Qualla: Tutbury Castle

Tutbury Castle: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dave Harris, CC BY 3.0. Mary Queen of Scots called herself the "pauvre prisonniere" of Tutbury, and she was not exaggerating for sympathy. The castle she was sent to in 1569, and again in 1585, was a damp and ill-fitting hilltop fortress on the Staffordshire-Derbyshire border, its plaster wet, its carpentry draughty, its garden an enclosure of wooden palings she said was more like a pig run than anything fit for a queen. Today the castle is mostly ruin. A nineteenth-century folly called Julius' Tower stands on the motte where the original Norman keep once rose, and the surviving stretches of curtain wall and the broken stump of John of Gaunt's Gateway look out across the Dove valley toward the village of Tutbury below. The Duchy of Lancaster still owns it, which means, in 2026, it belongs to King Charles III.

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Image: Dave Harris | CC BY 3.0

Tutbury Castle: Norman Foundations

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Searle, CC BY-SA 2.0. The first castle at Tutbury was raised by Henry de Ferrers, one of William the Conqueror's most powerful Norman followers, sometime after 1066. Henry made it his headquarters in the wapentake of Appletree, the medieval administrative district that included the hunting forests of ...

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Image: Mike Searle | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tutbury Castle: From Stronghold to Showpiece

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Duncan Harris from Nottingham, Britain, CC BY 2.0. The de Ferrers kept rebelling. In 1264, after the family backed Simon de Montfort against the crown, Prince Edward, the future Edward I, nearly destroyed the castle. Five years later Henry III gave the confiscated estates to his second son, Edmund Crouchback, founding the Duchy o...

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Image: Duncan Harris from Nottingham, Britain | CC BY 2.0

Tutbury Castle: The Captive Queen

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stocksy, Public domain. Mary Stuart arrived at Tutbury on 4 February 1569, after a long winter journey south from Bolton Castle in Yorkshire. The English Privy Council wanted her far from the Scottish border, and Tutbury, with its high enclosure and its remote position, suited Elizabeth's anxieties. Tap...

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Image: Stocksy | Public domain

Tutbury Castle: 1585: The Last Stay

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. In January 1585 Mary came back, and this time her treatment hardened. Her keepers, Ralph Sadler and John Somers, struggled to find acceptable hangings for her bedchamber, which sat under the eaves of a timber-built lodging with windows that opened only into the castle courtyard. ...

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Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tutbury Castle: The Civil War and the Folly

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. The castle's last act as a real military post came in the English Civil War. Held for the king by Sir Andrew Kniveton, it withstood one Parliamentary assault in 1643 and held out until April 1646, when its garrison surrendered after a three-week siege. Parliament, having decided ...

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Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0