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Dilston Castle  Ordnance Survey Map Reference  NY 977633

Dilston Castle, a 15th century pele house, stands on a hill above the Hexham – Corbridge level crossing and overlooks Devilswater. The earliest known structure on this site appears to have existed in 1317 when a manor house owned by the Divelston or Dyvelston family passed into the hands of the Tyndales.  Dilston passed to the Claxtons in 1379, and Sir William Claxton fortified the manor in 1417.  

The original tower measured about 11.9m by 7m over walls 1.5m thick, and had a vaulted basement, with a prison at the north-west corner.  The entrance was at the north-east corner, and there was a spiral staircase in the north-west corner.  There were originally two floors above the basement level, but the structure has been much altered.



Above : Plans of Dilston Castle based on those from
"The Castles & Tower Houses of Northumberland" by Mike Salter

The Tyndales however, insisted that they still owned Dilston, and around 1430, the tower was captured by John Tyndale, his claim being supported by the Percy family.  Sir Robert Claxton regained possession in 1441, but in the 1480s Dilston passed by marriage to the Cartingtons.  It is they who are thought to have added the wing at the southern end of the tower measuring 4.3m by 4m.  Like the basement of the main block, the addition had gunloops, which also provided light and air.  It contained three floors above the basement.

The Radcliffes obtained possession of Dilston around 1521, and later that century, added the wing on the northern side.  This covered the old entrance, measured 9.5m by 6.7m, and contained a range of four floors.

In 1616, Sir Francis Radcliffe was arrested on suspicion of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot.  After his release he began to extend the castle so that the original tower became the west wing of a quadrangular mansion, with a new chapel on the south side.  When Sir Francis died in 1622, his son Edward completed the work.  The Radcliffes were created Earls of Derwentwater in 1688, and work continued in expanding the mansion.



Above : Dilston Castle from the South-West, August 1998

On 6th October 1715, at the age of twenty-six, James Radcliffe, the third Earl rode off, reaching Preston in November with 2700 hundred men.  The young Earl had been brought up in France and learnt to favour the Jacobite cause.  His wife, too, had Jacobite sympathies and urged him to join the rebellion, which was being planned to replace Protestant Elizabeth I with Catholic Mary.  Known as the Rising of the North, the Earls of Northumberland, Westmoreland and Derwentwater, were at the heart of the insurrection.

The third Earl bade farewell to his young wife and baby and set off to join the rebels. They met near Sweethope Lough, between Bellingham and Kirkwhelpington, and raised the Jacobite flag. They did not have the support they had hoped for and Newcastle would not let them into the city.  They plodded on into Scotland where support was assured, but many of the Scots were reluctant to cross the Border into England.

After one day's gallant resistance he surrendered to General Carpenter and was executed in London on Tower Hill.  His body was returned to Northumberland where it was buried in the little chapel by the castle. It is said that the ghost of the Earl can be seen galloping across the moors along with his men, whilst the ghost of his wife can be seen desperately wring her hands within the remains of the castle.  They are also said to both haunt a bridge in the grounds.

The majority of Dilston was demolished after the Earl's death, and the remains consist of a rectangular tower house with a chapel where he was buried in 1716.  The Earl's son, John, died in 1731.  The Earl's brother inherited Dilston but lived abroad, until he was captured on board a French ship in 1745, and also executed.  Traditionally, the aurora borealis is supposed to be clearly visible every 24th February, the anniversary of Lord Derwentwater's execution.



Above : Vintage postcard of Dilston Castle by "Gibson & Son", from the North-East

The castle estate was passed, by Act Of Parliament to the Greenwich Hospital Commission in 1731 under the pastoral care of the Church of England. The mines belonging to the estate were let to the London Lead Company. It is documented that the receiver for the Greenwich Hospital Commission was Mr John Grey of Dilston Castle.

The Greenwich Hospital Commission demolished the mansion in 1765, and built the modern hall for John Grey in 1835. His daughter was women's advocate Josephine Butler. Born Josephine Elizabeth Grey in 1828, Josephine Butler campaigned for women's causes, especially the welfare of prostitutes, famously campaigning against the Contagious Diseases Act. Wooler Museum has recently opened an exhibition about Josephine Butler, and a portrait of John Grey can be seen at Berwick Museum.  Today the house on the site is a children's home.

By 1859, all that remained of Dilston Castle was a dilapidated tower.  In 1868, an eccentric lady named Amelie, arrived at Dilston to claim the Derwentwater's inheritance, stating that she was a descendant of John Radcliffe, the third Earl's son, who had died childless over 130 years before.  Wearing an Austrian uniform, complete with sword, the spirited lady pitched her tent within the ruined castle.  The Lords of Admiralty, owners since 1865, sought to have her removed.  The Hexham Highway Board fined her ten shillings and she was forced to vacate 'her land', although she continued to camp nearby for a while.  In 1874 the estate was sold to William Beaumont, later Lord Allandale.



