#warkworth castle

[tim-dennis]

Harris Hawk

[wandering-jana]

Warkworth Castle, Northumberland

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[venicepearl]

Warkworth Castle is a ruined medieval castle in Warkworth in the English county of Northumberland. The village and castle occupy a loop of the River Coquet, less than a mile from England's north-east coast. When the castle was founded is uncertain: traditionally its construction has been ascribed to Prince Henry of Scotland, Earl of Northumbria, in the mid-12th century, but it may have been built by King Henry II of England when he took control of England's northern counties. Warkworth Castle was first documented in a charter of 1157–1164 when Henry II granted it to Roger fitz Richard. The timber castle was considered "feeble", and was left undefended when the Scots invaded in 1173.

[hotguyswithcats]

Castle in the Mist, Warkworth, England

[marlowedobbe]

Castle in the Mist, Warkworth, England

[debbieallen]

Castle in the Mist, Warkworth, England

[kinorinsama]

Castle in the Mist, Warkworth, England

[umservidorporvez]

Castle in the Mist, Warkworth, England

[mapo-d]

Castle in the Mist, Warkworth, England

[mea-gloria-fides]

Warkworth Castle.

[withasideofshakespeare]

Re: cowboy Midsummer

What if we did a whole collection of Shakespeare plays but inexplicably changed the setting?

The Winter’s Tale but it is very clearly modern Southern California.

Macbeth but all the castles are children’s haphazardly constructed tree forts (this might actually be on theme somehow).

Hamlet but they’re clearly already in London so the “sent to England” plot is a convoluted argument about what the most Englandy place in England is.

Henry IV except the English court is a high school football team and Eastcheap is the theater building and Warkworth is just the high school in the next town over.

Measure for Measure but they’re in space. Space nuns. Why not?

[tim-dennis]

Warkworth Castle

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Getting back to Marmion! Some bits of context for the last few days’ posts.

A palmer was sort of a continual pilgrim, who spent a period of time travelling to holy sights and praying. The greatest holy sight of all was Jerusalem, where the palmer in the poem has in fact been, along with a huge list of other holy sights, from Mt. Ararat where Noah’s Arc reputedly came to rest after the Flood, to Mt. Sinai, to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and in England Durham and Canterbury among others.

I think (I am not sure) palmer paid for their travels in part by donations from pious people, who might want the palmer to pray for them at some shrine. Marmion himself expresses a more lighthearted picture of palmers in general -

I love such holy ramblers; still

They know to charm a weary hill,

With song, romance, or lay:

Some jovial tale, or glee, or jest,

Some lying legend, at the least,

They bring to cheer the way.”

- and that may not be unrealistic for a category of people that could have included the medieval equivalent of a tourist with a GoFundMe. But this palmer is not of that kind - he’s haggard and gloomy, and kind of disturbing with his nighttime mutterings. But Marmion chooses to accept him as a guide all the same, and the next morning the whole group departs.

The first canto (The Castle) ended, we switch scenes and characters for the second (The Convent), to a boat travelling north, up the eastern coast of England, from Whitby to the island of Lindisfarne (also called St. Cuthbert’s Isle) with a group of nuns aboard. Now, where has Lindisfarne been mentioned in the previous canto? In the bit about Marmion’s former page:

That boy thou thought’st so goodly fair,

He might not brook the Northern air.

More of his fate if thou wouldst learn,

I left him sick in Lindisfarne:

The voyage is both a little scary and exciting for the nuns, who don’t get out much. Many of the castles the pass, like Warkworth and Dunstanburgh and Bamburgh, are ones you can still see on the Northumberland coast today.

But two of the group in particular are not having fun: the abbess (chief nun), who is not named, and the novice (i.e., has not yet taken vows and become a nun) Clare. Clare joined the convent recently after the loss of the man she loved, and in order to escape an unwelcome suitor who is trying to marry her in order to get at her property.

She was betrothed to one now dead,

Or worse, who had dishonoured fled.

