Qualla: Brough Castle

Brough Castle: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frances Grose, Public domain. Two fires bookend the story of Brough Castle. The first started after a Christmas feast in 1521, when Henry Clifford's revels turned into a blaze that gutted the place. The second came in 1666, just a year after Lady Anne Clifford finally celebrated her own Christmas in the keep she had spent a lifetime restoring. Between those two fires lay nearly a millennium of border violence, fortress-building, and stubborn aristocratic memory.

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Image: Frances Grose | Public domain

Brough Castle: Built on Roman Bones

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Medcalf, CC BY-SA 2.0. When William Rufus rode into the north-west in 1091, he was looking for ground that would hold a castle. He found it at Verterae, a three-acre Roman fort that had guarded the Stainmore Pass for centuries before being abandoned in the fifth. The earthworks were still there, the ro...

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Image: David Medcalf | CC BY-SA 2.0

Brough Castle: The Scots Come South

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit malcolm tebbit, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1173 William the Lion of Scotland invaded as part of the Great Revolt against Henry II. His army tried Wark and failed, tried Carlisle and failed, took Appleby, and then arrived at Brough. The castle was held by six knights. Six. They put up enough of a fight that William had ...

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Image: malcolm tebbit | CC BY-SA 2.0

Brough Castle: The Clifford Centuries

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karl and Ali, CC BY-SA 2.0. By the late 1260s the Clifford family controlled Brough, and they kept it for almost four hundred years. Robert Clifford rebuilt the east wall around 1308 and added a new hall and a circular tower of apartments - Clifford's Tower - before dying at Bannockburn in 1314. The region ...

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Image: Karl and Ali | CC BY-SA 2.0

Brough Castle: Lady Anne's Long Memory

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karl and Ali, CC BY-SA 2.0. Lady Anne Clifford was a royalist who somehow kept her northern estates through the English Civil War, protected by powerful Parliamentary friends. Between 1659 and 1661 she rebuilt Brough, doing more restoration here than anywhere else on her properties. Her approach was strikin...

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Image: Karl and Ali | CC BY-SA 2.0