Qualla: Newark Castle

Newark Castle: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Nevell, CC BY-SA 3.0. King John died here on the night of 18 October 1216, in a bedchamber at Newark Castle, with the Magna Carta crisis still unresolved and his royal treasure lost in the Wash. He was not the first monarch to use the castle, and he was very much not the last to fight over it. The fortress on the south bank of the River Trent was already eighty years old by then. It would survive another four centuries of royal politics, then take three Civil War sieges in the 1640s, and finally be blown apart with gunpowder on Parliament's orders in 1648. What stands today is partly medieval, partly Victorian, and entirely Newark's. The gatehouse is one of the finest twelfth-century examples in England, and you can walk through it for free.

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Image: Richard Nevell | CC BY-SA 3.0

Newark Castle: A Charter and a Bishop

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy Jamieson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Newark Castle was the work of Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, sometimes nicknamed Alexander the Magnificent for his free spending. A charter generally dated to 1135 granted him permission from King Henry I to fortify the river crossing at Newark, which controlled the meeting of the...

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Image: Andy Jamieson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Newark Castle: The Last Bed of King John

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathan Thacker, CC BY-SA 2.0. King John spent the autumn of 1216 fighting a war he was losing. His barons had invited Prince Louis of France to take the throne; John had crossed and recrossed the country trying to hold his remaining loyalists together. On 12 October, his baggage train was caught by an incomin...

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Image: Jonathan Thacker | CC BY-SA 2.0

Newark Castle: Three Sieges and a Slighting

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. Four centuries later the castle was at war again. Newark held for Charles I throughout the English Civil War, surviving three sieges between 1643 and 1646. The first, in February 1643, was a brief Royalist victory. The second, in early 1644, ended when Prince Rupert relieved the ...

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Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Newark Castle: Anthony Salvin's Repair

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Martin, CC BY-SA 2.0. The castle stood as a partial ruin for two centuries. Then in 1845 the architect Anthony Salvin, who had a long career restoring British castles and cathedrals, began three years of careful conservation work, putting the masonry back together without pretending the slighting had ...

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Image: David Martin | CC BY-SA 2.0