Her kinsmen bade her give her hand

To one who loved her for her land;

Herself, almost heart-broken now,

Was bent to take the vestal vow,

And shroud, within Saint Hilda’s gloom,

Her blasted hopes and withered bloom.

On top of these griefs, there’s been an attempt to murder her, and the people who attempted it are now prisoners in Lindisfarne awaiting trial:

And jealousy, by dark intrigue,

With sordid avarice in league,

Had practised with their bowl and knife

Against the mourner’s harmless life.

This crime was charged ’gainst those who lay

Prisoned in Cuthbert’s islet grey.

Moving back a bit to yesterday’s entry, this is why the abbess of Whitby is going on this journey: to sit in judgement on these attempted murderers.

Sad was this voyage to the dame;

Summoned to Lindisfarne, she came,

There, with Saint Cuthbert’s Abbot old,

And Tynemouth’s Prioress, to hold

A chapter of Saint Benedict,

For inquisition stern and strict,

On two apostates from the faith,

And, if need were, to doom to death.

Lindisfarne is a tidal island: at low tide it is a peninsula that can be reached from the mainland across mudflats, but at high tide it is an island.

The tide did now its floodmark gain,

And girdled in the saint’s domain:

For, with the flow and ebb, its style

Varies from continent to isle;

As the ship reaches Lindisfarne, the nuns of Whitby on the ship sing a hymn, and the nons and monks of Lindisfarne sing one in return.

[officiallordvetinari]

Below are 10 (more) articles randomly chosen from Wikipedia's featured articles list. Links and summaries are below the cut.

Warkworth Castle is a ruined medieval castle in Warkworth in the English county of Northumberland.

Banksia coccinea, commonly known as the scarlet banksia, waratah banksia or Albany banksia, is an erect shrub or small tree in the family Proteaceae.

The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is a bird of prey found in North America.

Nine cities submitting bids to host the 2012 Summer Olympics and 2012 Summer Paralympics were recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

The Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) is an extinct species of mammoth that inhabited the Americas as far north as the Northern United States and as far south as Costa Rica during the Pleistocene epoch.

Hyderabad (/ˈhaɪdərəbæd/ HY-dər-ə-bad; Telugu: [ˈɦaɪ̯daraːbaːd], Urdu: [ˈɦɛːdəɾaːbaːd]) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana.

The 2003 SummerSlam was the 16th annual SummerSlam professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).

Georges Bizet (né Alexandre César Léopold Bizet; 25 October 1838 – 3 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic era.

Michael Gomez (born Michael Armstrong; 21 June 1977) is a former professional boxer who competed from 1995 to 2009.

M-553 is a north–south state trunkline highway in the Upper Peninsula (UP) of the US state of Michigan.

[hotguyswithcats]

Castle in the Mist, Warkworth, England

[doctorloup]

There are eight days left to fully fund Season 3 of Shadows at the Door and get us a version of the Mountains of Madness so gay that you could power a small turbine on the spinning of Lovecraft in his grave, so this seems like a good time for me to do a few posts about my favourite episodes, and the places in and around North East of England they’re inspired by, or just remind me of. Spoilers will follow obvs.

If you can’t throw a few dolla to the ko-fi, why not share the link and fight the algorithms with us. https://ko-fi.com/shadowsatthedoor/goal?g=85 Don’t worry, you’re going to get the infodump anyway… Anyway, without further ado, let’s start the #SatDNETour at the beginning. S1E01 Leave a Light on for Me. Warkworth in Northumberland we are told is the inspiration for Anworth, where Professor Troughton [our beloved] encounters a haunted lantern. Here you can see it’s quality castle, haunted by the ghost of Margaret Neville, mother of Harry Hotspur, and a mysterious young man seen running around the walls…

…..And the incredible hermitage hewn out of the sandstone cliffs, accessible only by ferry across the River Coquet..

Tomorrow spoons permitting there will be more “North East’s Haunted” lore. And remember for a small donation you can fuel me and @yamikakyuu 's obsession with our awkward ace Professor blorbo.