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Are you heading to the beach with your family this summer? Thinking of taking your bucket and spade and building a sand castle? English Heritage and Sand In Your Eye’s Jamie Wardley have made this video to give you some top sand sculpting tips to take your castle to the next level!

Jamie, along with Claire Jamieson and Rodrigo were asked by the English Heritage Trust to build the ultimate sand castle at Dover Castle following these very methods and based on historically accurate medieval castle building techniques.

Claire Jamieson sand sculpture UK

Claire Jamieson at Dover Castle

Everybody knows you need to use wet sand to build a good castle but there’s so much more to it than that. By using your hands to pat the sand or “play the piano” like Jamie does in the sand castle building video, it compacts the grains down and makes your structure super hard and strong enough to face the oncoming waves. Have you ever thought of using a ruler or a wooden knife to do sand carving and add details? What else could you use that you might find on a day at the beach? Most castles on the beach have a tower and we all love to dig a moat and fill it up with sea water but does your’s have a motte, bailey, keep, crenellations and drawbridge like the real castles?

english heritage dover sand sculpting

The ultimate sand castle in detail
Credit – English Heritage/PA

Jamie Wardley sand art

Jamie Wardley building a sand sculpture

You can join Sand In Your Eye for some upcoming sand art engagement workshops at castles across England and help them build a giant sand castle. If you can’t make it to any of those you can download a flag from the English Heritage website and build your own – if you upload it to their website or Facebook and Instagram pages with the #LoveCastles hashtag you could be in with a chance of winning a stay in one of their lovely holiday cottages.

Can’t wait to see your sand sculptures!

dover castle ultimate sand castle

The ultimate sand castle at Dover castle

sand carving giant sand castle

Detail of sand carving at Dover Castle_

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