Carlisle Castle (Carlisle England)
The last fortress to be besieged in the history of England
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“This grim, red stronghold kept a forbidding eye on one end of the Anglo-Scottish border, where there was constant raiding and rustling. As late as 1745 the castle fell to Charles Edward Stuart‘a (“the Young Pretender”) Scots Jacobite army, and the last castle siege in English history took place a year later, when the Jacobite garrison vainly resisted the Duke of Cumberland.
Taken prisoner and kept without water, the Jacobites were reduced to licking stones in desperation; the “licking stones” are still there.
On the site of a Roman fort, the castle was built of earth and timber in William Rufus’s (1087-1100) time and them reconstructed in stone, probably under his successor Henry I. Through the succeeding centuries it was strengthened and modernized, and though the twelfth-century keep is the oldest part to survive, the rounded battlements for deflecting cannonballs were not added until about 1540.
The castle changed hands between the English and Scots several times. David I of Scots held it for twenty years from 1135 and Robert the Bruce besieged it in 1315. One of the cells has carvings made by captives in c. 1480, but the two most famous prisoners were Mary, Queen of Scots, who was a “guest” in 1568, and border bandit “Kinmont Willie” Armstrong, who escaped in 1596. The fortress was besieged fir months in 1644 by the Scots, in alliance with the English Parliament against Charles I. The Royalist garrison surrendered after they had eaten all their dogs and as many of the rats as they could catch. Today the castle contains Roman finds and the museum of the King’s Own Royal Border Regiment. (RC)
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⬇️In 1745 Carlisle Castle was held by Jacobites, only to become their prison when it was recaptured.
⬇️Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned at Carlisle Castle after fleeing from Scotland in 1568.
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