EDLINGHAM CASTLE

Northumberland

This handsome little ruin stands in a remote and attractive valley.  By Northumbrian standards it is quite a small Castle, although it is still impressive.

The first Castle dates to around 1295 when the land was sold by Walter de Edlingham to one William de Felton who built fortified hall here on the site of Edlingham's previous moated manor house.  His son, also William, inherited the hall in 1328 and began to turn the hall into a Castle proper, adding a gatehouse, a tower which is to all intents and purposes a small keep, and a curtain wall.  The last de Felton, John II, died in 1396 and the Castle passed to the Swinburnes who remodelled it along the "fortified manor house" lines more popular by that stage.

The Castle remained with the Swinburnes until it was abandoned at around the time of the Civil War when William Swinburne, by then very aged, asked Parliament not to confiscate his lands due to their proximity to the Scots and their having been plundered and made uninhabitable.

By 1661 the Castle had become a quarry for local house builders and by 1715 it was "now in ruins".

Today the Castle is owned by English Heritage.

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