Scaleby Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Scaleby Castle lies just south of the village of Scaleby, a few kilometres north-east of Carlisle, in the historic county of Cumberland. Located near the Scottish border, it served as a front line of defence during the Anglo-Scottish campaigns of the late 13th and early 14th centuries. It is a rare example, in north-west England, of a quadrangular castle surrounded by circular moats: an inner moat, now filled in, and an outer moat that still holds water, edged by a bank. Around a courtyard stand a ruined four-storey tower house, a polygonal tower, a gatehouse with a portcullis and ranges remodelled in the 17th and 19th centuries. The ensemble offers a rare reading of the evolution of a border fortress into a country house: a medieval tower burned during the Civil War, a hall brought up to date in the 1680s, and then a Gothic Revival wing attributed to Thomas Rickman. The site, listed at the highest grade, is also the birthplace of the Reverend William Gilpin, theorist of the picturesque.