Bamburgh Castle

Bamburgh Castle

Bamburgh Castle is a fortress located in Northumbria.

Real World Background

Bamburgh was said to have originally been built in 547 as the stronghold of King Aelle, an Angle king in Northumbria, who named it after his wife Bebbe ("Bamburgh" being descended from "Bebbe's burh" - "burh" was an Old English word for "castle"). It was converted into a stone castle by the Normans; Robert de Mowbray held it against King William Rufus of England when he rebelled against him in 1095 (he was captured, however, and William Rufus forced the castle to surrender by threatening to blind Mowbray). Thereafter it was held by a series of constables, among whom was Henry "Hotspur" Percy (the same who featured prominently in Shakespeare's Henry IV Part One). During the Wars of the Roses, Bamburgh sided with the Lancastrian cause, until the Yorkists took it in the June of 1464, with the help of early cannons (Bamburgh was the first English castle to fall to gunpowder-based weaponry).

According to Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, Bamburgh was one of two possible locations for Joyous Garde, the castle of Sir Lancelot (Alnwick was the other). Bamburgh's name under the post-Roman Britons was "Din Guyardi", echoing the "Garde" part of "Joyous Garde", which gives it the stronger claim.

See Also

• Bamburgh Castle at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia