Carlisle Castle is located in Cumbria and was built in the late 1000s; at this time, Cumbria was part of Scotland. The castle was originally a Norman-style motte and bailey one at the site of an Roman fort dating from 72AD, known as Luguvalium. The existing castle keep dates from the early 1100s. The castle has seen a lot of action over the years and is the most sieged castle in the UK as it was on the northern border, and Mary Queen of Scots was a prisoner here. It was used in the Civil War and also the Jacobite uprising before becoming neglected in the late 1700s. The grounds were used for militarty purposes in more recent times before becoming a tourist attraction. The castle can be visited, and the Cumbria Museum of Military Life is located inside the grounds.
From the 1700s, some of the castle was demolished, and the stone from it was used for other buildings. Barracks here were occupied in the 1850s with soldiers and officers living here with their families.
The castle contains historic graffiti, but with the current conditions, there was not any signage to point this out.
Post-lockdown, a one-way system is in place to visit the castle, and the upper two floors of the keep are shut off from the public currently due to this (because a one-way system cannot be implemented). Visitors can visit the half-moon battery in front of the inner courtyard, which is just a semi-circular hallway at moat level.
Inside the castle, visitors could walk around the castle walls. The tower where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned has been demolished, but the area where it stood can be seen on one of the far corners.
The above buildings were used for the military history, and the below image shows the entrance to the castle keep.
Visitors can explore a couple of rooms on the first level of the castle, including the great hall. At the bottom of the castle, on the ground floor, visitors can explore the store rooms and dungeon, which were dark and damp rooms.
After visiting the castle, I had a quick walk to Cumbria's Museum of Military Life. The cafe is also located here and was open with seating outside. The museum included items, weapons, medals, propaganda, personal items, and uniforms from the major conflicts in the past couple of hundred years - Boer War, India, World War I, World War II, and the most recent in Afghanistan.
When the current virus is no longer a threat, the museum should be fully open to the public again, but at least it is an attraction that can be visited while most of us are unable to and do not wish to go abroad this year.
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