Qualla: Great Siege of Scarborough Castle

Great Siege of Scarborough Castle: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 18 February 1645, Sir John Meldrum walked into Scarborough at the head of 1,700 Parliamentarian troops and took the town almost without a fight. He took the harbour, he took the South Steel Battery, he took the streets - everything except the castle on the cliff above. Inside that castle, Sir Hugh Cholmley refused to surrender. For the next five months, what followed was one of the bloodiest sieges of the entire English Civil War. By the time Cholmley walked out on 25 July, twenty-five of his original five hundred defenders were still fit to fight. The keep was a ruin. The Cannon Royal had fired from inside St. Mary's Church. Meldrum had been blown off a cliff trying to chase his hat. The story of Scarborough Castle changing hands seven times in six years began with this siege.

Great Siege of Scarborough Castle: Cholmley Changes Sides

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Early in the war, Sir Hugh Cholmley held Scarborough for Parliament. The castle on its precipitous headland, the strategic supply port below, the access to the coal trade out of the Tyne - it was a position Parliament needed to keep. In March 1643, Cholmley changed sides. His own...

Great Siege of Scarborough Castle: Marston Moor and the Run of Defeats

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 2 July 1644, the Parliamentarians and their new Scottish allies, the Covenanters, broke the Royalist army of the north at Marston Moor outside York. The next day, the Marquess of Newcastle - the King's captain-general in the north - boarded a ship at Scarborough with his senio...

Great Siege of Scarborough Castle: Meldrum's Astonishing Fall

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Sir John Meldrum took the town in February 1645 with almost no casualties on his side. Cutting off the Royalists from land and sea, he settled in to bombard the castle. Then, on 24 March, he was knocked off the cliff. Cholmley wrote afterwards that Meldrum had been trying to retr...

Great Siege of Scarborough Castle: The Keep Comes Down

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Cannon Royal pounded the castle keep for three days. The west wall collapsed, taking the roof and the floors with it. St. Mary's Church, the gun's firing platform, sustained terrible damage from the recoil and from Royalist counter-battery fire; one side of the church remains...

Great Siege of Scarborough Castle: Surrender at Noon

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Sir Matthew Boynton replaced Meldrum and chose a different strategy: pure bombardment from land and sea, no more infantry assaults. The defenders ran out of water when the spring failed, ran low on gunpowder, suffered scurvy from their starving diet, and finally surrendered at no...