Warkworth Castle is famous for its cross shaped keep and that alone makes it worth a visit. It occupies a well defended location, surrounded on three sides by the River Coquet with the North Sea less than half a mile away.
Visiting Warkworth Castle
Warkworth castle is north of Newcastle on Northumbria’s Castle Coast. It is a lovely location in a very pretty village and has a dedicated car park. There are limited catering facilities in the castle shop but plenty of options in the village. There are also toilets in the castle.
My Experience
We pulled into Warkworth castle and were actually able to park so we made ourselves lunch before heading off to visit, the first time the benefit of the motorhome was apparent. This was part of a motor home tour we did of Northern England, detailed in my blog here.
Warkworth Castle is superb – a huge keep in excellent condition and of a very unusual design with a curtain wall and plenty of other partly surviving buildings. The view of the keep through the gateway, while not quite matching the Treasury at Petra, is certainly impressive.
There is plenty of decoration in the castle and concessions to comfort, as befits the home of the Percy family, one of the primary English border lords. You can actually visit the interior of the keep, thanks to some Victorian restoration works and see some rooms that have ceilings, a real novelty! The weather was great too, blue sky, so we spent a couple of hours ambling around before going back to the motor home.
The second batch of photos were taken in 2007 on a rather greyer day.
Warkworth Castle Photo Gallery
These next photos were taken in the dim and distant past of 2007 and they were not taken in RAW so these are pretty much unedited jpgs. I’d like to think my own skill in photography has moved on since then too so these may not be ideal pictures. Sorry!
History
Warkworth Castle is a ruined medieval building in Warkworth in the English county of Northumberland. The village and castle occupy a loop of the River Coquet, less than a mile from England’s north-east coast. When the castle was founded is uncertain: traditionally its construction has been ascribed to Prince Henry of Scotland, Earl of Northumbria, in the mid-12th century, but it may have been built by King Henry II of England when he took control of England’s northern counties. Warkworth Castle was first documented in a charter of 1157–1164 when Henry II granted it to Roger fitz Richard. The timber castle was considered “feeble”, and was left undefended when the Scots invaded in 1173.
Roger’s son Robert inherited and improved the castle. Robert was a favourite of King John, and hosted him at Warkworth Castle in 1213. The castle remained in the family line, with periods of guardianship when heirs were too young to control their estates. King Edward I stayed overnight in 1292 and John de Clavering, descendant of Roger fitz Richard, made the Crown his inheritor. With the outbreak of the Anglo-Scottish Wars, Edward II invested in castles including Warkworth where he funded the strengthening of the garrison in 1319. Twice in 1327 the Scots besieged the castle without success.
John de Clavering died in 1332 and his widow in 1345, at which point The 2nd Baron Percy of Alnwick took control of Warkworth Castle, having been promised Clavering’s property by Edward III. Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, added the imposing keep overlooking the village of Warkworth in the late 14th century. The fourth earl remodelled the buildings in the bailey and began the construction of a collegiate church within the castle, but work on the latter was abandoned after his death. Although The 10th Earl of Northumberland supported Parliament during the English Civil War, the castle was damaged during the conflict. The last Percy earl died in 1670. In the mid-18th century the castle found its way into the hands of Hugh Smithson, who married the indirect Percy heiress. He adopted the surname “Percy” and founded the dynasty of the Dukes of Northumberland, through whom possession of the castle descended.
In the late 19th century, the dukes refurbished Warkworth Castle and Anthony Salvin was commissioned to restore the keep. The 8th Duke of Northumberland gave custody of the castle to the Office of Works in 1922. Since 1984 English Heritage has cared for the site, which is a Grade I listed building and a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
References
The English Heritage site with opening times is here
The history above is copied from the Wiki page here