Blenkinsopp Castle

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Blenkinsopp Castle ruin with parking lot

Blenkinsopp Castle is the ruin of a country house about 1.6 km outside the village of Greenhead in the English county of Northumberland . Part of the manor house, which was partially destroyed by fire, is also the ruin of a residential tower from the 14th century. The house is listed by English Heritage as a Grade I Historic Building and is a Scheduled Monument .

Origin of name

Blenkinsopp seems to come from the early medieval Cumbrian language , probably composed of Blaen (German: summit, upper part) and Kein (German: ridge, mountain range). Later came the old English Hōp (dt .: valley)

history

The old manor of Blenkinsopp was in the hands of the eponymous family Blenkinsopp from the 13th century . They had a large residential tower built. On May 6, 1340, they received a royal permit to fortify the house (English: License to Crenellate).

An early account of Wallis , written before 1769 and cited by Reverend JF Hodgson , states that “the west and north-west sides of it are protected by a very tall grassy wall and a deep moat - a vault passes through it, to the north as in the south, 33 feet [corrected by Hodgson to 53 feet] long and 18½ feet wide; two smaller ones on the north side. The facade of the western wall broke down at a time that no living person remembers. "

A report from 1541 mentions that the roof was in ruins and the residential tower was in poor condition. The family retained ownership of the property but left the property to the Earl of Northumberland and left the castle to live in their other nearby homes, Bellister Castle and Blenkinsopp Hall .

In 1727 Jane Blenkinsopp , heiress of the estate, married William Coulson from Jesmond . In 1832 the property was then unused and the house of a mining agent was added to the ruinous building, probably by the architect John Dobson . Around 1877, William Blenkinsopp Coulson had extensive restoration work carried out, during which a country house was created on the site. Soon after it was completed, the Coulsons sold their Blenkinsopp lands to Edward Joicey .

In the 20th century the country house served as a hotel, but was damaged by fire in 1954. Large parts of the house were demolished for security reasons.

Today one part is still inhabited and another part is a ruin.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bethany Fox: The P-Celtic Place-Names of North-East England and South-East Scotland . The Heroic Age, 10 (2007). Retrieved December 15, 2015. (Attachment here . Retrieved December 15, 2015.)

Sources and web links

Coordinates: 54 ° 58 ′ 26.4 ″  N , 2 ° 31 ′ 30 ″  W.