Muncaster's rise from Bleak House to Enchanted Castle |
| Muncaster in the Lake District has been the home of the Pennington family for at least eight hundred years but new research reveals that their time at the Castle nearly came to an abrupt end in the eighteenth century. Family tradition had suggested that in the 1770's Sir Joseph Pennington allowed Muncaster to go into decline. However, research carried out as part of the Local Heritage Intiative Scheme makes it clear just how serious that situation became. Sir Joseph's son provide a vivid account of the state of the house when he arrived to live there after his wedding in 1778. Sir John Pennington wrote that: " The questions were not whether I should have a good House at Muncaster, but whether I should have any estate....because the part left, and which I was anxious to have make do...actually fell in while we were deliberating about it. Alas! Alas!" In another account of the problems
he faced he complained that the Estate was "the worst conditioned
in England without exception - Muncaster now attracts over 90,000 visitors a year and in 2003 it won an Excellence in England award for the best visitor attraction. Peter Frost-Pennington, one of the current generation of the family says: "fortunately Sir John Pennington did not simply abandon the ruin that Muncaster had become but set about repairing and rebuilding it. Otherwise the Castle might not be here today! So we've very good reason to be thankful for his efforts." Papers uncovererd in the research show that the cost of the repairs made at the end of the eighteenth century was £6,000 at that time a huge amount of money. Letters from people who stayed at the house some years later provide evidence of Muncaster's successful restoration. One guest wrote describing is as "the enchanted castle" and another talked of "its many grand and interesting beauties." The research shows that the Castle's North Tower was added in the 1830s providing the symmetry to the 14th century Pele Tower and giving Muncaster the appearance that it has today. This was thirty years earlier than had previously been thought. It is also clear from the research that when Muncaster fell in to such a bad state of repair in the 1780s it had been a very impressive building. Documents found by the researchers show that in 1678 there were 14 'chimlayes' (chimneys). From another document, which had been produced for the payment of the Window Tax in 1746, it can be seen that Muncaster had 103 windows and around 55 rooms and corridors. The building, which would shortly fall into such serious disrepair, was therefore a fairly grand house. However, the researchers also found papers that give some idea just how difficult it was becoming to maintain such a large building in this remote part of rural England. In June 1762 the family's agent wrote that 'THe winter has entirely brought all the White Wash and Rough Cast off the Front side of the Hall, so that the Wall is quite bare, and water gets into both the Dining Room and Hall.' Eighteen months later he wrote that having had the greatest rains and the highest winds....than has been seen for several years before...The rain beat into every room in the house but your Honour's and the nursery.' Peter Frost-Pennington says: 'After experiencing the storms in January this year I have every sympathy with those ealry generations of Pennington's who had to cope with such harsh weather conditions, even with the better materials that have been used to rebuild and repair parts of the castle since then we couldn't entirely keep the weather out.' Research director Alex Chatburn led a team of 14 volunteers. Together they spent over 700 hours going through papers at Muncaster, Whitehaven and Ambleside as welll as at the Natioanl Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. The Pennington's hope the research will be followed up by a full scale physical architectural survey by English Heritage.
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