Bricked up Alive: The Ghost of Carlisle Castle
Carlisle Castle’s Scottish Resident
Image by: Flickr user, CAMRAman
At almost 1000 years old Carlisle’s imposing castle has had a violent and turbulent history due to its pivotal border location. Throughout the years the castle has changed hands multiple times passing between Scottish and English control many times during its extensive history.
Today the castle is maintained by English Heritage and is home to both the Cumbria Museum of Military Life and the county headquarters of the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment.
Although our castle’s illustrious history will not come as much surprise to our local readers, they may be surprised to hear that nestled between the cold sandstone walls of the castle walks a resident well over 200 years old.
During the 1830’s whilst the castle was still under military use, it undertook some extensive construction work in order to build the regiment a new barracks and parade ground. During this work various walls were demolished. Within one of the felled walls workmen uncovered the skeletal remains of a Scottish lady. Only identifiable by the tattered remains of her tartan clothing and three rings still lodged onto her bony fingers, those who found her were convinced that she had been the victim of a form of brutal immurement, literally:
bricked into the walls whilst still alive and left to starve to death.
The opening of the Scottish lady’s final resting place must have stirred her spirit as from then on her ghostly figure has begun to show herself within the castle. One notable occasion was in 1842 when a guard of the castle completing his night watch duties, was approached by an unusual woman. He began shouting at the woman to warn her she was trespassing, when the lady did not respond he began shouting for his fellow guardsmen. The lady still remained unfazed by the guard’s screams.
Now panicking the guard raised his bayonet and charged straight at the woman, however when his bayonet hit her she simply vanished into thin air. The guard overcome with fear at this sight collapsed into a heap on the floor. The other guards who had heard the commotion came to his aid and managed to revive him although after recounting the story he died a short time later, perhaps shocked to death by his encounter with the Scottish lady that fateful night.
This is an adaptation of a story recounted in Richard Jones’s excellent book: Haunted Castles of Britain and Ireland
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What happened to the ladies remains
There were no human remains, the story is from 1819, and the bones were found to be animal by Dr Barnes.
If this was the case that there were animal bones, what was actually uncover in the 1835 by workmen?