Qualla: Brough, Cumbria

Brough, Cumbria: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dougsim, CC BY-SA 4.0. There are two Broughs. There is Market Brough to the north, strung along the main road, and Church Brough to the south, gathered around a green and a Norman church and the ruined castle of the Cliffords. Until 1977 they were physically continuous; then the A66 bypass cut between them and made the split literal. The village has been here, in one form or another, since Roman soldiers manned the fort of Verterae - "The Forts" - to guard the pass over Stainmore.

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Image: Dougsim | CC BY-SA 4.0

Brough, Cumbria: Verterae

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Supergolden assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. Brough sits where the Roman road climbed out of the Eden valley toward Stainmore on its way to York. The Roman fort - Verterae, plural, perhaps because it commanded more than one approach - occupied the ground south of Swindale Beck, and the rectangle of its earthworks is now a S...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Supergolden assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Brough, Cumbria: St Michael's and the Heaviest Four

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carol Rose, CC BY-SA 2.0. St Michael's Church in Church Brough has Norman bones - parts of it may have been damaged when William the Lion's Scots attacked the castle in 1174 - and a sixteenth-century body. The north aisle was added in the fourteenth century. The tower was built by Thomas Blenkinsop of Hel...

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Image: Carol Rose | CC BY-SA 2.0

Brough, Cumbria: The Burning Holly Tree

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Hone (probably) Uploaded by Tris2000 at en.wikipedia, Public domain. Brough has held onto a Twelfth Night tradition that goes back at least to the eighteenth century. A holly tree - later, ash trees were substituted - would be set alight and carried through the village, followed by a brass band. When the flames had partly gone out, the procession ...

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Image: William Hone (probably) Uploaded by Tris2000 at en.wikipedia | Public domain

Brough, Cumbria: Bells, Castles, Castles, Hotels

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Curtis, CC BY-SA 2.0. Two castles are visible from Brough. The first is Brough Castle itself, English Heritage's free-to-visit ruin on the spur above the bypass. The second is Augill Castle, a Victorian mock-medieval pile built in 1841 by John Bagot Pearson of Kirkby Lonsdale as a weekend retreat; it ...

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Image: Andrew Curtis | CC BY-SA 2.0