Qualla: Fotheringhay Castle

Fotheringhay Castle: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Iain Simpson, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is a grass mound by the River Nene, and that is most of what is left. The castle that stood here was the size and weight of a small town, and inside its great hall on the morning of 8 February 1587 the executioner needed three blows of the axe to kill Mary, Queen of Scots. By 1635, less than fifty years later, the place had been reduced to ruin and most of its stone carted away for use elsewhere. What survives is the motte: seventy metres across at the base, thirty metres across the flat top, seven metres above the water meadow. Stand on it on a still morning and the absence has a shape.

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Image: Iain Simpson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Fotheringhay Castle: Scottish Princes and Norman Earth

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian Simons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Fotheringhay was raised around 1100 by Simon de Senlis, Earl of Northampton, on the northern bank of the Nene. The site he chose was Norman in form, motte-and-bailey, with a polygonal stone keep on top of an earthen mound and a moat fed from the river. Through his widow's remarri...

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Image: Ian Simons | CC BY-SA 2.0

Fotheringhay Castle: The Yorkist Cradle

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Todd, CC BY-SA 2.0. Richard, Duke of York, made Fotheringhay one of his principal residences. His wife Cecily Neville bore him sons here, and on 2 October 1452 the youngest of them, Richard, was born in the castle. He grew up to be the king who has been argued over more bitterly than any other Engli...

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Image: Mike Todd | CC BY-SA 2.0

Fotheringhay Castle: Mary's Last Winter

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kokai, CC BY-SA 2.0. She had been a prisoner for eighteen years before they brought her here, moved between Sheffield Castle, Sheffield Manor and other holdings of her keeper the Earl of Shrewsbury. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots since infancy, queen consort of France for a year and a half, claimant to ...

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Image: Kokai | CC BY-SA 2.0

Fotheringhay Castle: The Erasure

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mat Fascione, CC BY-SA 2.0. It is sometimes said that James I had Fotheringhay demolished out of grief for his mother. The truth seems to be more ordinary. The castle had been falling into disrepair through the later Elizabethan years; by 1635 it was reported a ruin and was taken down soon afterwards, its d...

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Image: Mat Fascione | CC BY-SA 2.0