There is an atmosphere to Thornbury. It is hard to pin down, until the staff explain.

It’s a combination of boiled-up molehills, mashed conkers, gin and brown ale.

A former staff member, who enjoyed upholstery and respected history, used to make his own woodstain.

He didn’t believe what it said on the tin when it came to looking after the oak panelling, floorboards and woodwork throughout the only Tudor castle hotel in the UK. So he made his own eccentric lustre and preservative for his workplace.

His is not the only presence that lingers on at Thornbury Castle in Gloucestershire, not far from Bristol in southwest England.

After dinner, thanks to chef Mark Veale and his Gordon Ramsay roots, his lovingly forced rhubarb and signature rhubarb and beetroot dessert, his Brixham fish, totally local lamb and wine pairing recommendations from Lille-man Jerome (“Armagnac with the foie gras and game terrine”) I returned – goutishly – across a courtyard and up the spiral stone stairwell to my bed chamber.

Henry VIII and his six wives were sitting on my pillow.

After dinner, turn-down mints unwrap the history of Thornbury, the only town in the world with a fish and chip shop in a wedding registry office. Read the handmade House of Dorchester complimentary chocolates and you learn about the Tudors, from Catherine of Aragon to Catherine Parr, the only British monarch to be buried in a public church – the St Mary’s chapel at Sudeley Castle, near Cheltenham.

The ‘H’ depicted in stone on the lawn stands for helipad rather than the portly king.

Don’t bother with George the concierge at the front desk. He’s the one in full body armour: gorget, pauldrons, spaulders and chainmail gusset.

He doesn’t say much for the castle’s official meeter and greeter.

Talk instead to Jenni, Faye or Katrina and you hear about Henry VIII and his Thornbury disconnections.

Henry beheaded the castle’s original owner, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham – a man who perhaps had more right to the throne than the better-known bald, adipose, 54-inch-waisted, cuckolding monarch with a pronounced jousting–related limp. And renowned fertility difficulties. Losing your head ran in the Buckingham family as Richard III had executed Edward’s father.

Henry VIII honeymooned for 10 days at Thornbury Castle with his second wife, Ann Boleyn, as part of their lengthy nuptials tour in 1535, which also took in Dover, Sittingbourne and innumerable four-posters and coronet beds in between.

Thornbury has it all; from arrow loop windows and a minstrel gallery to a polygonal tower, hexagonal dining room and jovial ladies dispensing breakfast

There were no Voya Irish hand-harvested seaweed bath gels and hand wash or perfectly behaved monsoon showers then. Nor an on-call massage therapist offering warm bamboo treatments, eyebrow tidying, groom facials, bridal hair trials and French pedicures.

Doubtless, on her honeymoon at Thornbury, newlywed Ann Boleyn stared up at the same ornately carved ceilings, mused at the tapestries, pulled the tasselled ropes, stared into the open fireplaces and whistled lute rifts and hummed virginals while dreaming of treasonable adultery.

She was executed in 1536.

Arguably, Boleyn and Thornbury Castle (as well as the ‘last orders grill’ in the Tower of London) patented the ‘dining in a dungeon’ concept. Thornbury has a special occasion dungeon restaurant and wine cellar, as well as the Great Hall conference, banqueting and function room where Henry VIII held court and planned business strategies such as dissolving monasteries and ‘attainting”‘as many 16th century nobles, major land owners and wealthy magnates as he could.

The castle, which has its own vineyard producing Muller Thurgau and Phoenix grape wine and a Greek sommelier and former surgeon who gave up A&E for oenology, must possess one of the few hotel dining rooms through which greyhounds occasionally freely roam. Albeit ecto-plasmically.

Reportedly the infamous syphilitic, diabetic Henry’s first daughter Mary (later Queen Mary I) by Catherine of Aragon also visited the castle, bringing her dogs.

The castle has been pet and ghost friendly for more than 500 years.

As well as reported canine spectres there is the obligatory grey lady and occasional sightings of a transparent man, possibly Jasper Tudor, the first owner’s stepson. His face is carved into the key cupboard behind reception.

Thornbury has it all; from arrow loop windows and a minstrel gallery to oriel windows and double-height compass windows to a polygonal tower, a hexagonal dining room and cuddly jovial local ladies dispensing butter-grilled kippers and porridge with strawberry and maple syrup at breakfast.

Not to mention the petit fours, scones and huge cake-stands at afternoon tea.

Thornbury was the first restaurant outside France to earn a Michelin star and the sticky toffee pudding has remained on the menu since the 1960s.

A three-course dinner costs €70, while lunch is €28. The roasted monkfish cheeks, seared scallops and venison haunch carpaccio with juniper baked celeriac make you forget you are a commoner for a while.

Nothing much else has changed. The turrets and crenellations remain. The parapets are embattled. The gilding is 24 carat gold.

There are: mullions; applewood chandeliers; wrought-iron candelabras; clanking, thick arched doorways; portraits of rakes in ruffs, silks and tapestries; bee boles; gargoyle; heraldic knots and antelopes; secret passageways; priest holes and hidey-holes; hauberks; matchlocks; lances and longswords and a listed walled Tudor garden.

There’s one of the largest hotel beds in Britain, 10-foot wide and well-appointed for any XL monarch.

In total there are 26 authentic bedchambers, including one in the tower up a 77-step spiral staircase and looking out over the River Severn and into Wales. Historians agree the king may have urinated off it.

Henry, who ascended to the throne when he was 17, was a keen hunter and did not have to go very far to find Stafford’s “palace within a castle”, which has unequalled historic chimneys and vintage crusted port.

Although, in those days, maybe there was no eggy bread for the children. Or Knickerbocker Glories for anyone.

• Contact Thornbury Castle by calling +44 01454 281182 or by visiting www.thornburycastle.co.uk

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