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Dunstanborough Castle stands in lonely grandeur on great whinstone crags, close to the very edge of the sea, and on the first sight of it, Keats' wonderful lines spring involuntarily to the lips: "Magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."
In the Wars of the Roses, Dunstanborough Castle was taken and retaken no less than five times, and Queen Margaret found refuge here, as well as at Bamburgh; but apart from these occasions, Dunstanborough has not taken nearly so great a part in either local or national history as the other Northumbrian castles of Bamburgh, Warkworth, and Alnwick, though greater in extent than any of them.
At Craster, another fishing village and a favourite holiday haunt, is Craster Tower, which has been the home of the family of Craster since before the Conquest. Not far to the north is the famous Rumble Churn in the rocks below Dunstanborough Castle, where the waves roll in and out of the caves and chasms with weird and hollow rumblings. There is another Rumbling Churn in the cliffs near Howick.
We got a good view through our glasses of the old towers of Dunstanborough Castle. As the wind fell light, we pulled in to have a look at it, papa being anxious to do so, as he had visited it in his younger days. The weather-beaten ruin stands on the summit of a black cliff, rising sheer out of the ocean.
Simon de Montford once owned this estate, and the next lord of Dunstanborough was a son of Henry III., to whom Earl Simon's forfeited estate was given. His eldest son, Thomas of Lancaster, took part with the barons in bringing the unworthy favourite of Edward II., Piers Gaveston, to his death.
There are two legends somewhat similar to each other which are told of a company held in the spell of a magic sleep, to be awakened by certain devices, in which the blowing of a horn and the drawing of a sword are prominent. One is the story of "Sir Guy the Seeker," and is told of Dunstanborough Castle.
He visited and made studies from all the old cathedrals, castles, and abbeys, and in 1798 he exhibited pictures of Fountain and Kirkstall Abbeys, Holy Island Cathedral, Buttermere Lake, Dunstanborough Castle, as well as "Morning Among the Corriston Fells." He found in Yorkshire also some of his warmest friends and most munificent patrons, notably Mr.
Behind the castle lies the pretty old-fashioned village with its quaint hostelries and grove of trees; and from the higher parts of the new golf-links the player may look round on a view which would be difficult to match, comprising as it does, the Farne Islands and Dunstanborough to the south, and northward, Holy Island, with its castle and abbey and the bluish haze of smoke lying over Berwick; while, on the western skyline, on a clear day, may be seen the rounded caps of the Cheviots.
The Percies were all Lancastrians, though Sir Ralph Percy changed sides twice. The castle fell into the hands of the Yorkists, and the great Earl of Warwick, the "King-maker" himself, made it his headquarters for a time, while he superintended the sieges of Alnwick, Dunstanborough, and Bamburgh, which were all invested at the same time.
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