Twizell Castle
Twizell Castle (also Twizel Castle ) is a folly in a bend of the Till in Tillmouth Park , about 10 miles southwest of Berwick-upon-Tweed in the English county of Northumberland . The never completed building from the 18th century based on a medieval residential tower is considered a Scheduled Monument and English Heritage has it as Historical Building II *. Grade listed. Below the ruin is the medieval Twizell Bridge over the river. The area can be seen from a footpath that leads past the castle ruins from the road. In the garden of the ruin you can find earthworks of the former medieval village of Twizell .
The castle
A medieval residential tower stood on the site in 1415 and was held by Sir John Heron . It was destroyed in 1496 by the Scottish Army under the leadership of King James IV and Perkin Warbeck . James IV returned on August 24, 1513 on his way to the siege of Norham Castle and held a council or parliament session in "Twesil" or "Twesilhaugh".
The property was sold by the Herons to a member of the Selby family around 1520 . A report from 1561 describes only the remains of a residential tower and a barmkin (German: enclosure). All that remains of these medieval buildings are walled-up windows, a beveled entrance and the original northeast corner stones .
In 1685 Sir Francis Blake († 1718) bought the property for £ 1944 and an annual lease of £ 100 from the widow Selby. The Blake family lived there until 1738 when they moved to nearby Tillmouth Hall .
From around 1770 Sir Francis Blake († 1780) worked on the reconstruction of the castle as a neo-Gothic country house according to plans by the architect James Nesbit from Kelso . The new building was supposed to be five stories high, but despite 40 years of construction, this project was never finished. When the Blakes built a new country house in Tillmouth Park in 1882, much of the unfinished Twizell Castle was demolished and the building blocks were used in the new construction. Today the two-story high ruin is a folly. It has a rectangular floor plan with round towers at the corners and two wings on the north side. The basement rooms in the main block are made of stone and covered with brick vaults as a precaution against fires.
The property is in poor condition and was therefore officially added to the English Heritage Heritage-at-Risk registry in 2008.
Individual evidence
- ^ Patrick Fraser Tytler: History of Scotland . Volume 5 (1841). P. 57. Chapter: Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland . Volume 2 (1814). P. 278
Sources and web links
- Commons : Twizell Castle - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
- Twizell Castle . Images of England. English Heritage. Retrieved October 28, 2016.
- Twizel Castle (Duddo) . In: Keys to the Past . Archived from the original on October 7, 2007. Retrieved October 28, 2016.
- Twizell Castle . In: Gatehouse Gazetteer . Retrieved October 28, 2016.
- Twizell Castle . In: North of the Tyne . Retrieved October 28, 2016.
Coordinates: 55 ° 40 ′ 58.8 ″ N , 2 ° 11 ′ 16.8 ″ W.