Chillingham Castle

Many people have difficulty in the matter of accumulating "stuff".  It's fun to buy things, cool to own them, but getting rid of them?  Nah.  It of course can lead to becoming a Hoarder.  Usually there is some limiting factor.  I've not watched the various TV programs on this matter but in general you can only fit so much "stuff" into a double wide trailer or, for the more fortunate hoarder, a barn.  But what if you have an entire castle to fill?  Things could get interesting.

On one of our Diggers Excursions last month we went to Chillingham Castle.  It has been very extensively rebuilt, but at its core it is an old place.  And  it sits in the debatable lands between England and Scotland.  Often besieged; I suspect if you were to talk to the ghosts of the various Lords who held Chillingham they'd misinterpret the term hoard to mean yet another pack of rampaging Scots on the way.

The current Lord, Sir Humphrey Wakefield, would be another matter.  He's done a lot of things.  Been a cavalry officer, a mountaineer who has climbed Everest, been married several times....and served as a director for various Antique firms.  He even worked for Sotheby's for a while.  Here's a guy who had access to an entire universe of "stuff".  And he's filled Chillingham up with it.

You are off to a good start when you walk through the front gate and have a WWI vintage machine gun aimed at you.

This shows the overall "organization" of the place.  Vickers gun, African drum, random photos, an aluminum ladder against the back wall.....

Chillingham claims to be one of the most "haunted" castles in Britain.  And to be fair, there have been a few skeletons found buried and walled up in odd places.  Here in one of the main halls is a guide who was very enthused about ghosts.  He has various ghost detecting equipment in that box behind him.  During his chat with us he did a quick take and said "There...did you see that spirit orb along the edge of the tapestry?"

It didn't seem right to disappoint the man, so our photographer Pete arranged a trick photo of us in front of that fireplace in the background.  We'll probably end up on their website....

Photo credit of course to Pete Savin.  Acting credits shared.

You actually don't even need to buy the fairly reasonable entry ticket to see cool things.  Before you hit the gift shop/box office you can cruise through a faux torture chamber.  It is suitably dark and gloomy so I made rare use of a flash here.....

Of course most if not all of these torture implements are modern fakes, that's part of why they have atrocious lighting in this area.  The gigantic steel trap on the floor is one of those things supposedly used to cruelly, and one assumes fatally, capture poachers who strayed onto private hunting preserves.

You can also, sans ticket, go to their very nice tea shop.  Here it is seen from "The Minstrel's Gallery" where musicians would strum away with lutes and such back in the day.  Or even now, as you can rent the facility for private functions.

All manner of pikes and such on the walls.  Also antlers.  That massive set high up on the right wall are  Irish Elk antlers.  This was a species now extinct that overlapped with early Man and turns up in some cave paintings.  These antlers are dug up in various places, especially Ireland, and were an active commodity on the Castle Decor market back in the day.  These seem too big (sources vary but 11 or 12 feet across, max) to be entirely plausible as a genuine set.  Probably there was a competition amongst decorating nobility....my set is bigger than yours.  Ironic, as one theory for the extinction of Irish Elk is related.  As evidently "Does loved them some big ones" there was genetic selection for male elk with the most ridiculous front heavy....er.....racks.  Eventually the male half of the species figuratively and perhaps literally just tipped forward on their noses and could no longer move.  Add what metaphors seem good to you.

Lots more Castle Décor.  Random paintings on the wall, a table permanently set for a formal dinner.  That huge wooden thing on the back wall is a punt gun, a massive shotgun that you'd mount on the front of a small boat so that you could blast an entire flock of waterfowl all at once.

The whole place is chock full of things like this.  But there is a fair bit of actual history too.  Here's the view from The Edward Tower, where Edward the First (aka The Hammer of the Scots) stayed during one of his forays up this way.  Nice gardens.

In such a historic spot I had to ask my friend Pete to sit in the helpfully provided throne and strike an Edwardian pose.  He's clearly ruminating on the perfidious nature of the Scots - almost as bad as his allied nobles - and on the profound disappointment that was his son, the future Edward II.

If a castle full of curios and purported ghosts interests you I recommend Chillingham.  If you just want to see additional demonstrations of my principle that no opportunity for a silly photo should be missed.....come back on Monday.....