Qualla: Bolton Castle

Bolton Castle: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris06, CC BY-SA 4.0. On a clear July evening in 1568 a deposed Scottish queen rode through the gate of a castle she had never seen, accompanied by thirty of her household and watched by guards who were trying to figure out where to put her. Mary Stuart had crossed the Solway Firth two months earlier after losing the Battle of Langside. She was 25, widowed twice, mother of a one-year-old future King James I of England, and an enormous diplomatic problem. Elizabeth I had moved her south from Carlisle to a castle deep in Wensleydale, partly for security and partly because nobody quite knew what else to do. The castle was Bolton, and it had been waiting for someone like her since 1399.

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Image: Chris06 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bolton Castle: Eighteen Thousand Marks

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris06, CC BY-SA 4.0. Bolton Castle was built between 1378 and 1399 by Richard Scrope, the 1st Baron Scrope of Bolton, on the north side of Wensleydale. The contract with the master mason John Lewyn survives from September 1378. The royal licence to crenellate followed in July 1379. The reported cost ...

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Image: Chris06 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bolton Castle: Pilgrimage and Punishment

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Dibb, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1536 John Scrope, the 8th Baron, threw the castle's weight behind the Pilgrimage of Grace - the great northern Catholic rebellion against Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. When the rising collapsed, Scrope gave sanctuary inside Bolton to Adam Sedbar, the Abbot of ne...

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Image: Michael Dibb | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bolton Castle: A Queen in the South-West Tower

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Helen Wilkinson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Mary spent six months at Bolton, from July 1568 to January 1569. She was given Henry Scrope's own apartments in the south-west tower. Of her retinue of 51 people, only 30 men and 6 ladies-in-waiting could be lodged inside. The rest took rooms in the village. She brought a hairdre...

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Image: Helen Wilkinson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bolton Castle: The Shawl and the Long Survival

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Seale, CC BY-SA 2.0. Local legend says Mary tried to escape and fled toward Leyburn, dropping her shawl on the cliff edge that runs west out of the town. The escarpment is still called The Shawl and remains a favourite walking route with sweeping views down Wensleydale. The story is almost certainly ...

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Image: David Seale | CC BY-SA 2.0