We are on day 2 of our weeks vacation in North East England, and our first stop this morning was Edlingham Castle. Its an old ruin with a cool feature of one of its towers being caught and strapped in place while in the process of collapse !
It dates from around the 13th century and was strengthened due to the regular cross border skirmishes between England and Scotland (before we were friends !).
It was quite a beautiful morning, so we were pretty lucky with the weather.
The wider buildings of the castle are quite derelict, but this gave the kids a lot to run around in - and they were happily playing hide and seek for a while.
The Castle is maintained by English Heritage and is free to visit. Its fairly safe as long as you dont go climbing on the higher parts of the remains !
The Castle was inhabited until around the 17th century, after which it began to fall in to disrepair. A lot of it was then taken down and used to provide materials for the building of farms in the surrounding area.
The castle had quite a few floors, and in the pic above you can see the intricacy of the interior stone work including the great fireplace, which would probably have been a focal point for the main floor/hall in the castle.
The picture above is the view up through the chimney stack of the great fireplace, from the bottom of the castle. You can still see the fire/heat colouring of the stones which is quite cool.
The upper parts are barred of for safety, as it really is in a poor state.
You can still see where the spiral stairs were looking up through the tower above.
In the picture above can see how they have stitched the leaning tower to the main mass of the castle. Those rods done look that big to me ! Although they have also concreted the crack at the base.
And the castle certainly had some lovely features as can be seen by the lovely round remains above, with defensive arrow slit !
And above you can see part of the internal drain system still in place - and probably still working during down pours !
We really liked it, and it even kept the kids happy, noting that they are in the awkward early teenage years, so keeping them happy is pretty impressive all in itself (the rest of the day didnt go so well on that front !).
The setting for the castle was also really nice, in a valley surrounded by moors on all sides with crags and lots of purple heather !
All in all, well worth the visit, and I'd definitely go back again !
