IGAS went on a roadtrip to the incredibly aptly named Chillingham Castle, and chill we did! Mainly because, due to the biblically terrible weather we’ve been having of late, most of the fun parts got rained off.
But that didn’t dampen our spirits (ho ho).
The courageous crew set off from Edinburgh via a very uncreepy and rather delightful stop off at an actual real life treehouse restaurant made of actual real-life trees:
On a normal day, this would have been the highlight but not for us, because we had a castle to conquer and what a castle it is! Nestled in Northumberland, on what used to be the border between England and Scotland, Chillingham was originally a monastery before being given a facelift and, for the most part, becoming the castle we know and love in 1344.
Boasting big named guests such as King Edward I (the one that had the barney with William Wallace), King James VI/I, and, perhaps most importantly of all, the International Ghost Appreciation Society, the grounds also host a rare breed of cows, known as the Chillingham Cattle, who are very cute. A solid bovine 10/10. The place also has a torture chamber that is left heroically unexplained, bar this warning on entry:
But, should you be brave enough to go in, such delights await as this spiky chair:
And this surprisingly relaxed looking gentleman:
The castle is also said to be haunted by a whole heap of ghosts. These include the ‘radiant boy’ – a creepy child who’s said to haunt the Pink Room; ‘Lady Berkeley’, whose husband ran off with her sister; and one some seem to call ‘The Spanish Lady’, who apparently – if the below letter is to be believed – doesn’t take kindly to any lightfingered larceny on her turf:
Alas, we were not to find out though – on this trip, at any rate. Upon arrival, we checked into our apartment (which was very cooly situated in the battlements of the castle itself) to await the start of our ghost hunt, but the weather gods had other plans in store. The rain, it would appear, does not stay either in Spain or on the Plain. It was so bad, in fact, that it flooded parts of the route the guide who was meant to be giving the tour took to get to Chillingham; and our hopes of a night of spooky wanderings round a medieval castle were, for the most part, shot down.
But not entirely. One room was available for us to access and it was, quite gloriously, the dungeon.
Despite being above ground – something one might consider to be a disqualifier for the term – it was somehow the most dungeony dungeon we could have hoped for:
Pitch black inside without a torch, it was made entirely of thick stone, with words carved ominously into the wall:
It also housed a grate in the floor which had the good grace to atmospherically have what appeared to be a (fake) skeleton thrown in the mix; and the whole shebang was crowned by a several inches of thick wooden door that creaked ominously when closed. All in all, a very satisfactory find:
Not the evening we had planned, but IGAS isn’t easily cowed (hah). Once we’d had our fill of dungeon drama, we headed back to the apartment and held our own mini-séance, making do and mending with whatever we had to hand, which also included the invention of the worst drink in history. (If you’re wondering what that might look like, mix gin with cold milk and add pepper and you’ll have a fairly solid idea.)
Finishing up the night with some super creepy ghost stories and a tarot reading, we found that while there were no spirit shenanigans to report back, there are definitely worse ways to spend a night in Northumberland. Til next time, Chillingham!