Above : Print of the castle in 19th century

The old castle lies within the private estate just south of the A695 near Corbridge.  The remains can be accessed up a small lane on the opposite side of the river.  This lane leads to a private Scout campsite, and a small old bridge about 30m into the field on the left-hand side of the leads up a hill to a small gate on the right hand side of the path marked 'private'.  This allows one to access the rear of the estate and the castle ruins, although the castle is not officially open to the public.  An interesting website can be found at  
http://cll.ncl.ac.uk...on/thedilst.htm

Find below a further 19th century print of the castle.



Bibliography

John Kinross : Discovering Castles in England & Wales : Shire Publications Ltd., First Edition, 1973; Second Edition, 1984; Reprinted, 1990 & 1995
T.H. Rowland : Medieval Castles, Towers, Peles & Bastles of Northumberland : Sandhill Press, First Edition, 1987 ; Reprinted, 1994
Mike Salter : The Castles & Tower Houses of Northumberland : Folly Publications, December 1997
[See http://www.follypublications.co.uk/ for full details of books produced by Mike Salter]
M. Scott Weightmann : Castles of Northumberland : Pitkin Guides, 1997

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More history, from Bastions and Belligerents, Medieval Strongholds in Northumberland, by John F Dodds, Keepdate Publishing ISBN 1 899506 45 4

When Aluric retired from the Sherrifship of the Royal manor of Corbridge in 1118, King Henry 1 carved the Dilston estate out of the manor and granted it as a barony to his former representative in lieu of a pension. The old man took the name of his gift - Divelston as it was then- as his surname, and his descendants held the barony until 1290.
The last Divelston bequeathed the barony to a distant relative called Sir William Claxton, but the courts over-ruled the will and directed that a cousin, William de Tynedale should get the property. The Claxton family had to wait until 1416 before they could settle into Dilston. When they did, they were quick to build a tower overlooking the Devil's Water, an L-shaped structure with a vaulted ground floor and a round turret sticking out on corbels at one end.
Sir Robert Claxton died in 1484 and left Dilston to his only offspring, Joan, the bride of a few months of John Cartington. Dilston remained hers and did not pass to her husband , so when John died their daughter Anne inherited only Cartington.
In due course Anne married Edward Radcliffe, a younger son of Thomas Radcliffe of Derwentwater. Their son Cuthbert inherited Cartington when his mother died, and Dilston when his Grandmother Joan died in 1521. Cuthberts eldest son inherited Dilston, and a younger son got Cartington.
The Radcliffes held Dilston for close on 200 years. The first hundred was uneventful, the second quite the reverse. Sir Edward Radcliffe welcomed in the 17thc by building a hall on his estate which incorporated the old , but much altered tower as a wing. In 1629 he purchased Alston's lead mines, a very lucrative investment which provided the wherewithal to buy Langley barony in 1632. He lost this during the Civil War for supporting the King, but it was put on the market, bought by a London businessman George Hurd, and sold back to the Radcliffes for £10,000. Sir Francis, Sir Edward's son, raised this huge sum by mortgaging some Yorkshire manors owned by his mother.
Sir Francis became obsessed by property ownership and during the 1660's he bought numerous estates in Nothumberland, almost as if his aim was to surpass the Percy's as top landlords. Property however ws not enough: a grand title was needed as well. He achieved this by marrying his son and heir, Edward, to Lady Mary Tudor in 1687. She was fourteen years old at the time, the illegitimate daughter of Charles 2nd and Mrs Moll Davies, a stage performer whom Samuel Pepys considered more talented than Nell Gwynn. Next year Sir Francis became Earl of Derwentwater, Viscount Radcliffe and Baron Tynedale.
Edward inherited his father's estates and titles in 1696. He lived in London and played no personal role in Northumberland. An active supporter of both the Roman Catholic religion, and the Stuart dynasty, he failed to see anything glorious about the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and when King James 2nd (and 7th of Scotland!) was deposed he sent his son James to be educated with the ex-king's son in St Germain in France. The two boys became close friends.
Young James Radcliffe became the third Earl of Derwentwater on his father's death in 1705. He returned to England in 1709 and , deciding that Dilston should be his home, he put in hand complete re-modelling of Dilston Hall, working to a plan which retained the old tower wing. He married in 1712, Anna Maria, daughter of Sir John Webb of Canford in Dorset, and they lived in Canford until Dilston Hall was habitable. But the job was never completed, and the hall provided a happy home for just one year.
Northumberland at this time was ripe for Jacobean rebellion. Many of the influential landed gentry and business magnates wanted the Stuart kings back for religious or economic reasons, and secret plotting and schemimg was the order of the day. The accession of George 1, a Hanoverian who never even bothered to learn English, acted as a catalyst, and when in August 1715 the Earl of Mar and other Scottish noblemen proclaimed the Old Pretender as James 8th of Scotland and 3rd of England there was an animated response south of the border.
It was generally known that the Earl of Derwentwater's sympathies were with his old school chum, and the government issued a warrant for his arrest. He evaded the law men and went into hiding, at first in Styford and then in Newbrough, and did not emerge until all was ready to declare openly for James Stuart. The Radcliffes , James and his younger brother Charles, rode up and down the county during October, picking up what support they could find. They elected a protestant Member of Parliament, Thomas Forster of Adderstone, to be their 'general'- for public relations rather than military reasons- and a few noblemen like Lord Widdrington joined them. But many others, especially protestants like the Blacketts and the politically shrewd like the Capheaton Swinburnes, found reasons for staying at home, and the rising was not he qualified success hoped for . Indeed even after the Earl of Mar had sent troops under Brigadier MacIntosh, and Lord Kenmuir had brought men from Galloway, the total force numbered only two thousand. It proved to be no match for Government troops when they met at Preston on 12th Nov 1715. A handful of Northumbrians managed to escape, but most including the two Radcliffes and Forster, were taken prisoner and marched into London gaols.
Charles Radcliffe managed eventually to escape and fled to France ( he returned for the 1745 rebellion only to be captured and executed). Forster also escaped thanks to a clever trick by his sister Dorothea. The Earl was kept in The Tower (of London) and resolutely rejected offers of freedom if he acknowledged the Hanoverian succesion and changed his religion. His wife entreated the King and the House of Lords to no avail, and he was executed in February 1716. His body was brought back to Dilston in secret by Frank Stokoe of Chesterwood and laid to rest in the private chapel which still graces the estate.
Not unexpectedly the vast Derwentwater empire was sequestrated in its entirety, although Anna and her infant son John were permitted to continue to live at Dilston until the government decided what to do. In 1735 an Act of Parliament decreed that everything should be granted to the trustees of the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich, to pay for the completion of their building programme and to provide for future maintenance.
It was a most handsome donation, especially as the Alston mines were still very profitable. The hospital was also fortunate in securing the services of John Grey as Northern Estates Manager: he was a conscientious and efficient agriculturalist who doubled the yield of the land in a few years.
In 1765 most of the old hall was demolished, but the old tower , now roofless was allowed to remain with just sufficient of the attached hall to give it a few windows. This ruin still makes a charming picture, but has no practical value and is retained purely for romantic reasons. The private chapel a few yards away is perhaps of more interest to architects. A new Dilston Hall was built in 1835 on the southnwestern side of the grounds. In 1874 the estate was sold to W.B.Beaumont, who later became the first Lord Allendale, and today it is a centre for an Advanced Social Training Establishment.

