Dunstanburgh Castle
History
Along the sea-battered Northumberland coast of England resides Dunstanburgh Castle. It was built by Thomas, the 2nd Earl of Lancaster, the wealthiest nobleman in England, beginning in 1313.
Several decades later, in the 1380s, John of Gaunt, who had inherited the castle in 1362, added a second gatehouse to the fortress and converted the massive gatehouse built by Thomas of Lancaster into a keep. However, his enhancements were performed hastily using a poor-quality stone. Consequently, they did not withstand the test of time, as this portion of the structure fell into ruins much faster than the original construction.
The headland was occupied long before the castle. Excavations in the 1920s and 1930s found prehistoric and Roman pottery, and in 2003, English Heritage archaeologists identified the rampart of an Iron Age promontory fort beneath the medieval defenses.
The coastal path from Craster, with the castle ahead.
Prior to Lancaster's arrival, the lands were controlled by Simon de Montfort in the middle of the 13th century, whose primary residence was Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire. After de Montfort was killed at the Battle of Evesham in 1265, Henry III gave the lands to Edmund, Lord of Embleton, younger brother of Edward I, and father of Thomas. After Edmund's death, the lands passed to Thomas, Earl of Lancaster. In 1307, Edward II, a cousin of Thomas, took the throne to become King of England. However, his devotion and favoritism towards the deplorable Piers Gaveston did not sit well with the Northern barons, who Thomas of Lancaster eventually led in the murder of Gaveston in 1312. Now at odds with King Edward II, Thomas of Lancaster built Dunstanburgh Castle to protect himself. After months of tension, the king issued Thomas of Lancaster a formal pardon in October 1313. However, construction of the castle was well underway by that time. On August 21st, 1316, King Edward II granted a formal license to crenelate Dunstanburgh Castle, which was nearing completion. Nonetheless, it represented the king's approval and acknowledgment of the castle's lawfulness.
Work began in the spring of 1313 with a ditch on the western side and a great gatehouse. The castle was probably ready for use by March 1319, when Robert of Binchester became its first constable. Thomas rarely saw his new castle. In August 1319, he passed through on his way to the siege of Berwick, almost certainly the only time he ever visited.
Thomas's resistance to Edward II and his new favorites, Hugh Despenser the Elder and Hugh Despenser the Younger, ended at the Battle of Boroughbridge on March 16th, 1322. He was captured trying to flee to Dunstanburgh Castle and was beheaded at Pontefract Castle. Edward II placed a garrison of 40 foot soldiers and 40 hobelars, or lightly armed cavalry, in the castle. By 1326, it had been returned to Thomas's brother, Henry, and in the 1350s, it sheltered people and their goods from Embleton and the surrounding townships during a Scottish raid. In 1362, John of Gaunt inherited the castle through his marriage to Henry's granddaughter, Blanche, and it passed to the Duchy of Lancaster.
John of Gaunt's Gatehouse.
Amid Scottish raids, John of Gaunt inspected the border defenses in 1380 and began three years of work to modernize Dunstanburgh. First, the master mason John Lewyn raised a mantlet wall 6.5 meters high and 1.3 meters thick across the north side of the great gatehouse, creating a courtyard that separated the lord's private quarters from the rest of the castle. After the Peasants' Revolt of June 1381, the master mason Henry Holme strengthened that wall with a new tower and gateway and built six service buildings inside the enclosure. Around 1383, a new western gatehouse with a barbican and a drawbridge was completed. The carriageway of Thomas's gatehouse was probably blocked, John of Gaunt's gate became the main entrance, and the old gatehouse became the lord's tower, or donjon. Although ashlar stone had been ordered, the new masonry was not of good quality, perhaps because skilled craftsmen were in short supply while fortresses were being built or repaired all over northern England, or simply because the work was done too quickly. Holme had worked at Berwick in 1360, and by 1431, the gatehouse was reported to be on the point of collapse.
