Marisco Castle, also known as Lundy Castle, is a fortification on the island of Lundy, constructed in the 13th century by Henry III and extensively rebuilt in the 17th and 19th centuries. Henry built the castle following the arrest of William de Marisco in 1242, creating a squat granite fortification that overlooked the Bristol Channel. The castle and its surrounding rabbit warrens and pastures passed out of the control of the Crown and onto a sequence of nobles from 1332 onwards.
The castle was reinforced in the late 16th century to deal with the risk of piracy, and was again strengthened during the English Civil War between 1642 and 1647. During the 18th century, the castle fell into ruin; it was briefly used for housing convicts and much of its stone was robbed for use elsewhere on the island. In the middle of the next century, the castle was converted into agricultural housing, with the site being extended to support the new submarine telegraph cable that linked the island to the mainland.
The cable cabin attached to the castle was keep was converted into a holiday cottage in 1956, and the remainder of the keep was similarly converted in 1979. The castle is now operated by the Landmark Trust and available for rent as a set of four holiday properties.
History
13th-15th centuries
Marisco Castle was built by Henry III between 1243 and 1244 in order to control the island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel. Six years before, there had been an attempt to assassinate the King in Woodstock; the investigation established that William de Marisco, a minor nobleman reduced to piracy, was responsible. Royal forces tracked Marisco down to Lundy and seized him 1242, resulting in his execution for treason. Lundy passed into control of the Crown and the King ordered the construction of a fortification to control the island and prevent it falling into the hands of his enemies.
The Sheriff of Devon, Walter de Bathon, arrived on Lundy in the spring of 1243 with a master mason and set about building a castle in the south-east corner, which was compete by 1244. The site would control the landing site on the island. The castle used local granite, with lime for the mortar imported from Devon. It cost £200,1It is difficult to accurately compare early modern financial figures with modern equivalents. See our article on medieval money for more details. a large sum, paid for in part by rabbit fur from Lundy’s commercial warrens, and formed the main building on the island. The initial garrison comprised a constable, forty sergeants and four mariners. The island held warrens, pastures and farmland, and three workers were also left on the island to work the lands.
Edward III gave Lundy to William Montagu, the Earl of Salisbury, in 1332 and the castle passed out of royal control.
16th-17th centuries
Sir Richard Grenville acquired Lundy and its castle through his marriage in 1577. Piracy increased with the growth of the local tobacco trade, and Richard built additional fortifications around the castle, including the east parade. Sir Bevill Grenville, his grandson, was given Lundy in 1619 and continued the developments, including probably building two houses in the front of the castle, which had become increasingly ruinous. In 1633, Bevill reported that the Spanish had landed 80 men on the island and pillaged it.
In 1642, civil war broke out between the Royalist supporters of King Charles I and those of Parliament. Bevill Grenville was killed in 1643 and Thomas Bushel, a local mine owner, was appointed the governor of Marisco Castle. Bushel maintained a garrison of 20 men and rebuilt much of the castle at his own expense, including reconstructing the keep, adding a parade ground, a bastion with guns overlooking the sea, curtain walls, and a private residence, later known as the “Old House”, for himself.
After the collapse of the Royalist effort in the southwest, Bushell continued to hold out in the castle. He rejected an offer from Lord Say and Seal – who argued that he was now the rightful owner – to hand over the property in exchange for compensation, and entreaties from the Parliamentary commander Lord Thomas Fairfax. Eventually, following discussions with the King, Bushel surrendered to Colonel Richard Fiennes – a relation of Lord Say and Seal – in February 1647.
After the restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, ownership of the castle was restored to the Grenville family.
18th-19th centuries
The Grenvilles and their descendants continued to hold Lundy and the castle for many years. The island was leased to Thomas Benson, a landowner and Member of Parliament for Bideford, between 1748 and 1754. Benson took on contracts to transport English convicts to North America, but shipped them to Lundy instead, where he kept them in the castle and put them to agricultural work; he also used the caves in the cliffs under the castle for smuggling. Discovered, Benson was heavily fined and, after an attempt at insurance fraud to make good his losses, he fled to Portugal.
