HMS Berkeley Castle (K387) HMS Berkeley Castle (K387) HMS "Berkeley Castle" was a Castle-class corvette of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. She was named after Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. The Castle-class corvettes were an improved and enlarged derivative of the earlier Flower-class corvettes, which was intended to be built by shipyards that could not build the larger and more capable frigates. The greater length of the Castles gave made them better seaboats than the Flowers, which were not originally designed for ocean escort work. Large numbers (96 in total) were ordered in late 1942 and early 1943 from shipyards in the United Kingdom and
Berkeley Castle from the Minstrels' gallery. His tomb is in St Mary's churchyard which stands besides the castle. Adjoining the Great Hall was the Chapel of St Mary (now the morning room) with its painted wooden vaulted ceilings and a biblical passage, written in Norman French. In the late 16th century Queen Elizabeth I visited the castle and played bowls on the bowling green. During the English Civil War, the castle still held sufficient significance for it to be captured in 1645 by Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, for the Parliamentarian side and after a siege which saw cannon being fired at point blank