Interestingly, English castles were typically built to defend a border or location along a critical travel route. Dunstanburgh's remote location along the coast was not considered a necessary location worth defending by the barons who controlled the territory before the arrival of Lancaster. Instead, the castle was constructed due to political uncertainties and increased Scottish raids from the north.
The ruined gatehouse, seen from inside the castle.
For the most part, Dunstanburgh Castle was a refuge during Scottish raids and barons traveling along the Northumberland coast. While predominantly uneventful, the castle was a location of action during the Wars of the Roses. After the Lancastrian defeat at Towton in 1461, Sir Ralph Percy, joint constable of the castle, briefly submitted to the Yorkists, but in 1462, he declared again for Henry VI when Margaret of Anjou landed at Bamburgh with a French army. The Yorkist Earls of Warwick and Worcester besieged the castle, and Sir Thomas Malory, the author of Le Morte d'Arthur, fought in their army. Percy surrendered on Christmas Eve 1462, but the Yorkists did not secure the castle for good until June 1464, when they battered it with cannon fire, causing severe damage from which it never fully recovered.
Sheep now graze inside the walls.
By the late 15th and 16th centuries, the castle was too large and expensive to maintain. Surveys in 1538 and 1543 found the curtain walls in poor repair and some lead roofs partly missing, with only the gatehouse still habitable. Around 1594, a widow named Alice Craster lived in the gatehouse and used the castle as the center of a farming estate. As the Scottish border became more stable, James I sold the castle into private ownership in 1604-05, and it passed to Sir Ralph Grey of Howick Hall and the Grey family. In 1695, 240 Winchester bushels of corn and several cartloads of hay were harvested inside the walls. The ruins also attracted artists, including Thomas Girtin and, later, J. M. W. Turner, who admired them especially against a stormy sea.
In 1869, Samuel Eyres bought the ruins from the Earl of Tankerville. By the 1920s, the castle's owner, Sir Arthur Sutherland, could no longer afford to maintain it, and he placed it under the state's guardianship in 1930. When World War II broke out in 1939, the castle became part of the coastal defenses against a possible German landing and was used as an observation post by a small detachment of the Royal Armoured Corps. It was refortified with pill boxes and anti-tank trenches, a gun pit was added outside the walls, and mines were laid along the shore. Today, Dunstanburgh Castle is owned by the National Trust, which also manages the surrounding coastline, and is administered by English Heritage.
Castle Highlights
Dunstanburgh Castle is located on a remote outcrop along the North Sea. The castle was once one of the largest castles in Northern England. Even today, in ruins, its massive gatehouse and castle backed towards the sea would make any attacker think twice.
Thomas of Lancaster's Gatehouse.
A long walk from the car park in the south or across the golf course to the north will be necessary for visitors to the castle. The view of the castle as you approach from either direction is well worth the walk. With its twin D-shaped towers flanking a vaulted passage, the gatehouse remains the most intact portion of the castle and the best place to explore. Although a ruin now, ample remains of the gatehouse still exist to illustrate how large the towers were centuries ago. In addition, remnants of staircases and multiple floors within the towers still exist. If you believe the ghost story about Dunstanburgh, a secret hidden room exists somewhere close to or inside the gatehouse, just waiting to be rediscovered.
The Lilburn Tower.
Almost as interesting as the gatehouse is the Lilburn Tower, located along the northern wall of the castle. Most towers of the period were built with circular-shaped exterior walls to help deflect arrows or large projectiles fired from trebuchets and minimize structural damage. However, the Lilburn Tower was constructed with rectangular walls, possibly due to its location perched high above the surrounding fields, where it would not need the extra defense afforded by rounded walls. Either way, the primary purpose of the Lilburn Tower was to serve as an observation post for persons approaching from the north either by land or sea. Lastly, Dunstanburgh Castle also has a very large inner bailey which may have been used for farming or grazing livestock within its walls when protection was needed.
Dunstanburgh Castle is also haunted.