Late 18th-century accounts of the castle describe that the castle was equipped with five artillery guns, and that the garrison was provided with water from one of the island’s wells, brought down to the castle through clay pipes.
Sir John Borlase Warren, the Member of Parliament for Buckingham, purchased Lundy and the castle in 1775, by when the fortification was quite ruinous. Warren robbed the castle of stone for other work on the island, turning the interior into cottages, and visitors to the island in 1787 described the castle as being “entirely demolished”.
The castle passed between several different private owners over the next few years. One of these was Sir Aubrey de Vere Hunt; the labourers he brought onto the island reportedly inflicted extensive damage to the remaining fabric of the castle, and there were large falls of the external walls in the early 19th century.
20th-21st centuries
In 1916, Walter Heaven, financially desperate, sold Lundy and the castle to A. L. Christie, and in 1925, to the businessman Martin Harman. A survey in 1928 showed that the keep was no longer habitable. There was a proposal to renovate the castle and turn it into a cattle bower, but the projected cost – £1,430 – was too great. The cable cabin, however, was converted into a holiday cottage in 1956. The island proved expensive to maintain, and in 1969, after the death of Harman’s son Albion, it was sold to the National Trust, with the Landmark Trust taking over its lease. By now the castle was in ruins once again.
The Landmark Trust carried out extensive repairs between 1975 and 1978, finishing with an archaeological survey. The Trust converted the castle into two cottages in 1979, with a third being created in 1988. The Parade Ground was rebuilt in 1983 and 1984 by the Manpower Services Commission, during which additional archaeological work was carried out.
In the 21st century, the castle is protected under UK law as a Scheduled Monument and a Grade II* Listed Building, and is rented out as a set of holiday lets by the Landmark Trust.
Architecture
Marisco Castle lies on the south-east side of Lundy, looking out over the Bristol Channel towards Hartland on the mainland. It comprises a keep, a parade ground and a bastion above the sea, with a curtain wall and earthwork defences on the landward side. The keep is made of granite rubble, and is approximately 51 ft by 38 ft across, with turrets at each corner. The style of the square, low keep dates from the reconstruction work of the 17th century. The interior of the keep is now divided into three 20th-century holiday cottages, and the cable hut attached to the northern side. To the south-east of the keep, the parade ground ends in a bastion; the ruins of the smithy and the 17th-century Old House run along the southern side. Defensive earthworks lie to the north and west of the castle.
Below the castle in the cliffs is Benson’s Cave, and artificial cavern 19.5 m deep and 2.5 m wide . Despite its name, it predates the 18th century and may have originally been a powder store constructed during the Civil War.
Bibliography
- Chanter, John Roberts. (1877) Lundy Island: A Monography. London, UK: Cassell, Petter and Galpin.
- Goodall, John. (2011) The English Castle, 1066-1650. New Haven, US and London, UK: Yale University Press.
- Grose, Francis. (1785) Antiquities of England and Wales, Volume 6. London, UK: S. Hooper.
- Keay, Anna and Caroline Stanford. (2015). Landmark: A History of Britain in 50 Buildings. London: The Landmark Trust.
- Smith, Julia; Haslam, Charlotte; Williams, Michael; and André Coutanche. (2014). Lundy: History Album (50th Anniversary edition). London: The Landmark Trust.
- Ternstrom, Myrtle. (2006) “Lundy’s History: The Course of Change” Lundy Studies pp 31-62.
Attribution
The text of this page is licensed under under CC BY-NC 2.0.
Images on this page include those drawn from the Flickr, Geograph and York Digital Library websites, as of 24 December 2018, and attributed and licensed as follows: “IMG1287“, author Rebeccawithers, released under CC BY-ND 2.0; adapted from “Lundy 2010: arrival by helicopter”, author Michael Day, released under CC BY-NC 2.0; “Benson’s Cave“, author David Metcalfe, released under CC BY-SA 2.0; “Lundy Castle“, author P. A Rathz, released under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 UK.