The rooms within the castle were built exclusively for the Queen by Robert Dudley, the First Earl of Leicester


Built to woo the Virgin Queen, architecture experts are now calling it ‘the Shard of its day.’

There is no doubt the views from the top of the 100ft tower, which boasts what were then the biggest glass windows in a secular building in Tudor England, are impressive enough to make you go weak at the knees.

Whether they also made Queen Elizabeth I swoon into the arms of her favourite Robert Dudley in the spectacular quarters he created for her exclusive use at Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire remains a mystery as intriguing as the rest of their relationship.

Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire has been nicknamed the 'Shard of its day' with its 100ft tower and what would have been the biggest glass windows in Tudor England

But English Heritage will tomorrow open the monarch’s rooms in the tower to the public for the first time following a two-year project to install stairs and platforms allowing access to the chambers at the centre of the affair that set tongues wagging in Elizabethan high society.

Yesterday the historic monuments body’s Head Curator Jeremy Ashbee said a door - its arch still visible - from the queen’s outer chamber, where she would meet the great and the good, in the tower connected her rooms directly with Dudley’s living quarters next door, which like much of the rest of the castle were later destroyed during the English Civil War.

There was, believes Dr Ashbee, an antechamber between the two sets of rooms where Dudley, the handsome and flamboyant Earl of Leicester, could well have ‘lurked’ until Elizabeth was free of other company before popping in to see her alone. From there it is just a few short steps into the regal boudoir, where no one was normally allowed except the Queen and her ladies in waiting.

‘We do not know whether their relationship was ever physical,’ said Dr Ashbee. ‘But they had known each since childhood, shared passions for riding and dancing, and it was no secret in Court circles that he was a suitor for the queen’s hand in marriage. Indeed, Dudley built the tower expressly to win her hand.’

The quarters within the fortress were built exclusively for the monarch by Robert Dudley, the First Earl of Leicester - and their relationship was a talking point at the time

Head curator at the castle, Jeremy Ashbee, believes there was also an antechamber between the rooms where the Earl could have ‘lurked’ until her majesty was free

A door arch is still visible from where her outer chamber would have been within the tower that connect her room directly with Dudley’s living quarters next door

Their relationship - portrayed by Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes in the 1998 film Elizabeth - was much talked about after Dudley’s first wife Amy broke her neck and died after apparently falling down the stairs at Cumnor Place, Berkshire, in 1560.

Debate raged over whether Dudley had got rid of her as an obstacle to his relationship with the monarch. Dudley, who was also the Master of the Horse, overseeing all the queen’s equestrian needs for travel and hunting, was granted Kenilworth Castle by Elizabeth I in 1563.

At a cost equivalent to tens of millions of pounds in today’s money, he began building the tower for her there in 1570. Elizabeth stayed at the castle four times during her summer ‘progresses’ away from London.

Her last visit in 1575 caused particularly intense speculation about their relationship as she stayed for 19 days from July 9 to 27 - the longest she ever stayed at any courtier’s house.

Elizabeth (posed by model) stayed at the castle four times during her summer ‘progresses’ away from London and her last visit in 1575 caused particularly intense speculation about their relationship as she stayed for 19 days from July 9 to 27 - the longest she ever stayed at any courtier’s house

Documentary evidence shows the tower was built right in the middle of the period when Dudley was getting her to come visit and it was referred to as “the Queen’s lodge

Dr Ashbee said: ‘We know from documentary evidence when the tower was built was right in the middle of the period when Dudley was getting her to come there. People referred to it as ‘the Queen’s lodge’.

‘She was 41 and he 42 during the 1575 visit and it has long been thought this was his last throw of the dice to get her to marry him. He even commissioned portraits of the queen and himself specifically for that visit, which might have been intended to hang in the dancing chamber above her bedroom.’

In a letter, Robert Langham, a member of Dudley’s household, described the tower as ‘in day-time on every side so glittering with glass, at night by continual brightness of candle, fire and torchlight, transparent through the lightsome windows, as it were the Egyptian Pharos [an ancient lighthouse] relucent unto all the Alexandrian coast.’

Dr Ashbee said: ‘It is the Shard of its day, architecturally extremely daring in its use of large glass windows and what it looked like from the outside.

But Dudley (right) failed to win (left) Queen Elizabeth's hand - his chances having probably not been helped by him fathering an illegitimate son to Lady Sheffield in 1574

A painting of Kenilworth Castle dated 1620. The Queen's rooms in the tower will be open to the public for the first time tomorrow after a two-year project to install stairs

‘It would have formed an impressive backdrop to the deer hunts which the queen and Dudley went on daily during her stay, with the sun glinting off the windows and the tower reflected in the lake which was then in the grounds.’

Dudley failed, however, to win the queen’s hand, his chances having probably not been helped by him fathering an illegitimate son by Lady Sheffield in 1574. Elizabeth never returned to Kenilworth and he married Lettice Knollys, Countess of Essex, in 1578.

But the queen evidently retained an affection for him and kept a letter he wrote to her shortly before his death in 1588. Its contents were mere pleasantries, but she wrote on the back ‘His last letter’ and kept it in a casket of treasured possessions by her bed until her death in 1603.

The tower was previously only viewable looking up from its cellar level in what Dr Ashbee calls ‘a Baldrick’s eye view of history - like looking up a chimney.’

Now visitors can walk round the remains of all four storeys of the ruined tower and into what would have been its individual rooms. Elizabethan fireplaces, the vast bay window frames and door arches are still visible, as are holes in the walls where ornate plaster friezes decorated with gold leaf would once have hung.