Carlisle Castle

Carlisle Castle

Carlisle Castle
Carlisle
Cumbria
CA3 8UR

Tel: 01228 591 922

Web: Carlisle Castle

About Carlisle Castle

Standing strongly in the city it has dominated for nine centuries, Carlisle Castle was a constantly updated working fortress until well within living memory. Now its rich and varied visitor attractions reflect its long and eventful history.
Even before the medieval castle was begun, this site was an important Roman fortress. Today, the castle still plays a prominent role in Cumbria as one of its best loved landmarks.
The squat, frowning keep, begun during the 12th century by King Henry I of England and completed by King David I of Scotland, is both the oldest part of the castle and a reminder that Carlisle was a disputed frontier fortress, long commanding the especially turbulent western end of the Anglo-Scottish border. The keep houses displays about the castle's history, from medieval assaults via the exploits of Elizabethan Border Reivers to the Civil War siege and Bonnie Prince Charlie's Jacobite Rising of 1745-6.
Carlisle was then the very last English fortress ever to suffer a siege: overwhelmed by Cumberland's Hanoverian army, its Jacobite garrison were imprisoned in the keep's dank basement, where visitors can see the legendary 'licking stones' which they supposedly licked for life-giving moisture. Equally famous are the strange and fantastic carvings on the kee