A pair of Durham newlyweds’s first home is a real life castle

They’ve been married for three months


A pair of recently weds have fulfilled the Durham dream of living in a real life castle.

Georgia and Owen May started their new lives together at Rose Castle near the Lake District. Georgia, a fourth year at Castle college, and Owen, who has recently graduated from Cuth’s, got married in July of this year and have recently moved into Rose Castle as part of the Rose Castle Foundation.

The Castle is to be used as a centre for international peace and reconciliation, with the May couple becoming the “caretakers” of the building. Owen’s role is to help organise fundraising events at the Castle and to also find other sources of income for the charity.

Although Georgia is about to go into her fourth year at Durham in a couple of weeks, she plans to spend her weekends and holidays at the caretakers’ cottage on the site of the Castle grounds.

She told The Tab: “The experience so far has been incredible but not because of the castle itself, rather because of what the castle is being used for. The really exciting part is that the castle is going to be used to host reconciliation programmes, providing training and resources to equip community, organisational and faith leaders.

“It’s an amazing blessing to witness a castle that has experienced 800 years of conflict be transformed into a landmark of peace. It’s been great fun, albeit a little tricky, moving in – on his first day at work as Project Manager, Owen just needed a desk, a landline phone (as there is no mobile signal at Rose!) and internet, of which he had none in the office. Instead he was sat at the very old Bishop’s desk surrounded by ancient, dusty books in the wood-panelled library.

“Our latest friends on site are Rosco & Rosamund the peacocks, and Daisy the sheep (who was brought up in the castle courtyard and so loves cuddles).”

However, unsurprisingly, apparently life is pretty different to Durham Castle, with fewer drinking societies and rugby boys and no noisy rivalries.

Wedding photos thanks to Kyle Hassall Photography