Lowther Castle

Lowther Castle stands in the Eden Valley in Cumbria, a ruined country house built between 1806 and 1814 for William Lowther, the first Earl of Lonsdale. Robert Smirke designed the sham castle in his first major commission, incorporating fragments of a 17th-century house on the site. The building mixes Gothic pointed arches with Tudor-style windows and features a nine-bay central block, angle turrets, and a central tower linked by low wings. A battlemented forecourt wall with turrets and a gatehouse fronts the house, while a service wing extends to the east. The estate has belonged to the Lowther family since the Middle Ages, though the house closed in 1935 and partly served as a tank range during the Second World War. The castle’s history includes visits from Mary, Queen of Scots in 1568, escorted by Francis Knollys. William Wordsworth stayed frequently, writing poems for the first Earl and his wife Augusta, who kept an album of verses by visiting poets. Turner painted *Lowther Castle – Evening*, now in the Bowes Museum, while George Macartney compared the estate’s grandeur to the emperor of China’s summer retreat. The second Earl assembled over a hundred ancient sculptures, reflecting Victorian collecting tastes, and entertained American politician Daniel Webster and his wife in 1839. Today, the castle ruins sit within a rewilding estate managed by the Lowther Castle and Gardens Trust. Visitors walk through the forecourt and along the embattled walls, past turrets and the gatehouse. The wider grounds include extensive woods, water features, and sweeping views across the Eden Valley. The service wing and surviving fragments of the house reveal its former scale, while the landscape around it continues to change as the rewilding project takes hold.