XIV.—Brougham Castle, Westmorland

Extract

About a mile and a half south from Penrith on the main road from Carlisle to York and on the Westmorland side of the river Eamont, which is the boundary between the two counties, stand the ruins of Brougham Castle, one of the most important strongholds of the great Clifford family, who owned no less than four castles in the county, namely, Brougham, Appleby, Brough (under Stanmore), and Pendragon, and also Skipton in Craven, Yorkshire. From comparatively early times the site of this castle has been a place of some importance, as the Romans had here a strong camp, the remains of which are still to be seen in the field to the south of the present building. The name of this camp was Brovacum, but it has been spelt in various ways. It was a rectangular parallelogram surrounded by a single ditch about 75 feet broad with rounded corners, and had a rampart on the inside. There has also been a berm or terrace between this rampart and the ditch below the main defensive works, which were of timber. No trace of the entries to the camp now remain. The ditch on the south side is still complete, and portions on the east and west. Mr. Gr. T. Clark, in a paper in the Proceedings of the Cumberland and Westmorland Archæological Society gives the area within the ditch as 113 yards by 134 yards at the present time, but says it was most likely 198 yards originally, as that was the proportion of the Brough camp. The reason for placing this camp where it is was to guard the ford across the river Eamont where the road from York to Carlisle crossed that river. This ford I think was a little further down the stream than the present bridge, at a point where it is very shallow in summer, but during the winter and spring it must have been often dangerous and at times impassable. Of course the bed of the river may have been quite different in Roman times, but probably its course was much the same as at present. If I am right as to the site of the ford, the Roman road was continued in a straight line from about the Countess's Pillar to the brow of the hill above the river, down which it went at a sharp angle to the water, and then straight across the marshy field until it meets the road as traced by the ordnance surveyors. The camp stands on the south side of the river about 30 feet above it on flat land; and if Mr. Clark's suggestion as to the original size be correct its north-east corner was about 50 yards distant from it. On the opposite side for some considerable distance must have been marsh land, probably often flooded, whilst still further north rose the conspicuous hill now known as Penrith Beacon, under the southern flank of which the Roman road ran in an almost straight line to the next important camp, Voreda, near the village of Plumpton, about five miles north-north-west of Penrith. The camp was also, in all probability, approached by another road, which ran past the present Brougham Hall and across the river Lowther near the bridge and on to Yanwath, where it joined the road that goes over High Street, Avhich in places attained an elevation of 2,200 feet. A third road I think led to the camp from the south, going over Crosby Ravensworth Fell and so on to Lancaster. The main road all the way from Brough Castle to Carlisle is a most wonderful piece of engineering, when the probable condition of the country when the Romans made it is considered. Its gradients are seldom excessively steep, and yet it keeps an almost straight line for miles; and this was surveyed and made at a time when the whole country was a dense forest and the surrounding hills inhabited by a warlike and hostile race. It is rather surprising, considering the military importance of Brovacum, that it has not yielded more important monuments than it seems to have done. Stukeley mentions that he saw many fragments of altars and inscriptions at the Hall (Brougham Hall), and in the wall by the Roman road beyond the castle and near the Countess's Pillar a pretty “buste,” part of a funeral monument, and further on another bas-relievo much defaced, so that in his time perhaps there were some monuments which are now lost; but Chancellor Ferguson in his History of Westmorland says it “has not yielded many inscribed stones, and those not of any great importance. A couple of altars to the local deity Belatucador and four or five fragments of tombstones.” A portion of an inscription remains on a slab in the ceiling of a doorway passage leading to the second floor of the keep; the only word I could read for certain was Titus.