High Head Castle

Alan Hunter of Eden District Council Planning Dept. describes the rescue of th’s major building, High Head Castle, Ivegill, Pen rith.

If all goes according to plan, 1989 should see work begin on one of the most significant and ambitious restoration projects Cumbria, or indeed the North of England, has ever witnessed. Yet only three years ago Eden District Council was required to contest a public inquiry into a decision to refuse consent for the total demolition of the building concerned.

Equidistant between Penrith and Carlisle and situated on the eastern fringe of the Lake District, High Head Castle and its setting is one of the most romantic and dramatic in England.

Largely destroyed by fire in 1956, and now little more than a shell, it still, nevertheless, manages to evoke an unforgetable sense of place. Perilously perched over 100 ft. above the deeply incised River lye, with water racing noisily over flat rocks in a dank and noisy gorge, the site is now half-buried amidst its 24 acres of overgrown gardens and terraced grounds. In the summer it becomes an almost inpenetrable jungle of thistles and willowherb. Ivy now has a strangle hold over finely jointed masonry. Moveable fittings, ironwork and sculpture have, sadly, been systematically pillaged. The impression of romantic decay is not too dissimilar to that of Highgate Cemetery, London.

Originally the site was occupied by the Kings Castle in the Forest of Inglewood. The earliest written record is of 1272. The chapel in the grounds was built originally in 1358. The castle, a mediaeval square pele tower within a curtain wall, was extended in about 1550 for the Richmond family. Only its western wing remains, with its unmistakable straight headed mullioned windows with round-arched lights under hood moulds, although attached to the south-west corner of this wing is the basement of a square tower which presents evidence of 14th Century work.

The mediaeval wing is now visually subservient to a very ambitious and sophisticated Palladian rebuild for Henry Richmond Brougham (pronounced Broom). Dated 1744-49, itis inthe style of, and probably to the design of, James Gibbs, the architect responsible for the building of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

Centrepieces to the main and side facades, a Doric hail screen reminiscent of the Cambridge Senate House, the Venetian window upstairs over the tripartite arrangement of door and flanking windows in a rusticated surround all appear to have been adaptions of plates in Gibbs “A Book of Architecture” published in 1728. It was clearly the finest house of its date in Cumbna. As long ago as 1911, when 18th century architecture was not generally admired, an article in The Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society described High Head as “a very instructive example of an architectural period only sparingly represented in Cumberland and Westmorland”.

A long formal avenue leads to a magnificent 11-bay facade with a projected pedimented 3-bay centre. It has a central door with alternate-block rustication, entablature and pediment. The large tympanum to the centre has a mighty triton and mermaid with curling tails on either side of the Brougham coat- of-arms. It is built of deep red Lazonby sandstone on rock of the same colour, and its Italianate carvings are of the highest quality. Indeed craftsmen were imported from Italy for the project which cost 10,000 Hanoverian soverigns, the equivalent of £50,000,000 today!

Both the mediaeval wing and the principal house are listed Grade 11*. Adjacent is a fine stable quadrangle with heavy rustication, a steep pediment gable and cupola. It has, of late, suffered some insensitive conversion to residential use. The present chapel standing airily on elevated ground on the edge pf the river valley dates from 1682.

The proposed restoration will involve nothing less than the complete rebuilding of the mansion around a steel skeleton supporting a new roof and interior. The architects are Carlisle based Nichol Armstrong Lowe, responsible for the programme of works currently in train at Carlisle Cathedral. Restructuring will be aided by over 400 photographs of both the exterior and interior of the building which survive from the 19th Century and immediately following the fire of 1956. The cost of making the building watertight alone has been put at over Lim.

The driving force behind the project is Christopher Terry, a keen conservationist,

who has (through the High Head Rescue Project, a charitable trust) already secured substantial financial support from English Heritage (E0.4m), the Nationwide Building Society (£0.65m), the British Historic Buildings Trust, The Georgian Group, and several individual philanthropists.

Eden District Council and Cumbria County Council have offered albeit modest, but necessary, grant aid in order to fund urgent works to prevent the collapse of vaulted cellars.

Restoration is only the first hurdle to overcome in the story of High Head Castle. Finding a long term use for the building is the next, and potentially more difficult. The alternatives which are currently being actively pursued include a private residence, luxury apartments, country house hotel, corporate headquarters (e.g. Appleby Castle — Ferguson Industrial Holdings), conference/training centre, school, nursing home or health farm.

High Head Castle is a little known but substantial building of the highest architectural, historic and landscape importance. Its rescue from complete destruction, will, if it is successful, represent one of the boldest projects ever undertaken in this region. Our fingers are tightly crossed.

Alan Hunter

Eden District Council

High Head before the fire. (copyright Country Life)

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