The Ten Most Historic Places to Stay in Britain

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Online reservations for Thornbury Castle are available through the following secure booking engines and operators (links are to the hotel�s specific page where possible): Expedia.co.uk | www.lastminute.com | | LateRooms

The Old Hall Hotel is unavailable to book online. Those interested in staying at the hotel should click here for further information.

It isn�t merely the fact that this is Scotland�s oldest continually inhabited house which impresses, but more the very people who have rested beneath its roof.

No fewer than twenty seven Scottish Kings and Queens have visited Traquair. It was here that Mary Queen of Scots rocked her baby - the future James I of England - to sleep (the cradle is still to be seen) while Bonnie Prince Charlie and Robert the Bruce are other notables amongst notables.

The building itself has acted as a royal hunting lodge, defensive fortification and also a court. In fact, one particular document still at the house dated from 1175 concerns the founding of a hamlet that would later become the city of Glasgow we know today.

Home to Catherine, 21st Lady of Traquair, her husband and three children, it offers three guest rooms on a bed & breakfast basis.

Once the property of one of England�s most powerful figures, The Duke of Buckingham, Thornbury Castle was appropriated by Henry VIII after the Duke was suspected of seeking to overthrow the King.

But Thornbury wasn�t merely a financial asset of the monarch. In fact, it was here that he would court Anne Boleyn - his future second wife - during an affair that would come to fundamentally change the constitution of the nation. The room in which they stayed for ten days in 1533 is today available as the �Duke�s Bedchamber�. Mary Tudor was also a guest while a princess.

Said to be the only English Tudor castle to be operating as a hotel, Thornbury offers 25 guest rooms.

Formerly - and somewhat confusingly - known as �The New Hall�, the building one sees today was once the property of the Countess of Shrewsbury: the enigmatic Bess of Hardwick.

Built in 1573, the hall was constructed under the sanction of Queen Elizabeth I with a view to accommodating Mary Queen of Scots while under house-arrest. Indeed, it was visited by so many Elizabethan dignitaries that it was sometimes referred to as �That House of Royal Intrigue� where more power-broking took place than London.

It seems, however, that Mary became quite fond of her lodgings - upon leaving she scratched her famous lines into one of its windows with a diamond ring; �Buxton, whose warm waters have made thy name famous, perchance I shall visit thee no more-Farewell'