Edlingham Castle
Edlingham Castle is a ruined castle in a valley west of Alnwick in the English county of Northumberland . The small ruin, which Nikolaus Pevsner has described as one of the most interesting in the country, has been listed by English Heritage as a First Grade Historic Building and is a Scheduled Monument . Edlingham village is little more than a church with a few houses around it near the castle ruins.
The ruins are mostly flat, only the Tower of the Solar (dining room for the family) still stands, even if it has an impressive crack that runs through various floors to the ground floor. The foundations and parts of the walls of the hall house, the gatehouse , the barbican and other buildings in the castle courtyard are still visible today; most are from the 16th century.
The castle - or actually the fortified mansion that is typical of many medieval houses in the north of England - watches over one of the few access routes to Alnwick through the hills to the west. Its fortifications were reinforced in response to the hostilities on the border with Scotland between 1300 and 1600.
history
In 1174 a mansion was owned by a John of Edlingham on this site . In 1294, one of his descendants, Walter of Edlingham , sold it to William de Felton , who fortified it by building strong curtain walls and a gatehouse and fortifying the great hall and building additional buildings in the courtyard. In 1396 Elizabeth de Felton inherited it and married Sir Edmund Hastings , who had a strong tower with solar added. Her descendants lived in the castle and estate until 1514, when they were bought by George Swinburne, a constable from Prudhoe , whose family they kept until the 18th century.
During this time the castle slowly fell into disrepair; most of the buildings were demolished in the 1660s to use the building material to build farms nearby. Only the tower with the solar remained intact. In 1978 the Department for the Environment acquired the property and carried out extensive archaeological excavations. Before that, the tower with the solar was filled with rubble to a height of three meters, which was removed as part of the work.
The property is now managed by English Heritage and is easily accessible to the public from the nearby St John Baptist Church . William de Felton is buried in this church. There is an information board on the property; Brochures with more detailed information are available in the church for a small donation.
Individual evidence
- ^ Nikolaus Pevsner: Buildings of England . Penguin Books, 1957. Chapter: Northumberland .
Sources and web links
- Edlingham Castle . NorthOfTheTyne.co.uk.
- Photos of Edlingham Castle and the surrounding area on Geograph.org.uk.
- Edlingham Castle . English Heritage.
- John Dodds: Castles and Belligerents, Medieval Strongholds in Northumberland . Keepdate Publishing. ISBN 1-899506-45-4 .
- TH Rowland: Medieval Castles, Towers, Peles and Bastles of Northumberland . Sandhill Press, 1994. ISBN 0-946098-24-7 .
Coordinates: 55 ° 22 ′ 44.4 " N , 1 ° 49 ′ 12" W.