Qualla: Clitheroe Castle

Clitheroe Castle: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phil Platt, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is a hole in the southeast wall of the keep. It is roughly the shape of a cannonball strike, ragged at the edges, big enough to put your head through. Two stories explain it. The first is that the Devil, gathering rocks on Pendle Hill three miles east, slung a boulder at the castle in a fit of malice, missed, and dropped his apron-load near Pendleton instead. The second is that Oliver Cromwell, standing on the same Pendle Hill, fired a cannon and hit. The castle's guidebook deadpans: "It must have been a good cannon for the time to reach that far." The real cause is probably the slow widening of a Norman arrow loop through eight centuries of weather. But the legends are what people remember.

Read more: Clitheroe Castle on Qualla

Image: Phil Platt | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clitheroe Castle: The Smallest Keep

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phil and Juliette Platt, CC BY-SA 2.0. Clitheroe's Norman keep is the second smallest stone-built keep surviving in England. It sits on top of Castle Hill - a 39-metre outcrop of pale grey limestone, identified geologically as a Waulsortian mudmound, the southwesternmost of a chain of fossil-rich reef-knolls in the Bo...

Read more: Clitheroe Castle on Qualla

Image: Phil and Juliette Platt | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clitheroe Castle: Caput of an Honour

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karl1587, Public domain. Clitheroe was the caput - the head - of the Honour of Clitheroe, a vast feudal estate sprawling along the western Pennines from the Ribble to the moors above Manchester. After the Norman Conquest the lands passed to Roger de Poitou, then to Robert de Lacy of Pontefract sometime d...

Read more: Clitheroe Castle on Qualla

Image: Karl1587 | Public domain

Clitheroe Castle: Civil War and Public Park

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Loggan, Public domain. By 1602 a survey called the castle "very ruinous" - parts of the buildings were collapsing. In 1644 Prince Rupert briefly garrisoned it during the Civil War, only to abandon it after the Royalist defeat at Marston Moor. Parliament ordered it slighted in 1649. In 1660 Charles II g...

Read more: Clitheroe Castle on Qualla

Image: David Loggan | Public domain

Clitheroe Castle: What's There Now

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexander P Kapp, CC BY-SA 2.0. The buildings on the castle site house Clitheroe Castle Museum, which reopened after a £3.5 million refurbishment in 2009. Inside the Steward's House are 5,000 social history objects, a geology collection with four type and figured specimens reflecting the limestone reef beneath ...

Read more: Clitheroe Castle on Qualla

Image: Alexander P Kapp | CC BY-SA 2.0