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Another old postcard of the place.

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A coloured print of the castle from 1813.

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Postcards of Dilston Castle recently added to my collection.

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Another old postcard of Dilston Castle, recently added to my collection.

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From the Journal, 16th January 2008

Windfall for bridge over devil’s water

One of the most romantic historic sites in the North-East is to be further enhanced, thanks to a cash boost.

A grant of £218,000 has been awarded by the Heritage Lottery Fund to the North Pennines Heritage Trust for its Historic Dilston site, near Corbridge in Northumberland. The site includes Dilston Castle and chapel, and the scenic Lord’s Bridge over the Devil’s Water, a tributary of the Tyne.

The grant will finance a new programme of work from March, which will run throughout the year. Once completed, visitors will be able to access parts of the site not previously open to the public and will gain a better understanding of Dilston’s early development as a fortified settlement.

The now demolished Dilston Hall was the home of James Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, who was executed in 1716 for his role in leading the 1715 Jacobite rebellion in Northumberland.

Dilston Castle and Chapel opened to the public in 2003 having been restored by the Trust in phase one of the project. The new grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund will ensure the long-term survival of features such as the elegant early 17th Century Lord’s Bridge and the remains of an extensive Jacobean range of buildings that stood near Dilston Castle.

Excavation of these buildings began last summer during a field school run by North Pennines Archaeology Ltd. The quality and extent of the remains uncovered in the excavation proved to be of great significance, providing evidence of at least three phases of building, going back to medieval times. It is thought that in its later use, the building may have been a stable block or brew house for Dilston Hall, a Jacobean manor house built by Sir Edward Radcliffe, in 1622.

The grant means that the archaeological work can continue this year and that a fallen stairway, leading up to a turret in Dilston Castle, will be restored, offering a panoramic view across the Tyne Valley. The exposure of the foundations of the old hall that once stood alongside Dilston Castle – a 15th century tower house – will enable visitors to understand more clearly the early history of the site, the recorded history of which dates to the beginning of the 12th Century.

A new scheme for Dilston Castle is a removable canopy, which can be erected, when needed, over the first floor of the ruin, allowing functions to take place. The most urgent work involves the picturesque area beside the Devil’s Water, where a remaining stretch of ornamental walling – a surviving feature of the riverside gardens of the demolished Dilston Hall – still stands alongside Lord’s Bridge. Vital structural work needs to be carried out to the bridge and retaining walling.

Dilston Castle and Chapel will open to the public from the beginning of May to the end of September.

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A print of Dilston Castle from The Graphic, 12th February 1870.

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An engraving from the Illustrated London News, 1868.

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