In the mood for a wander around a ruin, I took a trip down to Berwick upon Tweed to visit the castle there. Unlike many castles I’ve been to before, the ruins of this one are pretty easy to find as the train station is right in the middle of them. Not that you’d really notice, as the ruined wall on the far side is the only real hint of the once grand structure that stood there. Most people would never realise that they are passing through the great hall of a castle where some major events in the history of Scotland and England took place. While they are sitting there waiting for their train to pull out of the station, various ghosts from the past are wandering around them, kings, noblemen and lowly peasants strutting and flitting around much like the pigeons on the station platform who bob and flap by.
Berwick Castle was built for King David I of Scotland in the 1120s to protect the important harbour town of Berwick upon Tweed from English forces. The castle was then used by Malcolm IV to imprison those who had fallen foul of him. In 1175 the castle and the town were surrendered to King Henry II of England as part of a ransom after the capture of the Scottish King, William the Lion, at Alnwick Castle. A little while later, 1189 to be exact, the castle and town were sold back to the Scots by King Richard I so that he could fund the Third Crusade. It all stayed in Scots hands for a quite a few years, despite being ransacked in 1216 by King John I of England who had much of the population of the town tortured until they handed over their valuables to him and his men.
In 1292 King Edward I was asked to arbitrate on who should succeed to the Scottish throne following the death of the only remaining heir to Alexander III. At the great hall in Berwick Castle, he announced that he had decided in favour of John Balliol rather than Robert the Bruce. Edward and Balliol soon fell out though and this led in 1296 to Edward and his army capturing the castle and the town. Edward ordered that the Scottish garrison stationed at the castle and the inhabitants of Berwick were to be slaughtered as a warning to those who rebelled against him. It is recorded that – ‘When the town had been taken…and its citizens had submitted, Edward spared no one, whatever the age or sex, and for two days streams of blood flowed from the bodies of the slain, for in his tyrannous rage he ordered 7,500 souls of both sexes to be massacred...So that mills could be turned by the flow of their blood.’
In 1306, the Countess of Buchan, who was a close ally to Robert the Bruce and had taken part in his coronation, was captured by the English and held at Berwick Castle. There King Edward ordered that she be ‘closely confined in an abode of stone and iron made in the shape of a cross, and let her be hung up out of doors in the open air of Berwick, that both in life and after her death, she may be a spectacle and eternal reproach to travellers.’ For four years she was imprisoned in this way before being released to the Carmelite Friars at Berwick.
In 1318 the castle and town were recaptured for the Scots by Robert the Bruce and were held for a few years before falling again to the English. And so, it went on and on until finally in 1482 they were taken for the final time by Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later King Richard III) for the English King, Henry VI.
Under Queen Elisabeth I, ramparts were built around the town of Berwick, and the castle became somewhat redundant. It quickly fell into disrepair and in 1603 after the Union of Crowns when King James VI of Scotland also became King of England, the castle was sold to the Earl of Dunbar. He demolished part of it to make way for a grand house for himself, but he died before the project could be completed. A lot of the stone from the castle was then taken and reused in the construction of various other buildings.
In 1847 the great hall of the castle was demolished to make way for the railway station that now stands there, and all that remains now are a few walls and ruined towers.
After taking a wander round and through the ruins of the castle, I left a Skulferatu in a gap in the stones of the White Wall.
The coordinates for the Skulferatu are -
Latitude 55.773434
Longitude -2.013114
what3words: power.stocks.gent
I used the following sources for information on Berwick Castle -
