NAWORTH,
CUMBERLAND.

AWORTH is one of the few remaining Castles of the Border rescued from the grasp of Time by the noble descendants of its ancient lords. It is the property of the Earl of Carlisle—the representative of “centuries of Howards”—who, according to Sir Walter Scott, “deserves high praise for the attention bestowed in maintaining the curious and venerable pile in its former state.” While, however, his Lordship has taken especial care to arrest the progress of Time over the old walls, he has been wisely cautious to prevent “repairs” from being unseemly patches upon the honoured face of “hore antiquitie.” Its condition is sufficiently dilapidated to carry instant conviction of its age; but nothing out of keeping with the solemn dignity derived from the weight of years is permitted to appear. To its early and existing condition his lordship has himself made happy reference, in some descriptive lines to this—the famous stronghold of generations of his ancestry:

“O Naworth! monument of rudest times,
When Science slept entombed, and o’er the waste,
The heath-grown crag, and quivering moss, of old
Stalk’d unremitted war!
* * * * * *
If now the peasant, scar’d no more at eve
By distant beacons, and compelled to house
His trembling flocks, his children and his all,
Beneath his craggy roof, securely sleeps;
Yet all around thee is not changed; thy towers,
Unmodernised by tasteless Art, remain
Still unsubdued by Time.”

The Castle stands on “a pleasant eminence” at the head of the Vale of Lanercost, or St. Mary’s Holme, and not far from the beautiful and picturesque ruins of Lanercost Priory, which cover the dust of the ancient Lords of Naworth,[7] and many other gallant chieftains who formerly held sway over the wild Border.

The approach to it is peculiarly striking. “The front is strengthened by a curtain wall, and a gateway embrasured, and the corners of the chief building on this side by lofty square towers.” On the north, it impends over the river Irthing, at a great height; the banks shagged with wood. “The whole house,” says Pennant, “is a true specimen of ancient inconvenience, of magnificence and littleness; the rooms numerous, accessible by sixteen staircases, with most frequent and sudden ascents and descents into the bargain; besides a long narrow gallery.” “The idea of a comfortable dwelling,” according to a more recent writer, “was, indeed, entirely excluded; the whole internal contrivance seeming only calculated to keep an enemy out, or elude his vigilance should he happen to get in; its hiding-holes are numerous; but it seems probable that many of its close recesses are even now unknown.”

We have no certain information as to the period of its erection. Tradition reports it to have been built by the Dacres; but “by which of them has not been ascertained.” The earliest mention of it occurs in the reign of Edward the Third, when “Ranulphus Dacre, who had married the heiress of the Multons, obtained a license to fortify and convert his mansion here into a castle.” In the family of the Dacres it continued until the year 1569, when, by the death of the last heir-male of the family, it passed to the Howards—by the marriage of William Howard, third son of Thomas Duke of Norfolk, with the Lady Elizabeth, sister of the last Lord Dacre.[8] When visited by Camden, in 1607, it was under repair; according to Bishop Gibson, it was “again repaired and made fit for the reception of a family by the Right Hon. Charles Howard, great-grandson to the Lord William.” By its present noble owner, the Earl of Carlisle, it is, as we have intimated, preserved from farther injury at the hand of Time,—and is the occasional residence of some members of his family, who resort to it in “the sporting season.”

The romantic fame of Naworth is derived from Lord William Howard—“belted Will Howard,” one of the heroes of Border Minstrelsy. The commencement of his chivalrous career was the first chapter to a volume of romance. He was the third son of the fourth Duke of Norfolk, and grandson of the famous Earl of Surrey—

“Who has not heard of Surrey’s fame?”