Last Friday the Oxford-based theatre company Cakes & Ale planned an outdoor production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the front lawn at Broughton to raise funds for the Helen and Douglas House hospice for children and young adults. The combination of an ominous forecast and even greyer skies led to the production being hastily shifted indoors into the Great Hall which just about fitted the 180 in the audience. Fabulous amateur dramatics meets fabulous indoor location. A wonderful production. It crossed my mind that next year (or one year) we should find a three act play with the Acts split between the front lawn, west lawn (see picture) or back lawn. Even better would be to have some contemporary dance out on the west lawn – or would it be impossible to get the correct level of “spring” on an outdoor stage? And might the dancers strain muscles in outdoor temperatures? Further research warranted.

The previous record for swimming all the way round the moat, held by Clemmie Gibbs with a time of 14 mins has been smashed. Mike Kennedy is the new holder - 11 minutes 20 seconds. That is for all the way round including under the gatehouse bridge. Now he has gone back to the US on his Harley - we demand he returns next year to defend his title !

I need to find out about other houses with moats - dry or full, complete or incomplete. There needs to be an Association - obviously those of us with full and complete (i.e. all the way round) moats will be terribly nice to those without.

You can see ours on the fantastic new Google tool - Google Earth. The satellite images of the area are not very clear but the moat is! Find Oxford, go 22 miles north and turn west for 2 miles - or to be precise 52 degrees 02'24.34" N 1 degree 23'32.17" W (is that the right way to express it? at least that is what Google earth has when I put the pointer above the moat)

This is the first blog entry on behalf of Broughton Castle, Banbury, Oxfordshire, UK. I hope to be the scribe through whom the house speaks to the world via its blog - "Old Subtlety". It is my family home, and we wanted to be the first Castle with a blog. (Are we?) We were, I like to think the first Castle with a website in January 1998. www.broughtoncastle.demon.co.uk . As you can see it looks very 1998. It is about to be brought back to life and do grown-up things like moving to www.broughtoncastle.com . Soon.

Old Subtlety was the nickname of the William Fiennes, first Viscount Saye & Sele, an important figure in the English Civil War, and a leader of the rebel Puritans / Parliamentarians in their struggle against Charles I. More on him later.