Qualla: Pickering Castle

Pickering Castle: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tilman2007, CC BY-SA 4.0. Richard II spent his final months as a prisoner inside walls that William the Conqueror's men had begun raising more than three centuries earlier. He arrived at Pickering Castle in 1399, deposed by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, and was then moved on to Pontefract, where he died. Pickering had become a holding cell for a king the new regime needed kept out of sight. The walls that contained him were the latest version of a fortress that had been refortified, rebuilt, and rebuilt again since 1069, when the Normans wanted a hard point from which to control the rebellious north.

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Image: Tilman2007 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pickering Castle: Born of the Harrying

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cyberdemon007 at en.wikipedia, Public domain. The first castle at Pickering was timber and earth, thrown up in 1069 or 1070 as William the Conqueror's army moved through Yorkshire executing what came to be called the Harrying of the North. Villages were burned, fields salted, populations slaughtered or driven to starvation. ...

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Image: Cyberdemon007 at en.wikipedia | Public domain

Pickering Castle: Edward II and the Scots

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tilman2007, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 1322, Edward II was very nearly captured by the Scots during the chaos of his disastrous northern campaigns. Pickering Castle's defences were hurriedly re-fortified on his orders, and the garrison strengthened. Between 1323 and 1326 builders added an outer ward and curtain wal...

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Image: Tilman2007 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pickering Castle: The Civil War Strip-Mining

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tilman2007, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pickering Castle came through the Wars of the Roses untouched. It might have come through the English Civil War the same way, except that it was held for the king. Cromwell's forces breached the west wall, and three mounds west of the castle are said to mark the positions of thei...

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Image: Tilman2007 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pickering Castle: From Ruin to Monument

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr Greg, CC BY-SA 3.0. The dismantled castle entered a long quiet. The Duchy of Lancaster still owns the property, a holdover from the medieval royal administration of northern England, but by the early twentieth century the ruins were a relic without a role. In 1926 the Ministry of Works took possessi...

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Image: Dr Greg | CC BY-SA 3.0