Bailey & Bew Castle - in the Debatable Lands

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The gatehouse in the south-west corner is the best surviving part of the castle.

The Scots had captured the castle in 1401, when it was the home of Christiana de Middleton and her son John, who were taken prisoner and ransomed, and after the English regained it, the Duke of Gloucester ordered that it be garrisoned against future attack by the Scots and the gatehouse was added around 1478.

The gatehouse stonework is still standing almost to its original height.
The castle was attacked and its outbuildings burned by the Armstrongs in 1541, as revenge for the earlier murder of Ambrose Armstrong when he had been caught thieving cattle, and the castle itself was ransacked and burnt by Border Reivers in 1583.

Standing in the gatehouse.

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From a corner of the gatehouse rises this staircase within the thickness of the walls. It led to a garde-robe (toilet) and to two spy holes overlooking the entrance.

The castle passed to the Grahams in 1630 and gradually decayed until it was sold to the neighbouring farm in 1900. In 1968 it was sold to a London property company who planned to sell it in many small non-removeable squares to anyone who wanted to own part of a historic castle but the scheme failed. No one is quite sure who now owns the castle and it continues to decay, though it is listed by English Heritage as a historic building which cannot be demolished.


I left Bewcastle to have lunch at Carlisle Airport and on my way I spotted what appeared to be a Tower House.

In fact there were two towers, with two-storey accommodation linking them and a walled courtyard.

Askerton Castle was a medieval Dacre and later Howard stronghold, fortified against the Scottish Reivers, which passed through marriage to a daughter of the 9th Earl of Carlisle and into the Eden family who continue to operate a working farm from here today.

That's all for today folks.