Celebrating Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s birthdays at Osborne, recreating a historic crossing at Tintagel Castle, and opening a new museum at Whitby Abbey are just some of the highlights at English Heritage sites in 2019, the charity announced today (Tuesday 19 February 2019). This year will also see the unveiling of a number of new English Heritage blue plaques in London including to the singer-songwriter Bob Marley, writer Angela Carter, and the pioneering war correspondent Martha Gellhorn.

Kate Mavor, English Heritage’s Chief Executive, said: "English Heritage’s role is not just to look after the 400 historic sites in its care but to bring the stories of these remarkable sites to life, inspiring visitors today and in years to come. In 2019 at different castles, palaces and abbeys across England, we are unveiling new museums, new exhibitions and – at Tintagel Castle – new architecture that will help people to better enjoy and understand these stunning places where history was made."

Highlights for 2019 include: 

• Whitby Abbey’s new museum

Launching in April, a new museum will do justice to the stories of this remarkable Benedictine abbey in Yorkshire, from the role it played in 664AD in deciding the date of Easter and allying the Church in England with continental Europe to how its ruins inspired great artists and authors, Turner, Tolkien and – most famously – Bram Stoker for his Gothic classic, Dracula.

• Osborne and two royal birthdays 

In May, English Heritage will celebrate the bicentenary of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s births at their seaside home – Osborne on the Isle of Wight. Whenever possible the royal couple celebrated their birthdays there and a new exhibition and trail will showcase the gifts they gave each other and for the first time, recreate one of the elaborately decorated birthday tables.

• Tintagel Castle and a bridge to the past

This summer a dramatic new footbridge will open at Tintagel Castle. Designed to help people to better understand and explore this legendary Cornish castle, the bridge will recreate the historic crossing from the mainland to the island, improve access and help to preserve and conserve the landscape. English Heritage has received a £2.5m donation towards the bridge from Julia and Hans Rausing – the largest single private donation ever received by English Heritage. 

• Walmer Castle’s lost gardens 

This spring visitors to Walmer Castle in Kent will be able to explore beyond the castle’s formal gardens and enjoy the wildflower meadow, the woodland walk and – for the first time in over 100 years – the newly restored sunken glen garden, laid out by William Pitt and his trailblazing niece Lady Hester Stanhope. A new learning space – by Adam Richards Architects – and the first new substantial building in the castle for 145 years will give education visitors a base from which to explore the grounds of the castle. 

• Beeston Castle and a Bronze Age build

Over the summer and using age-old traditional techniques, volunteers will raise and recreate a Bronze Age roundhouse at Beeston Castle, bringing to life the little-known prehistoric past of this Cheshire castle and creating a learning space with a difference for primary schoolchildren.

London Blue Plaques in 2019:  

English Heritage’s blue plaques scheme recognises notable people from the past and the London buildings in which they lived. This year’s recipients will include: 

• Angela Carter (1940-1992): Award winning novelist Angela Carter will be honoured with a blue plaque this year at her former home in Clapham. It was here that Carter spent the last sixteen years of her life. She often tutored her then student, Kazuo Ishiguro, at the kitchen table and received fellow writers – J.G. Ballard, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie – as guests. Carter’s unique, witty and widely acclaimed novels include Nights at the Circus, with its unforgettable trapeze-artist heroine, and Wise Children, a comedy about 75-year-old twin chorus-girls.  

• Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998): Writer and war correspondent Martha Gellhorn made her name writing about ordinary people living under the adversity of war. She fought for her place in the male bastion of war reporting in the early twentieth century and once sidestepped the American military’s disapproval of female journalists by stowing away in a hospital ship – an act that allowed her to report first-hand on the Allied invasion of France in 1944. The plaque will commemorate Gellhorn’s twenty-eight-year residence in Cadogan Square. With this as her base, she continued writing and reporting into the 1990s, consolidating her reputation as an important and influential journalist.

• Bob Marley (1945-1981): Bob Marley remains one of the most listened to musicians of the twentieth century and is often described as the first superstar to have emerged from the developing world, blazing a trail for other artists. Marley’s plaque will mark the house in Chelsea where he and the Wailers lived in 1977. It was while living there that the band finished recording Exodus, the album that featured some of his biggest hits, including ‘Jamming’, ‘Waiting in Vain’, ‘Three Little Birds’ and ‘One Love’. 

For more information, visit www.english-heritage.org.uk