Gleaston Castle
Gleaston Castle is a ruined castle in a valley about 500 meters northeast of Gleaston , a village between Ulverston and Barrow-in-Furness on the Furness Peninsula in the English county of Cumbria .
construction
The castle ruins consist of the remains of four towers, which are connected by a curtain wall around a roughly rectangular courtyard. The walls are made of limestone that was broken near the castle grounds. Details such as window and door frames are made of soft red sandstone , the origin of which is unknown, although it resembles the sandstone from which nearby Furness Abbey was built. The walls on the southwest corner of the property have a core of clay , as was common in castle building, but the cores of the other walls of Gleaston Castle are made of the same slate mortar that was used to plaster the walls.
history
The castle was first mentioned in a document in 1389, even if John Harington, 2nd Baron Harington , is said to have died at Gleaston Castle as early as 1369. It is generally believed that the 2nd Baron's grandfather, John Harington, 1st Baron Harington , began building the castle around the time he was called to the English Parliament in 1326 . It is said that the Harington family found it necessary to leave Aldingham because the sea was increasingly eroding the cliff on which their tower block stood. Another explanation is that the family needed more space for more servants.
It is possible that some of the buildings dated back to earlier times and were built as a bulwark against the Scots who posed a serious threat to the region following the raids of King Edward I of England and Robert the Bruce taking over the Scottish throne . Most of the castle was certainly built after the devastating Scottish raids of 1316 and 1322, as construction was quick and negligent, using inferior, local building materials, indicating a lack of funds.
The castle was a walled enclosure, 73 meters long in north-south direction, 37 meters wide on the south side and 46 meters wide on the north side. It had four corner towers clad in red sandstone. The donjon in the northwest had three floors and a dungeon . The 2.7-meter-thick curtain wall was made of limestone rubble and was not very strong. In 1415 John Harington received a papal indult for a private chapel and a portable altar for masses. However, it is likely that the castle had its own chapel before that date.
The castle was the headquarters of the Barons Harington (of Aldringham) until the death of William Harington, 5th Baron Harington in 1458 . The estate then fell to William de Harrington's daughter Elizabeth , who married William Bonville, 1st Baron Bonville of Shute , Devon , and the title of 6th Baron Harington to her younger son, William . The Bonvilles made Shute their headquarters; Gleaston Castle was abandoned and quickly fell into disrepair. Gibson writes that the castle was no longer inhabited after 1458.
William Bonville Junior fell with his father in 1460 at the Battle of Wakefield . The elderly Lord Bonville was executed after the victory of the Lancastrians in the Second Battle of St. Albans in 1461. The castle fell to William's newborn daughter Cecily , who later married Thomas Gray, 1st Marquess of Dorset . Then it fell to Henry Gray, 1st Duke of Suffolk , who sold it and the adjoining Fronhof to his bailiff Walter Curwen before he was beheaded in 1554 for high treason . At that time the castle was already in ruins. In 1540 Leyland noted : "There are ruins and walls of a fort in Lancashire called Gleston Castle, which once belonged to Lord Harrington and now to the Marquis of Dorset." One of the southern towers may have been inhabited in the 16th century but was in 1727 a farmhouse attached to the southeast tower. It appears that Curwen sold the property to Thomas Preston , a local landowner, whose descendant, Lord George Cavendish († 1794), was believed to be responsible for building most of what is now the farm.
The Gleaston Castle Farm was an important asset item for the lands of the Cavendish after the industrial revolution made the production of wheat and barley highly profitable. The farm was sold in 1920 to Thomas Barton Jackson of Bolton Manor in Urswick , who resold it in 1927.
Today the castle ruin is a Scheduled Monument and English Heritage has listed it as a Grade I Historic Building. The ruin can be seen from the street, but it is not safe to enter because of its dilapidation. Since 2014, English Heritage has viewed the property as badly dilapidated and in immediate danger of further deterioration. However, it has not yet been possible to agree on a further course of action.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Leslie Irving Gibson: Lancashire Castles and Towers . Dalesman Books, Clapham 1977. p. 22.
- ↑ Gleaston Castle, Aldingham . Gatehouse Gazetteer. , Retrieved April 13, 2016.
- ^ Heritage at Risk Register 2014 North West . English Heritage. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 13, 2016.
literature
- Plantagenet Somerset Fry: The David & Charles Book of Castles . David & Charles, Newton Abbott 1980. ISBN 0-7153-7976-3
Web links
Coordinates: 54 ° 7 '59.2 " N , 3 ° 7' 57" W.