Condoms and love letters all in a castle's secrets

The oldest item found in the four-year archive project at Warwick Castle is from the 12th Century.

Nineteenth Century condoms, love letters, and the tale of a servant pilfering a lady's Easter egg are among unexpected discoveries made by archivists collating Warwick Castle's records. A new online catalogue, charting 800 years of maps, letters and legal documents, shines a light on previously hidden stories, including those of the castle's female inhabitants and servants. Archivist Laura Orriss said the team made a conscious effort to create entries for previously uncatalogued material, opening up "a lot of stories that have never been explored".

"The women are the letter-writers, and that's where the stories are," she said. The redrawn catalogue, from 1,303 boxes of material and about 800 loose volumes, makes the vast Greville family archive easier for visitors to explore. With the oldest item dating back to the 12th Century, the project took a team of three part-time archivists and an assistant four years to complete.

The archive has been catalogued several times before over the centuries, but with more of an emphasis on its earls, deeds and finances. So what previously overlooked items have now come to light? Easter chocolates were an expensive commodity back in 1897, but no luxury was too much for Lady Marjorie Greville, known as Queenie.

The 12-year-old girl wrote to her father, the 5th Earl of Warwick, that her grandmother had bought her a basket of treats and her sister an egg, but "the housemaid has devoured half the egg". Their governess resorted to ingenious measures to prove the servant's nibbling, the newly-revealed letter said. "Mademoiselle made a mark just to see and this morning it was all bitten away," Queenie said.

Another letter, from Lady Eva Greville to her mother Anne, reveals drunken antics at the birth of a future king. A lady-in-waiting to Mary of Teck, she describes waiting in a drawing room in 1894 for the arrival of the future Edward VIII. The boy's father, Prince George, Duke of York, "fell about my neck and embraced me" upon learning of the boy's birth, she wrote.

"In fact I think everybody embraced everybody else, champagne was at once sent for & we all at once drunk its health, & we all got very vague indeed. "I am sure I drank about 10 glasses, for as every fresh person came in we had to drink health over again." He was "rather a sweet" and "very big child"," she added.

Meanwhile, letters found in the papers of Lady Sarah Savile, who would go on to marry Henry Greville, the 3rd Earl of Warwick, laid bare a teenage love affair. Her liaison, in the early 1800s, was with Regency fashion influencer Beau Brummell, a man renowned for his fleeting relationships. "You are the only being who I ever really loved," he wrote.

"And the same sincere and devoted affection which I have ever cherished will remain undiminished whatever be its future fate." His promises were thwarted after the noblewoman's mother intervened, but evidently was remembered fondly enough to Lady Sarah to treasure the notes. One particularly unexpected find was three condoms, discovered among correspondence dating back to 1853.

Made from animal guts, the remnants of a silk ribbon used to secure the end can also just be seen. Although their ownership is unknown, Orriss guesses they might have belonged to the third earl, who died the same year. "Previous prudish generations of staff kept them hidden," she said, adding the aim to stop the spread of disease proved fruitless when many went on to reuse the sheaths.

The collection is available for visitors to view at the County Record Office in Warwick, and an exhibition about it on display at Market Hall Museum in the town. Orriss believes, despite the team's exhaustive work, that "there's always going to be more to find". "There's bound to be things that haven't been uncovered yet."

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