until mid-August.
As part of its #LoveCastles season, English Heritage is urging people not only to visit the 66 real castles in its care, but to compete by sharing photographs of their own sandy fortifications – topped with English Heritage flags available for £1 donations to the castles fund – on the charity’s website, Instagram or Facebook pages.
There will also be castle-building workshops at eight castles, from Pendennis in Cornwall to Warkworth in Northumberland.
