Twizel Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Standing at the top of a river cliff overlooking the Till, a stone's throw from the famous Tudor bridge at Twizel and less than a kilometre from the Scottish border, the ruin of Twizel (or Twizell) Castle layers two histories. Beneath the shell of a large 18th-century Gothic Revival folly lies the core of a medieval fortified house, recorded as early as 1415 and devastated by the Scots in 1496. Around 1770, Sir Francis Blake set about enclosing these remains within an ambitious "Gothick" castle, planned on five storeys and entirely vaulted for fear of fire. The work, carried out with the help of Nisbet of Kelso, went on for nearly half a century without ever being completed. Today only two roofless storeys survive, flanked by round corner towers. The whole, a Grade II* listed building and a Scheduled Monument that includes traces of a medieval village and a garden, strikingly illustrates the meeting of border architecture and picturesque taste. The ruins are on Historic England's Heritage at Risk Register because of their fragile condition.