Two Italian cardinals, kidnapped on the road from Darlington to Durham in 1315, found themselves dragged inside the walls of a castle they had probably never heard of. Mitford Castle, west of Morpeth in Northumberland, was at that moment functioning as a private gaol for high-profile prisoners. Sir Gilbert de Middleton ran the operation. The cardinals had been travelling with Lewis de Beaumont, the new Bishop of Durham, and his brother Harry. Middleton's seizure of all of them would help end his career, lead to his execution at the Tower of London, and contribute to the castle's destruction. The pentagonal keep still stands - or what remains of it - on a small mound by the village of Mitford.
The earliest fortification at Mitford was an earthwork raised by the Bertram family in the late 11th century. By 1138 it appears in records as William Bertram's oppidum - a stronghold. The castle sat on a somewhat elliptical mound, a natural prominence improved by the moundbuilders, defending the crossing of the River Wansbeck. In 1215, King John's troops seized it during the baronial wars that gave us Magna Carta. The Norman motte-and-bailey form gave way to stone, and by the early 12th century the inner ward was being built. The ruins today are of ashlar - squared stone, finely cut. A stepped plinth on the western section still carries a large rounded archway, and along the east curtain wall there remains a gateway to a barmkin, the defensive enclosure that once protected horses and people in time of raid.
What sets Mitford apart is its keep - five-sided, each side a different dimension, built on the highest point at the northernmost corner of the castle in the early 13th century. Pentagonal keeps are rare in English castle architecture. There is no obvious tactical reason for the geometry; it may simply be that the master mason was working with an awkward outcrop and shaped his tower to the rock. The keep survives only to its first floor now. A semicircular breastwork - the strongest section of the building - flanks the east curtain. Mural chambers and a garderobe, a medieval toilet, are still identifiable in the wall thickness. The inner courtyard measured roughly 340 feet by 340 feet, used in later centuries as a garden and orchard. A cemetery was uncovered in 1939 north of the chapel, with headstones dating to the 12th century.
By 1315 Mitford had passed into the hands of Sir Gilbert de Middleton. The northern marches were chaotic, the Scottish wars draining the crown, and Middleton turned the castle into a kidnapping operation. The capture of the two Italian cardinals and the Beaumont brothers was a step too far. Ralph de Greystoke seized Middleton for treason. He was taken to the Tower of London and executed. Accounts of what happened to the castle differ. One tradition holds that it burned during Middleton's rebellion; another that the Scots destroyed it in May 1318 while Middleton was imprisoned in London. By 1323, when an inquest was held after the death of its owner Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, the records described Mitford Castle as 'entirely destroyed and burnt.' It has been a ruin ever since.
Mitford is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade I listed building, registered in October 1969. It is also on the Buildings at Risk Register, the official roll of heritage in peril. The estate passed from the Mitford family to the Bruce Shepherd family in 1993, and English Heritage grants in the 2000s funded repairs and consolidation. The work continues. The chapel ruins survive in the outer ward, and a few headstones still mark the graveyard there. The village of Mitford lies just below, and the parish churchyard holds at least one of the stones that was once part of the castle cemetery. What looks like a peaceful Northumbrian ruin was, for a brief and violent few years, a place where cardinals were held for ransom and the king's authority broke down.
Mitford Castle sits at 55.16 degrees north, 1.73 degrees west, about a mile and a half west of Morpeth on the south bank of the River Wansbeck. The nearest commercial airport is Newcastle International (EGNT) about thirteen nautical miles south-southeast. From altitude, look for the wooded prominence where the River Wansbeck bends, with the village of Mitford clustered below. The ruins are small and dark against the green of the river valley, easier to spot in winter when the trees are bare. Cruising altitude over central Northumberland often offers good visibility westward toward the Cheviots.