Brougham Castle - Picturesque Ruin

Picturesque Ruin

Lady Anne Clifford died at Brougham Castle in 1676 and her grandson, Nicholas Tufton, 3rd Earl of Thanet, inherited the Clifford estates. He died in 1679, and over the next five years possession passed through his three younger brothers. Under the youngest, Thomas Tufton, 6th Earl of Thanet, Brougham Castle suffered particular neglect. In 1714, he decided that Appleby Castle was a sufficient residence and sold the contents of Brougham Castle for £570. Only the Tower of League was left untouched, but in 1723 its contents were also sold, for £40 By the 1750s, the castle's only practical use was as a ready source of building material for the village of Brougham, which prospered due to investment from the Earl of Thanet. In 1794, a record of the dilapidated state of the castle noted that "much of the interior walls have lately been removed, also, for the purposes of building houses for the adjoining farmhold".

During the late 18th century, the Lake District became a popular visitor attraction and the sensibilities of Romanticism glamorised such historic ruins as Brougham Castle. In his poem The Prelude, William Wordsworth recounted exploring the ruins of Brougham as an adolescent with his sister. Brougham also provided inspiration another of Wordsworth's poems, the Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle upon the Restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the Estates and Honours of his Ancestors. The fallen castle attracted sightseers and antiquarians such as William Gilpin and Richard Warner. In his diary, Journey to the Lake District from Cambridge 1779, William Wilberforce described Brougham Castle as a "very fine ruin". The painter J. M. W. Turner visited Brougham in 1809 and 1831, and on the first occasion produced a sketch which would be the starting point of a later watercolour. To avoid the castle decaying further, Charles Tufton, 10th Earl of Thanet, spent £41 repairing the structure in 1830, and his successor Henry Tufton, 11th Earl of Thanet, undertook further repairs in the late 1840s, costing £421.

...That river and those mouldering tower
Have seen us side by side, when, having clomb
The darksome windings of a broken stair,
And Crept along a ridge of fractured wall,
Not without trembling, we in safety looked
Forth, through some Gothic window's open space,
And gathered with one mind in a rich reward
From the far-stretching landscape...

Extract from The Prelude, a poem by William Wordsworth published posthumously in 1850.

Henry Tufton died in 1849, and castle ownership fell to Hothfields. Maintenance was too expensive for the family, and by 1859 cattle were being kept in its gatehouse, and visitors complained that parts of the romantic ruin had become inaccessible. Without sufficient funds, the castle quickly fell into marked decay.

In 1915, the Ancient Monuments Board declared Brougham Castle a monument "whose preservation was regarded as being of national importance". With the introduction of bus services in the area, the castle experienced renewed interest from the public, and in the late 1920s around 2,000 people visited annually. In 1927, the 2nd Baron Hothfield granted guardianship of Brougham Castle to the Office of Works, although he retained ownership. The organisation repaired the castle at the cost of £5,925. In the 1930s an additional £1,050 was spent removing the masonry added in the 1840s.

Brougham Castle survives essentially as it was when the main repairs were finished in the 1930s. The castle is a Scheduled Monument, meaning it is a "nationally important" historic building and archaeological site which has been given protection against unauthorised change. Until 1984, when a survey of the standing structure was conducted, little archaeological investigation had taken place at Brougham Castle. The survey was part of a monograph on the castle detailing its history and the phasing of the structure. Brougham is one of only a few castles in Cumbria to have undergone extensive archaeological investigation. Today, the castle is open to the public, and a museum is run by English Heritage, the successor of the Office of Works.