The History of Bamburgh Castle

Castles don't come with a more rugged setting than Bamburgh Castle, sited on a high rocky outcrop called Whin Sill, on the edge of the sea. It is a perfect natural fortification - just add 12ft thick walls and you have a castle capable of resisting all but the heaviest bombardment. And resist it did, for some 400 years from the Norman Conquest to the Wars of the Roses.

Holy rock
The rocky outcrop was in use from the Iron Age, as a Celtic fortress seized by the English chieftain Ida. He surrounded it with a timber palisade which was attacked by King Penda of the kingdom of Mercia, who, the story goes, set fire to it, but failed because of the intervention of Aidan - a monk living on the nearby Farne islands who caused the wind to change direction, blowing the fire out.

Bamburgh was a sacred site with springs and a special relic - the head and right hand of the 7th-century King Oswald which was carefully preserved and apparently undecayed for hundreds of years. They were later stolen, allegedly by a monk. These stories may have some basis in fact because, in the 1960s, an archaeologist discovered a cache of Anglo-Saxon swords dating to the time of King Oswald.

Norman fortress
It was the Normans who commandeered this site for defence. In 1095, Robert of Mowbray rebelled against William Rufus and was locked in the tower at Bamburgh. To make sure he stayed there, King William built a massive castle around him and called it 'Malvoisin' - evil neighbour. The sturdy keep, measuring 69ft x 61ft x 35ft high, dates to just after this period, as does the chapel that was used by Augustinian canons. The walls of the castle, which were mostly rebuilt in the medieval period, are 12ft thick in places but are made of surprisingly small stones, the reason being that each stone had to be transported up the rock by packhorse or men.

Worms in the well
In a basement room beneath the castle is a 150ft deep well. It is older than the keep and probably dates to the Saxon period. In the ballad of the Laidley Worm, the wicked queen is supposed to have turned her stepdaughter into a loathsome worm or serpent that lives at the bottom of Bamburgh well.

Chequered history
Bamburgh Castle stood unharmed for 400 years until the time of Edward IV when it was the first castle to succumb to artillery fire during the Wars of the Roses. In 1704 it was bought by Lord Crewe, the Bishop of Durham, in a ruinous state. Later it had a myriad of uses: as a girls' school, a granary, an infirmary and as a home for shipwrecked sailors. Huge iron chains kept in the basement were used to haul up the wrecks onto the shore using shire horses - each link weighing an incredible 100lbs! In 1894, a wealthy industrialist Lord Armstrong bought the castle and began its restoration and today it is still home to the Armstrong family.

Feature supplied by Heritage magazine. About Heritage Magazine.

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