Carlisle and Carlisle Castle.

I couldn't possibly visit Carlisle without taking some time out to visit the castle and the town.

Extract from Britain's Top 25 Castles concerning Carlisle Castle, written but yet to be published..

The caste is situated on some high land on a narrow neck of land where the River Caldew joins the River Eden. The Romans built a turf and timber fort here in 72AD and established the town of Luguvalium.

Fifty years later Hadrian’s Wall was built just to the north. William II also known as William Rufus (1056 – 1100), third son of William the Conqueror defeated the local warlord and built a motte and bailey on the same site as the Roman’s had used in 1092. It was Henry I who visited Carlisle in 1122 and ordered a castle to be built and hence the large square keep that can be seen today.

The castle was the principal fortress of England’s north western border with Scotland. It changed hands frequently and was lost to David I of Scotland after Henry I’s death in 1135. The castle has suffered more sieges than any other castle in Britain with Scottish armies besieging the castle seven times between 1173 and 1461. A curtain wall was added to enclose the inner ward. Due to the shape of the site. it has a triangular shape. A large wall was added to create the outer ward and enclose an even larger area.

Henry VIII had divorced his wife, dissolved the monasteries and broke with Rome and had become internationally isolated. The threat from Scotland increased with their renewed treaty of alliance with France. Therefore Henry VIII ordered more defences for Carlisle Castle. The keep was lowered to make a gun platform, the inner ward walls were strengthened and the half-moon battery below the gate into the inner ward was added in 1542 which gave a commanding field of fire across the outer ward.

With the Act of Union in 1603, Scotland and England were united under a single monarch. But the sieges didn’t stop. Carlisle supported the king and was garrisoned by Royalists. After the defeat of the king’s army at Marston Moor in July 1644, a roundhead army arrived to besiege the castle in October 1644. The castle held on for nearly a year until news reached them of the king’s defeat at the Battle of Naseby in June 1645. There was little hope of any support arriving to lift the siege and the castle surrendered.

The castle’s tenth and final siege and the longest ever siege of a castle in Britain occurred during the second Jacobite rising of 1745. This was a last ditched attempt by loyal supporters with assistance from France to restore the exiled Stuarts to the throne. Prince Charles Edward Stuart also known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, led his army south and after five days captured the castle in November 1745. The Jacobite army marched south and reached Derby. They had met little resistance. The bulk of the British army was fighting in Europe during the War of the Austrian Succession 1740–1748 and the French hoped that this would either be a distraction or at best make the British pull out the conflict.

The Jacobite army found little local support for their cause. Several English battalions had been recalled from Europe to deal with this threat. The Jacobite army saw the writing on the wall and retreated. In December it retreated over the border into Scotland and left a garrison of 400 in Carlisle Castle to hold off the English pursuit which was led by the Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, the third son of George II.

The Duke of Cumberland reached Carlisle and the final siege started. The old castle was no match for modern artillery and after just nine days the castle was captured. Some of the garrison were imprisoned and 31 were executed.

The Duke of Cumberland followed the Jacobites as they retreated to Inverness. They were finally defeated at Culloden in April 1746. This was the last battle on Scottish soil and the final defeat of the Jacobite cause. Prince Charles Edward Stuart fled with a price on his head and after traveling through the country eventually left the country aboard the French frigate L'Heureux, arriving in France in September. The Prince's Cairn marks the traditional spot on the shores of Loch nan Uamh in Lochaber from which he made his final departure from Scotland.

The castle was used to house Napoleonic prisoners of war. Various adaptions were implemented to make the castle suitable for a garrison until they moved out in 1959. Much of these additions have been removed to reveal a more authentic medieval castle. There is a lot to see with a wealth of history and must get into the top 25 castles.

One of a mirror image of a pair of towers built in 1812 either side of the southern entrance through the city walls into the city to replace the similar towers built by Henry VIII in 1542. 

William, Earl of Lonsdale, a prominent local politician and landowner outside the right hand tower of the entrance into the city.

A traditional stone building on the corner of Lonsdale Street, now a bank.

The old city hall in market square with its cross to the right of the picture.

The Crown and Mitre Hotel overlooking the Market Square, but not my hotel as I had booked into one at half the price but a couple of kilometres walk away.

I visited the old local covered market, built in the 19th century...

                                         

...the front entrance...

...details of the roof...

...the side entrance... and still magnificent to see...

...but even teh back entrance is still sculptured with Corinthinian yopped colums eitehr side of teh entrance.

The east facade of the cathedral.

The southern entrance to the cathedral.

An internal view of the east window.

                                         

                    

Some of the magnificent organ pipes as seen from the altar.

                   

And yet more pipes on the other side, the larger and deeper bass note pipes.

The south side of the abbey church next to the cathedral. 

Part of the city walls erected by Henry VIII that abut the castle.

                                        

A view of the keep.

The southern entrance into the castle.

A view of the city walls from the inside that run up tp and abut the castle walls.

If you have followed the Hadeian's Wall walk blog and all the photos of Roman walls, you will not need me to stay that this is a section of Hadrian's wall that abuts the castle walls with later additions added on top. 

Two mosaic covered concrete armchairs in the gardens that surround the castle.

Some of the northern walls' buttresses.

The entrance into the inner citadel defended by a half moon battery.

The Museum of Cumbria Military History located within the castle complex.

The castle is still technically an army base so some of the buildings are not open to visitors. All of them are named after famous battles such as Alma, Gallipoli, Ypres and Arnhan and I had both recognised them and had been to the site of teh battle all except one, the Battle Of Arroyo in 1811 during the Peninsula Wars.

A howitzer at the corner of the Alma building housing the museum and the Arnhem building to the left.

And just opposite the castle entrance is the Tullie Museum for those that have not yet had enough of history.