Owing to the superb defensive position of the great castle, which still stands sentinel above the River Avon, Warwick has been important for the past thousand years or more. The town has a long and interesting history, and still has many attractive buildings dating from medieval times, the Elizabethan era and the Georgian period. The interesting variety of gardens and parks in Warwick includes the grounds of the castle, which were redesigned by Capability Brown in the mid-eighteenth century. There are numerous other gardens, many associated with historic houses, as well as the recently restored Hill Close Gardens, a rare survival of a group of nineteenth-century urban leisure gardens once common on the outskirts of most towns. In this superbly illustrated, full-colour guide, Christine Cluley and Jennifer Meir take the reader on a tour of Warwick's historic houses and gardens, from the Court House, to Lord Leycester Hospital, through Priory Park, and to the castle itself.